EDITORIAL
Rice testimony leaves lingering questions
The long-anticipated public appearance by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was undoubtedly disappointing in some ways to everyone involved in this drama.
For those who feel the Bush administration somehow failed to adequately respond to a looming terrorist threat, Rice offered up no smoking gun.
For those who believe the administration had done all it humanly could, given the political and factual circumstances of the time, Rice's testimony failed to make the case.
What emerges is a picture of an administration preoccupied with Iraq and other issues and bureaucratically unable to respond properly to the gathering storm clouds of information about possible terrorist attacks.
But it is important to note that those storm clouds were gathering steadily for the past two decades, and the record of previous administrations in making sense of the matter is no better.
Rice's appearance was billed as a counterweight to the explosive testimony by former terrorism chief Richard Clarke, who contends that he tried mightily to warn the administration about a pending attack but was largely ignored.
The jury's still out on that one. But it is interesting that one area where Clarke and Rice do agree is that there was no surefire way to have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
Yes, we could have and should have done more. But the shadowy nature of the terrorist threat suggests there was no way to guarantee a "silver bullet" that would have prevented the attacks.
But the real purpose of the 9/11 commission is not to assign blame, but to come up with recommendations for the future based on the experience of the past.
Some changes seem immediately obvious:
• Coordination of intelligence between various agencies, the CIA, FBI and so forth, must be dramatically improved.
Rice asserted that this is already happening, but institutional footdragging being what it is, it will take steady and forceful leadership to ensure the lines of communications are open and stay open.
And speaking of communication, it was disturbing to hear that while memos were circulating about possible terrorist hijacking of airplanes, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta was apparently left completely out of the loop.
• After years of relying primarily on high-tech forms of intelligence gathering, we now realize we must return to greater use of "human intelligence," that is, agents embedded in the societies and groups we perceive as a threat.
Clearly, there is a need for fundamental, structural reform of our intelligence operations.
In fact, the overarching lesson is that a security system built around a Cold War model simply failed to respond nimbly to this new form of threat.
Nothing we can do will turn back the clock on 9/11. But we owe it to the victims of that day and their grieving families to ensure that every mistake, every misstep leading up that tragedy be acknowledged and then set right.
