Posted on: Thursday, March 25, 2004

EDITORIAL
9/11: It's true; your government failed you

At last. Someone in the federal government, instead of obsessing over covering his reputation for failing to prevent the terrorist attacks of 9/11, has instead taken responsibility.

Stepping up to the microphone before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Richard Clarke, the National Security Council official who has accused President Bush of failing to make al-Qaida an urgent concern, began his testimony with an apology to relatives of the 3,000 people killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

"Your government failed you," Clarke said. "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you."

What the bipartisan, 10-member panel must discover, aided by the brilliant clarity of hindsight, is what caused this failure. That may in the end involve assigning blame, but blame is not the point. Learning what must be done to prevent recurrence is the point.

The panel will have to do that, however, without much help from the blandly self-serving testimony of the other officials from two administrations who testified during the past two days.

That is why Clarke's candor is welcome. But because President Bush has chosen to make his conduct of the war on terrorism a rallying point for his re-election, Democrats are already cranking Clarke's accusations into their campaign, and he is being crudely trashed by the White House.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice insists that all of Clarke's recommendations were followed, while Vice President Dick Cheney said he was "out of the loop" and resentful at being demoted.

It is hard to argue that Clarke was not in a position to observe White House response to the terrorist threat. In every administration starting with Ronald Reagan's, Clarke was a high-ranking official in the State Department or the NSC, dealing mainly with countering weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.

When the terrorists struck on Sept. 11, Rice designated Clarke as the "crisis manager"; he ran the interagency meetings from the Situation Room, coordinating — in some cases, directing — the response.

The essence of Clarke's charges is that in the summer of 2001, Bush did almost nothing to deal with mounting evidence of an impending al-Qaida attack — evidence that is fleshed out in alarming detail in the interim report released this week by the 9/11 panel.

Then after 9/11, charges Clarke, Bush's main focus was on attacking Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11.

Variations on these charges have been coming from many quarters for months; Clarke makes them more credible.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet may be right that taking out bin Laden might not have prevented 9/11. The hijackers, operating independently, were already embarked on their deadly mission.

But, Clarke writes, "I'm not saying we could have stopped 9/11, but we could have at least had a chance." The 9/11 panel's mission — if it doesn't get buried in recrimination, stonewalling and presidential politics — is to give us a chance next time.