• Introduction

• I. Automatic Dismissal of a Legitimate Line of Inquiry

• II. The “Incompetence Theory” of the 9/11 Intelligence Failure

• III. David Corn and the Magic All-Explanatory “Incompetence Theory”

• IV. Michael Albert Knows What Bush Knew

• V. Misconstruing the Anthrax Case

• VI. The Institutional Pattern of Provocation for War

• VII. The Irrationality of Attempts to Delegitimise 9/11 Inquiry

• VIII. Whitewashing the Israeli Mossad

• IX. Whitewashing Pearl Harbour

• X. Whitewashing the 9/11 Intelligence Failure

• XI. Missing the Point

• Conclusions

• Notes

Introduction

In reviewing the work of these commentators on 9/11, I analyse in detail the failure of the U.S. intelligence community in preventing the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks; the casual repression and/or misrepresentation of facts related to 9/11; the failure of U.S. defence measures on 9/11; the historic and institutional basis for skepticism about the official narrative; and some salient facts which illustrate the need for proper research into the linkages between U.S. government, military, intelligence, and corporate policy, and the ease with which the September 11 terrorist attacks went ahead.

I. Automatic Dismissal of a Legitimate Line of Inquiry

Numerous respected commentators on both the left and right of the political spectrum have ardently criticised widespread speculation that the Bush administration had advanced warning of the September 11^th terrorist attacks, sufficient to prevent them from occurring. When Democrat Party U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney called for a full investigation into the events surrounding September 11 – and particularly into the warnings received by the U.S. intelligence community suggesting that the administration may have known more than it is letting on – she was publicly derided.  “We deserve to know what went wrong on September 11 and why”, stated McKinney.

“After all, we hold thorough public inquiries into rail disasters, plane crashes, and even natural disasters in order to understand what happened and to prevent them from happening again or minimizing the tragic effects when they do. Why then does the Administration remain steadfast in its opposition to an investigation into the biggest terrorism attack upon our nation?

And on and on. The right-wing chorus of automatic denunciation appears to be based on the implicit assumption that the Bush administration is entirely guilt-free of any sort of role in implementing policies that may have facilitated the September 11 attacks, knowingly or unknowingly (McKinney specifies neither). Unfortunately, leading commentators on the left-end of the political spectrum appear to have joined in the obligatory chorus of derision. They are supported in this by the mainstream assumption that the reason the U.S. intelligence community failed to prevent the attacks is simply because of bureaucratic incompetence.

II. The “Incompetence Theory” of the 9/11 Intelligence Failure

That assumption has been adopted even by the private U.S. intelligence firm Stratfor, which produces independent intelligence on worldwide affairs. On September 16^th 2002, Stratfor commented:

On 20^th May, commenting on the outbreak of controversy in Washington DC over “what Bush knew and when”, Stratfor elaborated on this perspective in some detail, arguing that the colossal 9/11 intelligence failure was a consequence of the structural fragmentation of the U.S. intelligence community:

While it is clear that a generally “fragmented picture of the world” is a likely consequence of a “bureaucratically fragmented intelligence community”, in itself this does not demonstrate that the capabilities of that community in developing specific intelligence on various aspects of the world is completely dysfunctional. Rather it suggests that the U.S. intelligence community will find it hard to develop an integrated, coherent understanding of world affairs and their interrelationships.

What is likely to be developed instead, are somewhat uncorrelated and/or disconnected pockets of intelligence on various aspects of world affairs. This, however, obviously does not entail in itself that the intelligence produced will be inaccurate with respect to those aspects. On the contrary, it simply indicates that while the U.S. intelligence community is capable of developing accurate intelligence on specific disparate aspects of world affairs, due to the structural fragmentation among the various agencies that constitute the intelligence community, a coherent overall intelligence picture of the world based on comprehension of the complex influences and interconnections between these disparate aspects will be extremely hard to form. Indeed, Stratfor itself grasps this implication:

“It is unclear whether any of these agencies completely understand their own internal vision, let alone that they are able to transmit a comprehensive picture to the CIA (which is supposed to integrate all this into a coherent world view and serve it up to the president and other senior officials for action).”

Clearly, the problem here does not necessarily relate to the task of focusing and gathering intelligence on a particular threat to U.S. national security – rather it relates to the integration of disparate intelligence into “a coherent worldview”. Structural stumbling blocks thus principally affect the coordination of the U.S. intelligence community in this respect. Attempting to account for a U.S. intelligence failure with respect to the specific issue of developing intelligence on a particular aspect of world affairs - such as a particular threat to U.S. national security – on the basis of such structural stumbling blocks, is therefore theoretically unwarranted.

In other words, while it is certainly possible that such structural stumbling blocks may have had some sort of role in any such intelligence failure, to suppose that they wholly account for the failure without an in-depth factual analysis of the failure itself (based on inspecting the collection and analysis of the related data) is nothing but gratuitous speculation. Indeed, given that such structural fragmentation principally affects the integration of intelligence into a “coherent worldview” (“a single, integrated, coherent picture of what is happening in the world”) it is highly unlikely that this fragmentation alone would be sufficient to result in a wholesale intelligence failure on any isolated specific aspect of world affairs, i.e. a specific threat to U.S. national security.

Stratfor, however, makes the mistake of extending the scope of the implications of the structural fragmentation of the U.S. intelligence community to the community’s failure to act with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11^th – which of course was a specific threat to U.S. national security. Yet clearly this is unfounded based on Stratfor’s own assessment. Stratfor does go on to provide a useful examination of the specific ways in which the relative fragmentation of the U.S. intelligence community can, and has, affected the integration of analysis of information, thus preventing the development of a coherent intelligence product on world affairs.

Without, however, factually assessing the information on the September 11 terrorist attacks collected and analysed by the U.S. intelligence community, it is impossible to know whether this problem of emphasising collection over and above analysis, was the principal reason for the intelligence failure. It is further unlikely that the institutional compartmentalisation of the U.S. intelligence community contributed to its failure to develop a coherent perspective on the specific threat to U.S. national security of Al-Qaeda, because that compartmentalisation primarily affects the development of “a coherent worldview” – not a specific aspect thereof. It is the connection and coordination of intelligence on different aspects of world affairs into an integrated whole that is institutionally problematic as a consequence of the intelligence community’s compartmentalisation. Intelligence on specific issues is not implicated here.

It is, therefore, both theoretically and empirically incorrect for Stratfor to claim that: “Given this incredible tangle of capabilities, jurisdictions and competencies, it is a marvel that a finished intelligence product is ever delivered to decision makers.” This extreme conclusion is contradicted by the fact that the U.S. intelligence community has a demonstrable record of success. U.S. military intelligence expert Richard K. Betts, Director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, and former member of the National Commission on Terrorism, observes in Foreign Affairs: “Paradoxically, the news is worse than the angriest critics think, because the intelligence community has worked much better than they assume…

In this context, to prematurely presume in the absence of facts that an intelligence failure on a specific national security threat is because of incompetence induced by the institutional compartmentalisation of the intelligence community, is unwarranted. On the contrary, as documented by Johnson, most often such failures are not related to the quality of the intelligence product itself, but rather because the political bureaucracy does not act on accurate intelligence received.

Stratfor, at least, admits that: “We remain certain that if we searched all of the databases and memos we would find that the U.S. government had collected much of the information that would have been necessary to prevent Sept. 11. It was there.” Yet the organisation then makes a logical leap in assuming, without having actually examined the data itself and what was done with it, that this information “wasn’t collated, integrated, or analyzed and therefore could not be disseminated.” But in light of the above analysis, there is simply no good reason at all to assume that this is the case, particularly when we understand that the institutional compartmentalisation of the intelligence community only makes it unlikely that the CIA will be capable of developing “a single, integrated, coherent picture of what is happening in the world”, rather than any coherent specific threat assessment. Indeed, this position is supported by the fact that there has been a string of U.S. intelligence successes in the last decade, in comparison to which there have been relatively few – though of course tragic - failures.

III. David Corn and the Magic All-Explanatory “Incompetence Theory”

Cruder renditions of the “incompetence theory” of the surprising lack of action on the part of U.S. intelligence in relation to September 11 have come from partisans of the left. These renditions are articulated in a much less sophisticated, and even more badly argued, manner than the position of groups such as Stratfor.

IV. Michael Albert Knows What Bush Knew

Albert does not supply any evidence for why this is the case. Instead, having acknowledged the existence of a question “about Bush’s foreknowledge of 9/11”, he supplies a vague and ready-made answer that “at most”, the U.S. intelligence community “lacks competence.” But clearly Albert has no meaningful grasp of the structural discontinuities between various agencies in the U.S. intelligence community and what specific problems they create – instead he assumes the existence of a blanket wholesale “incompetence”, and decides without any factual basis that this is the only plausible explanation of why the U.S. government failed to foil the September 11 attack. For instance, he also flies in the face of the fact noted above, that on the specific issue of counter-terrorism U.S. intelligence agencies were very closely coordinating their operations and information, on a regular basis, in the months leading up to 9/11.

In other words, Albert gives the impression that he already has the answer to the question, and thus since the answer “at most” will be “incompetence”, then there is no need to pursue further inquiry. Unfortunately however, it appears that Albert arrives at this conclusion without any factual analysis or inquiry at all: “Of course these agencies lack competence. Moreover, what good does demonstrating the incompetence of U.S. intelligence agencies do peace and justice? Should bolstering surveillance budget allotments be a new progressive program plank?” Having decided from the outset that U.S. intelligence agencies “lack competence” – although like Corn, Albert fails to provide any specific factual insight into what exactly is implied by this blanket description – Albert assumes that this undefined “incompetence” undoubtedly explains the Bush administration’s failure to prevent the September 11 attacks. The way in which this undefined theory of “incompetence” magically explains all and every anomaly in the official mainstream 9/11 narrative is disconcerting.

But as discussed above, a proper understanding of the specific implications of the U.S. intelligence community’s institutional compartmentalisation does not lead one to the undefined blanket conclusion that the community suffers from a general “incompetence”, but rather that this compartmentalisation has very precise connotations for the integration of intelligence information into “a coherent worldview”. In other words, as already discussed, on both a theoretical level based on analysis of the structure of the intelligence community as well as on an empirical level based in part on comparative analysis of the record of U.S. intelligence successes and failures, the conclusion that the Bush administration’s failure to prevent the September 11 attacks was simply due to “incompetence” is premature.

Albert’s essential argument for why “the left” should stop asking “what Bush knew and when” is circular, and thus self-defeating. He assumes from the outset that the intelligence community failed to prevent the 9/11 attacks simply because of some vague and undefined “incompetence”. He then argues that since that it is the case, anybody calling for more understanding of “what Bush knew and when” is falling into the right-wing agenda of saying that since U.S. intelligence is incompetent, more U.S. dollars should be thrown at the CIA. He then argues that “the left” should not become party to a programme to mindlessly increase the U.S. intelligence and defense budget which will then be used for more wars and acts of terror worldwide.

But Albert’s entire argument rests on the assumption that he already knows (somehow) the generalities of “what Bush knew and when” – i.e. that he knows that Bush did not know. In other words, Albert begins his argument by assuming that he already knows that Bush failed to foil the attacks due to intelligence “incompetence”, and that since this is the case, there is no need to ask “what Bush knew and when”. This boils down to an elementary contradiction: We do not need to ask the question “what Bush knew and when” because we already know the answer, even though in fact we do not know the answer at all as evidenced by Albert’s total failure to prove his “incompetence” assumption. As such, Albert’s attempt to convince “the left” that they should not even bother asking the question “what Bush knew and when” is based on baldly (and falsely) assuming that he knows the fundamental essence of the answer, and that since the answer is “incompetence”, it is not worth pursuing. This, of course, is incoherent.

V. Misconstruing the Anthrax Case

Ironically, the only piece of “evidence” offered by Albert to support his thesis of the overarching “incompetence” of the U.S. intelligence community is that: “… these are the U.S. same [sic] intelligence agencies that can’t find the perpetrator of the recent anthrax attacks, even though the anthrax came from Fort Detrick, Maryland, and even though, given the skills required, the number of possible culprits is a handful.” Unfortunately, this particularly factoid is of Albert’s own construction. Anybody who has been following the anthrax case would be aware of credible evidence that U.S. intelligence does, in fact, know pretty much who the perpetrator of the attacks is, but has been prevented from arresting the individual under high-level government pressure.

The charge was made in a February 18^th address at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Citing sources she described as “government insiders” with whom she has been in contact, she testified that the FBI had known since last October the identity of the person who mailed lethal quantities of anthrax in letters to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Senator Patrick Leahy, and several media outlets. Her sources further informed her that although the individual in question had been interrogated several times, he had not been arrested. “We know that the FBI is looking at this person, and it’s likely that he participated in the past in secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed,” Rosenberg said.

“And this raises the question of whether the FBI may be dragging its feet somewhat and may not be so anxious to bring to public light the person who did this.

“I know that there are insiders, working for the government, who know this person and who are worried that it could happen that some kind of quiet deal is made so that he just disappears from view.

U.S. investigative journalist and former National Security Agency official Wayne Madsen, who has also testified in hearings before U.S. Congress as an expert on U.S. covert foreign policies, has written a particularly insightful and comprehensive analysis of the available data on the anthrax attacks for Counterpunch, described as “America’s best political newsletter” by Out of Bounds Magazine. Madsen’s conclusions are worth noting:

It should be noted that in this case, again, the evidence suggests that the failure of U.S. intelligence lies not with the accuracy of the intelligence product, but with the refusal of the higher political echelon to act upon it. This is not the place to undertake a detailed analysis of the anthrax issue, but it suffices to conclude that Albert clearly has no basic grasp of this subject. Nevertheless, he comments on it in support of his argument. Unfortunately, this is representative of Albert’s entire approach to 9/11. He appears to have no understanding, nor any interest in evaluating the actual data around 9/11 and related issues such as anthrax, but still feels ready to comment on them anyway. The simple problem that this creates is that ultimately, Albert’s commentary on 9/11 ceases to retain credibility.

VI. The Institutional Pattern of Provocation for War

Given that a proper analysis of the structure, capabilities, recent coordination and record of success of the U.S. intelligence community provides little – if any - support for the “incompetence theory” of a counterterrorist intelligence failure, it is likely that the 9/11 intelligence failure was a consequence of the higher political bureaucracy refraining from acting on intelligence. In this context, it is perfectly legitimate to investigate the 9/11 intelligence failure with due consideration given to both the admittedly unlikely “incompetence theory”, as well as what might be termed “the political inaction” theory, of which the “foreknowledge hypothesis” is one variation.

Either way, the likelihood of political inaction being behind the administration’s failure to foil the Al-Qaeda plot, in itself implicates the existence of a web of strategic and economic influences acting upon the political establishment, which resulted in such political inaction. And given that this is a far more tenable and probable possibility than mere “incompetence”, then it is essential to investigate the matter more thoroughly - including specifically an evaluation of the information (and what was done with it) about the 9/11 attacks available to the U.S. intelligence community.

But there are, in fact, very pertinent reasons not to blindly accept the official “incompetence theory” adopted by so many in the mainstream, tolerated barely by elements of the right-wing to save face, and uncritically parroted by naïve commentators on the left. In a reply to Michael Albert’s ZNet commentary, Canadian social philosopher Professor John McMurtry at the University of Guelph refers to these reasons in detail:

“Shocking attacks on symbols of American power as a pretext for aggressive war is, in fact, an old and familiar pattern of the American corporate state. Even the sacrifice of thousands of ordinary Americans is not new, although so many people have never died so very fast... The basic point is that the U.S. ‘secret government’ (Bill Moyers’ phrase) has a very long record of contriving attacks on its symbols of power as a pretext for the declaration of wars, with an attendant corporate media frenzy focussing all public attention on the Enemy to justify the next transnational mass murder. This pattern is as old as the U.S. corporate state - from the sinking of the battleship Maine to start the Spanish-American War in 1898, through the fabricated attack on the U.S. battleship Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964 along with the fabricated attack by Egypt on the client-state Israel in 1967, to a reiteration of the same general pattern in setting up the War Against Iraq from 1991 on - a war that has murdered by bombing and embargo intent an average of 5000 Iraqui children every month since. This executive branch war is still in motion. It started and it continues by the same overall pattern as 9-11. In the case of Iraq, the war was precipitated by the green light given by the U.S. Ambassador, April Glaspie, who said that the U.S. was ‘neutral’ regarding the climaxing dispute over oilfields between Iraq and Kuwait just before Saddam ordered troops into Kuwait. ‘Saddam fell into the trap’ were the insider words of Jordan’s foreign minister after the event. 

“Throughout there is one constant to this long record of hoodwinking the American public into bankrolling ever rising military expenditures and periodic wars for corporate treasure. This decision structure ruled before and through 9-11, and has escalated after it - to fabricate or construct shocking attacks on U.S. symbols of power to provide the pretext and the public rage to launch wars of aggression