9/11

9/11, al Qaeda, FISA, War on Terror

Our Right to Security

by  • 

Editor — This is a reprint of a commentary, primarily about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, by Debra Burlingame that was first published in the Wall Street Journal and on this web site on January 30, 2006. I think it is worth reviewing, in light of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s letting the Protect America Act of 2007 expire last Saturday night.

Our Right to Security
Al Qaeda, not the FBI, is the greater threat to America.
By Debra Burlingame

One of the most excruciating images of the September 11 attacks is the sight of a man who was trapped in one of the World Trade Center towers. Stripped of his suit jacket and tie and hanging on to what appears to be his office curtains, he is seen trying to lower himself outside a window to the floor immediately below. Frantically kicking his legs in an effort to find a purchase, he loses his grip, and falls.

That horrific scene and thousands more were the images that awakened a sleeping nation on that long, brutal morning. Instead of overwhelming fear or paralyzing self-doubt, the attacks were met with defiance, unity and a sense of moral purpose. Following the heroic example of ordinary citizens who put their fellow human beings and the public good ahead of themselves, the country’s leaders cast aside politics and personal ambition and enacted the USA Patriot Act just 45 days later.

A mere four-and-a-half years after victims were forced to choose between being burned alive and jumping from 90 stories, it is frankly shocking that there is anyone in Washington who would politicize the Patriot Act. It is an insult to those who died to tell the American people that the organization posing the greatest threat to their liberty is not al Qaeda but the FBI. Hearing any member of Congress actually crow about “killing” or “playing chicken” with this critical legislation is as disturbing today as it would have been when Ground Zero was still smoldering. Today we know in far greater detail what not having it cost us.

Critics contend that the Patriot Act was rushed into law in a moment of panic. The truth is, the policies and guidelines it corrected had a long, troubled history and everybody who had to deal with them knew it. The “wall” was a tortuous set of rules promulgated by Justice Department lawyers in 1995 and imagined into law by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. Conceived as an added protection for civil liberties provisions already built into the statute, it was the wall and its real-world ramifications that hardened the failure-to-share culture between agencies, allowing early information about 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi to fall through the cracks. More perversely, even after the significance of these terrorists and their presence in the country was known by the FBI’s intelligence division, the wall prevented it from talking to its own criminal division in order to hunt them down.

Furthermore, it was the impenetrable FISA guidelines and fear of provoking the FISA court’s wrath if they were transgressed that discouraged risk-averse FBI supervisors from applying for a FISA search warrant in the Zacarias Moussaoui case. The search, finally conducted on the afternoon of 9/11, produced names and phone numbers of people in the thick of the 9/11 plot, so many fertile clues that investigators believe that at least one airplane, if not all four, could have been saved.

In 2002, FISA’s appellate level Court of Review examined the entire statutory scheme for issuing warrants in national security investigations and declared the “wall” a nonsensical piece of legal overkill, based neither on express statutory language nor reasonable interpretation of the FISA statute. The lower court’s attempt to micromanage the execution of national security warrants was deemed an assertion of authority which neither Congress or the Constitution granted it. In other words, those lawyers and judges who created, implemented and so assiduously enforced the FISA guidelines were wrong and the American people paid dearly for it.

Despite this history, some members of Congress contend that this process-heavy court is agile enough to rule on quickly needed National Security Agency (NSA) electronic surveillance warrants. This is a dubious claim. Getting a FISA warrant requires a multistep review involving several lawyers at different offices within the Department of Justice. It can take days, weeks, even months if there is a legal dispute between the principals. “Emergency” 72-hour intercepts require sign-offs by NSA lawyers and pre-approval by the attorney general before surveillance can be initiated. Clearly, this is not conducive to what Gen. Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of national intelligence, calls “hot pursuit” of al Qaeda conversations.

The Senate will soon convene hearings on renewal of the Patriot Act and the NSA terrorist surveillance program. A minority of senators want to gamble with American lives and “fix” national security laws, which they can’t show are broken. They seek to eliminate or weaken anti-terrorism measures which take into account that the Cold War and its slow-moving, analog world of landlines and stationary targets is gone. The threat we face today is a completely new paradigm of global terrorist networks operating in a high-velocity digital age using the Web and fiber-optic technology. After four-and-a-half years without another terrorist attack, these senators think we’re safe enough to cave in to the same civil liberties lobby that supported that deadly FISA wall in the first place. What if they, like those lawyers and judges, are simply wrong?

Meanwhile, the media, mouthing phrases like “Article II authority,” “separation of powers” and “right to privacy,” are presenting the issues as if politics have nothing to do with what is driving the subject matter and its coverage. They want us to forget four years of relentless “connect-the-dots” reporting about the missed chances that “could have prevented 9/11.” They have discounted the relevance of references to the two 9/11 hijackers who lived in San Diego. But not too long ago, the media itself reported that phone records revealed that five or six of the hijackers made extensive calls overseas.

NBC News aired an “exclusive” story in 2004 that dramatically recounted how al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, the San Diego terrorists who would later hijack American Airlines flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon, received more than a dozen calls from an al Qaeda “switchboard” inside Yemen where al-Mihdhar’s brother-in-law lived. The house received calls from Osama Bin Laden and relayed them to operatives around the world. Senior correspondent Lisa Myers told the shocking story of how, “The NSA had the actual phone number in the United States that the switchboard was calling, but didn’t deploy that equipment, fearing it would be accused of domestic spying.” Back then, the NBC script didn’t describe it as “spying on Americans.” Instead, it was called one of the “missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives.”

Another example of opportunistic coverage concerns the Patriot Act’s “library provision.” News reports have given plenty of ink and airtime to the ACLU’s unsupported claims that the government has abused this important records provision. But how many Americans know that several of the hijackers repeatedly accessed computers at public libraries in New Jersey and Florida, using personal Internet accounts to carry out the conspiracy? Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi logged on four times at a college library in New Jersey where they purchased airline tickets for AA 77 and later confirmed their reservations on Aug. 30. In light of this, it is ridiculous to suggest that the Justice Department has the time, resources or interest in “investigating the reading habits of law abiding citizens.”

We now have the ability to put remote control cameras on the surface of Mars. Why should we allow enemies to annihilate us simply because we lack the clarity or resolve to strike a reasonable balance between a healthy skepticism of government power and the need to take proactive measures to protect ourselves from such threats? The mantra of civil-liberties hard-liners is to “question authority” — even when it is coming to our rescue — then blame that same authority when, hamstrung by civil liberties laws, it fails to save us. The old laws that would prevent FBI agents from stopping the next al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were built on the bedrock of a 35-year history of dark, defeating mistrust. More Americans should not die because the peace-at-any-cost fringe and antigovernment paranoids still fighting the ghost of Nixon hate George Bush more than they fear al Qaeda. Ask the American people what they want. They will say that they want the commander in chief to use all reasonable means to catch the people who are trying to rain terror on our cities. Those who cite the soaring principle of individual liberty do not appear to appreciate that our enemies are not seeking to destroy individuals, but whole populations.

Three weeks before 9/11, an FBI agent with the bin Laden case squad in New York learned that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were in this country. He pleaded with the national security gatekeepers in Washington to launch a nationwide manhunt and was summarily told to stand down. When the FISA Court of Review tore down the wall in 2002, it included in its ruling the agent’s Aug. 29, 2001, email to FBI headquarters: “Whatever has happened to this — someday someone will die — and wall or not — the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain problems. Let’s hope the National Security Law Unit will stand behind their decisions then, especially since the biggest threat to us now, [bin Laden], is getting the most ‘protection.'”

The public has listened to years of stinging revelations detailing how the government tied its own hands in stopping the devastating attacks of September 11. It is an irresponsible violation of the public trust for members of Congress to weaken the Patriot Act or jeopardize the NSA terrorist surveillance program because of the same illusory theories that cost us so dearly before, or worse, for rank partisan advantage. If they do, and our country sustains yet another catastrophic attack that these antiterrorism tools could have prevented, the phrase “connect the dots” will resonate again — but this time it will refer to the trail of innocent American blood which leads directly to the Senate floor.

Debra Burlingame, a former attorney, is the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, a Director of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center, and the co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America.

9/11

9/11 heroes – or victims?

by  • 

John Gilleeny, a retired firefighter, sends word that in her new book, Susan Faludi says that there were no heroes on 9/11, only victims:

In the end, the character actors who won the 9/11 hero sweepstakes were the New York City firemen. Their uniforms and the direction in which they were heading provided a clear demarcation between them, the heroes, and the office workers, the victims. The secretaries and financial brokers ran down the stairs; the firemen ran up – 343 of them to their deaths. Conveniently for the mythmakers, less than 0.3% of New York’s firefighters were women. There would be no need to rewrite the gender roles in this drama. The adulation began at once.

In our “different kind of war”, these uniformed men were assigned the role of our new supersoldiers. “These are the men who will fight our wars,” President Bush intoned, after posing with the firefighters at the smouldering ruins, as if he were their commanding officer. “These men are fighting the first battle,” Mayor Giuliani declared. In fact, he maintained, they had already won it. “Our firefighters helped save more than 25,000 lives that day – the greatest single rescue mission in America’s history.” That was a claim the surviving firefighters themselves would regard as preposterous. Of the 16,000 to 18,000 occupants of the World Trade Centre that day, 95% of those who died were on the upper floors, beyond reach of rescue, and most of those on the lower floors rescued themselves without uniformed help. The grim truth is that the human toll would have been significantly lower had the firefighters never entered the buildings.

She goes on.

John added his comments:

Femanazis hatred? White, middle class, ‘silent’ minority…males. Words taken out of context. Innuendo. Soundbites. Depositions given while under extreme post traumatic stress. All First Responders who perished were Heroes. Many Victims were Heroes. Radical Muslim miscreants murdered all First Responders and Civilians. Some would rather blame 9-11 on anyone except Muslim infidels.

Here is my response:

I doubt that Susan Faludi has done much more than bravely carry too many bags of groceries, all at once, from her car to her kitchen. All you need to read by her is, “The grim truth is that the human toll would have been significantly lower had the firefighters never entered the buildings.” She argued using an “unassailable” truth; Ms. Faludi chose a side and argued it without giving voice to better angels.

Who shows up after someone dials 9-1-1 and reports that there is a crazed gunman roaming a college campus or a dozen people are believed trapped on the upper floor of a burning apartment building? For that matter, why have but 0.5% of all our citizens gone off to this war and stayed in the fight since 9/11? Unlike Susan Faludi, millions freely choose to be at the other end of the call. Those of us who have entered the arena know the answer to my questions: someone had to do it and if not us, then who? Perhaps Admiral Halsey said it best, right after Guadalcanal, “There aren’t any great men. There are just great challenges that ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet.” That ‘force’ being the moral courage that causes some to step forward when many others either cannot or will not step forward.

To begin to respond to Susan Faludi, most civilians did self-evacuate. Yet untold thousands of civilians assisted others, went back upstairs, helped first responders, and aided those coming away from the World Trade Center. Thousands of troops and DoD civilians rushed in or near the burning and soon to collapse wing of the Pentagon. Some actually died in that effort. Search your memories or the archives of any major newspaper if you need reminded.

As for United Airlines Flight 93, I have not read her book yet apparently, Susan Faludi denies all the evidence that contradicts her from the Moussaoui trial and written about in the New York Times. Use that link, read that article, and click on the multimedia graphic ’10:01:59′ to the left of the article. I have personally spoken with the only witness to the plane coming over that rise, bobbing and jinking in the air, then rolling over and nosing into the ground. Those passengers and crew bravely fought, died, and won the first battle of this War on Terror.

The shocked passengers aboard flights 77, 11, and 175 had little time to assess the situation before terrorists murdered them. Yet they also knew most survived previous hijackings by waiting it out. Aboard those flights, it would take a while before word was passed and reality set in that some crewmembers and passengers had been murdered. God only knows their courage.

What a very few of the living know is, the flight and voice recorders aboard American Airlines Flight 77 clearly indicate the struggle inside the cockpit lasted for 6 minutes. One family member described that in enough detail for me to assert the pilot and his first officer died fighting to their last breaths.

In the South Tower, the job became reaching those above the fire floor after it was learned there was one open stairway, stairwell A. At 9:57 a.m., two minutes before that tower fell, Battalion 7 Chief Orio Palmer found that opening, reached the 79th floor, radioed for Battalion 9 Chief Ed Geraghty to come up, and for my brother-in-law, Lt. Joe Leavey, to join him. All told, somewhere near a hundred firefighters and police officers died in the effort to reach the 700 trapped above, those unaware of that way out. We know 18 civilians did survive by using that stairway to escape from above the fire floor and four of them (plus a Fire Marshal who helped one injured woman) lived because FF Tommy Kelly (Ladder 15 OV) shuttled the injured down as he brought up first responders.

The chiefs in the North Tower’s lobby soon realized the fires could not be fought to extinction and decided to make it solely a rescue operation. Yet dozens of injured, previously disabled, and disoriented people who could not make it out on their own, were gathered upstairs and assisted by firefighters. FDNY Chief Picciotto described a good bit of that in his book Last Man Down. He then started to evacuate while accompanying FDNY Engine Ladder 6 as they carried one woman out. Only those who have actually carried someone down 30 flights know how physically tough that was. Whole fire companies, four or five firefighters, were the ones doing that heavy lifting. To have done that while knowing buildings collapse (and some knew that the South Tower had already collapsed) and that many floors of the building above them were engulfed for more than an hour, took raw courage. Hundreds more outside the WTC were assisted by first responders (at risk to their own lives) on 9/11.

Rudy Giuliani did not lie one word at that last 9/11 Commission hearing; many got the word to evacuate, hesitated, or first set off to ensure all the Brothers were on the way out, and many died because of it. Surely, the numbers would have changed had all the radios worked perfectly; a few more might have lived and perhaps the number ‘323’ or ‘293’ would have come to vogue instead of the ‘343.’

I tried to do all the heroes of that day and the days that followed some justice with these words, within my eulogy for Joe, on November 13, 2001, at his funeral:

“We may someday learn what those who died did that day or perhaps be left to only wonder. What we do know, what we are sure of is, more people were saved that day than on any other day in America’s history.

“Yet even if they saved but one life or even no one, they tried and that’s what matters, all those who struggled on the Pile, who helped and tried to help, or merely said a prayer, you mattered.”

No words will ever do them full justice.

All that said, Susan Faludi be damned.

— Tim Sumner