The apparent misdeeds and cover-ups of the administration of George W. Bush related to the terrorist attacks of 2001 remain in historical limbo. Neither presidents, nor the Congress, nor the media have gotten to the bottom of these tragic events. The 9/11 Commission Report, while providing hundreds of useful details, egregiously and unpardonably failed to examine the doings of senior government officials in the run-up to 9/11 and so must be considered a cover-up. As a result, the American public has not come to closure on the 9/11 attacks or on the anthrax mailings of 2001, nor is there a shared understanding of such a critical issue as the real reasons that the US attacked Iraq in 2003.
These failures have left the field open to wild speculations regarding these events, generally termed “conspiracy theories”, though this term obscures the crucial distinction between elaborate prospective plots involving many actors (silly in the context of an open society) and retrospective cover-ups that government officials who have made embarrassing mistakes are all too prone to engage in (very realistic and plausible). However, it is also true that simple prospective plots involving two or three individuals can occur.
Failure to reach a full, shared understanding of major events that led to interminable wars and occupations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia as well as to the undermining of civil liberties has helped to alienate Americans from their government and media, a triumph for America’s enemies. So we must make every effort to establish a clear common interpretation of what actually happened.
For the record, the interpretation of this writer, a professional historian and former State Department intelligence analyst, is that:
1. The correct diagnosis of President George W. Bush’s performance in the run-up to the 9/11/2001 attacks is: criminal negligence. He was repeatedly warned that an al Qaeda attack was coming, yet he did nothing to protect the American people, which was his duty. The 9/11 Commission staff covered up Bush’s negligence by deliberately failing to ask him the obvious questions: what did he know and when did he know it? It appears that the Democrats on the Commission staff were eager to cover up mistakes Bill Clinton had made in dealing with al Qaeda during his presidency, and so by tacit agreement the Democrats and Republicans on the staff avoided asking tough questions about either Clinton or Bush.
2. Aware of his deep negligence, Bush sought to distract public and media attention by whipping up sentiment for attacking Iraq. Thus Bush’s need to distract attention from his negligence became one of the two main reasons for the U.S. attack on Iraq, the other being the efforts of Israel supporters, spearheaded by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, to use U.S. troops against Israel’s enemies. These were the necessary and sufficient causes of the attack; all other alleged reasons for the attack were insignificant compared to these. In a crucial way, therefore, the war against Iraq was a War of Distraction.
3. The role of Vice President Cheney’s top adviser, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby,1 deserves careful investigation.
4. The Defense Department’s Able Danger intelligence program successfully identified several intending al Qaeda attackers including Mohamed Atta more than a year before the September 11, 2001 attacks. The later efforts by the Defense Department’s inspector general’s investigation to deny the assertions of military officers and others that they recalled Atta’s presence on the chart displaying the findings of Able Danger and that they were repeatedly stymied in their efforts to bring their findings to the attention of FBI and others cannot be taken seriously in view of the indications that the investigation’s report was a cover-up. The Department destroyed extensive evidence and took reprisals against the whistle blowers. The Senate Committee on Intelligence report on Able Danger, which largely echoed the DoD report, was also a cover-up. Deputy National Security adviser Stephen Hadley, the last person known to have a copy of the chart in his possession, has never been questioned about it and may have destroyed it.
5. In 2004 FBI correctly identified Abderraouf Jdey as the Anthrax Mailer of September and October, 2001, and then shoebomber of American Airlines Flight #587 on November 12, 2001. But the Jdey identification was highly embarrassing: FBI and other U.S. Government agencies had permitted an al Qaeda operative whom FBI had released from detention to carry out two major terrorist attacks. Even more important, Bush and Cheney evidently feared that tying al Qaeda to the anthrax mailings and the crash of Flight #587 would lead to reinvestigating the run-up to the 9/11 attacks and thus threaten them. They also appear to have covered up the shoebombing of Flight #587. In the anthrax mailings case, U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins seems to have prepared the anthrax before 2001 in order to test vaccines. An Al Qaeda sympathizer appears to have stolen some of this anthrax from a DARPA project at George Mason University. Under pressure from FBI, Ivins committed suicide. Then FBI alleged that he was the Mailer.2 See Was Abderraouf Jdey the Anthrax Mailer?
In other words, even though presidents, the Congress, and the media have refused or failed to investigate properly or provide satisfactory explanations of these tragic and transformative events, the correct stories, at least in terms of summary characterizations, can be considered open secrets that some Americans know while many do not. Sufficient information is available to reach “much more likely than not” conclusions, if not “beyond a reasonable doubt” ones; and reaching such conclusions arguably represents a more realistic goal than the likely futile task of seeking to “pry the lids off” cover-ups. In effect, the American people can tell their Government: “Keep your supposedly secret but in fact embarrassing and at times incriminating documents. We already know enough to judge this case.” So the problem becomes one of talking things over among ourselves, reaching a shared understanding and making sure that every American learns of it.
Arriving at an accurate diagnosis is a key step on the path to healing.
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Kenneth J. Dillon is an historian and former State Department intelligence analyst who writes on science, medicine, and history. See the biosketch at About Us. For his interpretations of ancient and modern history, see his The Knowable Past (2nd edition, Washington, D.C.: Scientia Press, 2019).