"We're in danger of just letting things slide,"
said commission chairman Thomas Kean, a former Republican
governor of New Jersey. "We believe unless we implement
these recommendations, we're more vulnerable to another
terrorist attack."
Kean and the panel's vice chairman, former Democratic Rep.
Lee Hamilton of Indiana, told reporters that Congress should get
to work immediately upon returning in September from its summer
recess and that the next president — either President Bush (news
- web
sites) or Democratic challenger John Kerry (news
- web
sites) — must push for the overhaul soon after taking
office in January.
"Time is not on our side," Kean said.
The panel of five Republicans and five Democrats on Thursday
released the findings of its 20-month investigation into the
deadliest terror attack in U.S. history. Citing multiple
government failures, the report called for a national
counterterrorism center headed by a Cabinet-level director to
centralize intelligence efforts.
"If these reforms are not the best that can be done for
the American people, then the Congress and the president need to
tell us what's better," Republican commissioner James
Thompson, a former Illinois governor, told a news conference.
"But if there is nothing better, they need to be enacted
and enacted speedily, because if something bad happens while
these recommendations are sitting there, the American people
will quickly fix political responsibility for failure," he
said.
The idea of a new national intelligence director with budget
authority and power to oversee the 15-agency intelligence
community already has met with skepticism in Congress, where
some key lawmakers are concerned that the position would create
more bureaucracy and politicize the business of gathering and
analyzing intelligence.
Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news
- web
sites) said Friday in television interviews that change was
needed, but she stopped far short of endorsing the creation of a
national intelligence directorship.
"Any specific recommendation has to be looked at for
both its up sides and its down sides. But this president is
going to want to make decisions and to act because we understand
the importance of moving forward with intelligence reform,"
Rice said on NBC's "Today" show.
Nonetheless, Democratic commissioner Jamie Gorelick said she
believed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks represented a
"tectonic moment" in history that would force speedy
changes. Nearly 3,000 people were killed when 19 Arab hijackers
organized by al-Qaida flew airliners into New York City's World
Trade Center, the Pentagon (news
- web
sites) and the Pennsylvania countryside.
"There are bad consequences to being in the middle of a
political season and there are also good ones, because everyone
who is running for office can be asked, 'Do you support these
recommendations?'" she told reporters.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., expressed doubt that
lawmakers would have time to consider a sweeping intelligence
overhaul this year. Congress began its summer recess Friday and
was to be out of session until after Labor Day. But efforts
began in both the House and Senate to build bipartisan
coalitions for the commission's proposals. Relatives of Sept. 11
victims said they too would lobby.
"We're going to hold these people's feet to the
fire," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the
pilot of the hijacked plane that struck the Pentagon.
During the presidential campaign, the report could spell
trouble for Bush, who has made his handling of terrorism the
centerpiece of his re-election bid and insisted he fully
understood the threat.
Nearly three years after the attacks Americans are safer
because of improvements in homeland security and the war against
terrorists, the report said. "But we are not safe."
The report follows House and Senate reports that documented
U.S. intelligence failures and undermined the major claims cited
by Bush to justify the war against Iraq (news
- web
sites). The commission report repeated its earlier finding
that al-Qaida did not have a close relationship with Saddam
Hussein (news
- web
sites)'s regime.
Bush welcomed the commission's recommendations as "very
constructive" and pledged that "where government needs
to act, we will" without being more specific.
Bush had opposed creation of the commission, resisted release
of some documents to it and fought against letting national
security adviser Rice testify publicly under oath.
Kerry, campaigning for president in Detroit, said Bush
administration disputes had delayed the commission's work and
improvements to the nation's security.
"Nearly three years after terrorists have attacked our
shores and murdered our loved ones, this report carries a very
simple message for all of America about the security of all
Americans — we can do better," Kerry said.
The report does not blame Bush or former President Clinton (news
- web
sites) for government missteps contributing to the attacks
but did say they failed to make anti-terrorism a more urgent
priority.
"We do not believe they fully understood just how many
people al-Qaida might kill and how soon it might do it,"
the panel said.
"We also believe that they did not take it as seriously
as it should be taken. It was not their top priority," said
Kean. "We do believe both presidents could have done more
in this area."
The commission identified nine "specific points of
vulnerability" in the Sept. 11 plot that might have led to
its disruption had the government been better organized and more
watchful. Despite these opportunities, "we cannot know
whether any single step or series of steps would have
defeated" the hijackers, the report concluded.
___
On the Net:
Commission report: http://wid.ap.org/documents/911/finalreport.html
