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Since everyone else was focused on the testimony of Dr. Condeleeza Rice, the president's national security adviser, before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, I knew I should check with an obscure organization, the Committee That Really Runs America.
With some difficulty -- our phones aren't working well because it's been raining off and on for a week, and nothing in Salida is built to accommodate the improbable event of water falling out of the sky -- I reached Ananias Ziegler, the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who handles media relations for the Committee.
I bet you're going to ask me if the Committee had any
foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks,
he said after we
exchanged pleasantries.
I told him to consider that question asked.
As you might have guessed, Quillen, we have access to
all the American civil and military intelligence networks,
as well as our own sources,
he said. And the truth
is, we did have some indications that terrorists planned to
hijack airliners and fly them into buildings in Washington
and New York.
Then why didn't they act on that intelligence?
He parried my question with one of his own. You're in
the news business, Quillen. Don't you get story
tips?
Indeed I do, from time to time.
And do you pursue all of them?
Of course not. If I just jumped on each one, I'd never get anything done. I have to judge them by immediacy, probability, that sort of thing.
Believe it or not, it's the same here,
Ziegler
explained. There are thousands of hints and tips and
possibilities, and nobody has the resources to act on them
all. Besides, at least 99 percent of them are bogus, just
rumors and hearsay.
I asked for some examples.
Sure. At the start of every year, we find a crescendo
of chatter -- emails, cell-phone conversations, land-line
connections, people meeting -- that indicates an act
against Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. It peaks on Jan. 29,
Edward Abbey's birthday. Then it fades away for another 11
months. We know it's just talk and wishful thinking, so we
pretty much ignore it. If we paid attention to that, we
might miss a real threat.
And other examples?
On the loony-tunes side, some thread-count fanatics
were talking about taking the federal courthouse in
Manhattan during the Martha Stewart trial. More seriously,
every American embassy from Ottawa to Ulan Bator is the
subject of threats that range from kidnappings to car
bombs. Reports of suspicious activities range from possible
tampering with an irrigation-ditch headgate in your rural
county to potential locations for fissile material that
might be missing from the former Soviet Union.
That's a lot to worry about, I agreed.
It is. Now in hindsight, it might be pretty easy to
connect the dots of Saudis taking flight lessons in
Minnesota and Arizona, and talk of attacks on American
buildings. But in real time, you don't even know if they're
really dots, let alone whether they're connected.
He had a point, although I really didn't want to concede it. Before I could say anything, he continued.
Let's assume that on Sept. 10, 2001, you had received
a signed telegram from Osama bin Laden, telling you exactly
what was going to happen. What would you have done?
I wasn't in a position to do anything, but if I had been -- well, for starters, I wouldn't have believed the telegram. It would have sounded utterly preposterous, so incredible that I would have figured it was a canard, and focused on some other threat that seemed more probable.
Exactly,
Ziegler said. And if the federal
government had temporarily grounded all air traffic
starting Sept. 10, 2001, on the grounds of preventing an
attack, you would have been the first one to whine about
over-reaction to a most improbable threat, right?
Actually, I had enjoyed the quiet skies after Sept. 11, and I seldom fly, so I wouldn't have been anywhere near the first to complain. But I saw his point. So if it's exceedingly unlikely that any administration could have done anything to prevent the attacks, then why bother with these hearings now?
You know how we work, Quillen. It's what stage
magicians call 'misdirection.' If everybody's watching
Condi at the Commission, then Fallujah and Ramadi don't
make the news. And that's to the benefit of the
Committee.
Then he hung up.
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