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• Sunday, March 16, 2008 10:14 PM

  Christopher Michael Neill on the official story

  9/11 is the classic example of someone turning their own fuckups into an opportunity for self-advancement.

  According to the official story, al-Qaeda has at least two successful attacks against American interests using different methods each time than those used on 9/11.. the Kenyan embassy attacks and the US Cole.

  Al Qaeda also tried to bomb the WTC a second time back in the mid-90s, attempted to simultaneously hijack planes in the Philippines with the intention of crashing them into buildings in 1997, and about a year and a half later attempted to move a large (~dozen) group of people directly into the US over land, via South America.

  So all of the key aspects of the 2001 plan had been signaled years in advance. In every case they were caught in the planning stages, through coordinated efforts between the FBI, the CIA, and (in the South American operation) the State Department.

  This is part of the "not-quite-so-official" history because, despite appearing in the New York Times over the years, the stories never became part of the "master narrative."

  It's also possible that they don't even comprise the whole story of successful American counterintelligence action — it's not reasonable to assume that the NSA was involved too, for one thing, though you'd never see that in print. And there may even have been other thwarted operations that never made the news.

  My point is that, just on the basis of purely public, official news sources, one can quickly see that the story of American counterintelligence against al Qaeda was not a story of naive helplessness against an enemy who constantly shifted tactics and couldn't be predicted.

  Why didn't those successes become part of the "master narrative"? I don't know. Why are there people who don't remember the assassination attempts against Bill Clinton? Why are there people who remember Desert Storm but not Desert Fox? I'd love to see a news organization like Salon delve into that.

  Whatever the reason, the Clinton administration itself clearly didn't share the same myopia. Its counterintelligence worked well against al Qaeda and demonstrated an ability to respond quickly and flexibly — and to plan ahead for the need to take the fight to bin Laden.

  And for some reason that entire apparatus went dark in 2001. What rationale do you trust? Perle's and Rice's (published) doctrine about shifting resources away from counterterrorism and toward missile defense? Or Perle's and Wolfowitz' hope (similarly published) for a latter-day equivalent to Pearl Harbor to provide a neoconservative trifecta?

  It seems to me that, in firmly concluding that it was a negligent, not an intentional, failure, one has to say, "I accept this written statement of Bush administration doctrine as having been salient, but I reject this other written statement of Bush administration doctrine as having 'not counted'."

  I'm not saying that's the wrong choice to make. But I don't see the basis for it.

  —Amity Read Amity's other letters
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