9/11 panel spreads the blame

U.S. officials failed to grasp the seriousness of the threat posed by al Qaeda and lacked the “imagination” to stop the worst terror attacks in American history, the September 11 commission said yesterday in its final report.

The 567-page document, released after much fanfare and 12 public hearings over 15 months, calls for a vast reshaping of intelligence services and the creation of a national intelligence “czar” to oversee them.

The report does not blame President Bush or President Clinton personally for mistakes contributing to the 2001 attacks, saying legions of leaders bear some responsibility for failing to embrace post-Cold War changes needed to combat the rising threat of international terrorism.

The September 11 panel also offered the sobering conclusion that “we cannot know whether any single step or series of steps would have defeated” the 19 hijackers.

The commission’s purpose was not “to assign blame,” said Chairman Thomas H. Kean, who added that the nation’s “failures took place over many years and administrations.”

“Any person in a senior position within our government during this time bears some element of responsibility for our government’s actions,” the Republican former governor of New Jersey said at a press conference releasing the report.

The conclusions by the panel — officially called the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States — are based on more than 1,200 interviews and will be available for $10 in U.S. bookstores.

The document paints the pre-September 11 U.S. government as a body of agencies and policies gripped by a system that was shaped decades ago to respond to the threats of the Cold War.

“America stood out as an object for admiration, envy and blame. This created a kind of cultural asymmetry,” the report states. “To us, Afghanistan seemed very far away. To members of al Qaeda, America seemed very close. In a sense, they were more globalized than we were.”

Although large sections of the report are devoted to offering the most graphic account to date of how al Qaeda operatives turned four U.S. commercial flights into airborne suicide bombs, it also includes a multitude of recommendations for protecting the nation against future attacks.

The central recommendation calls for the establishment of a national intelligence-gathering center, unifying the more than a dozen U.S. agencies, including the CIA and collecting and analyzing national and international intelligence.

The center would be under the direction of a Senate-confirmed national director reporting directly to the president from a position ranking just below a full Cabinet member.

The intelligence “czar” would have the power to hire and fire deputies such as the CIA director and would be given control over the intelligence community’s multiple budgets.

President Bush did not comment on those specific recommendations yesterday.

From the Rose Garden, the president said the report by the 10 panel members, five from each party, “puts out some very constructive recommendations.”

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