Asymmetrical Information

That sounds about right. Would that the commission's ultimate goal were to dispassionately discover how our intelligence services might be streamlined and made more effective, increasing the odds of mitigating (but by no means completely forestalling) a similar future attack.

We, the people are responsible for 9-11.

We, the people were not paying attention to the gathering threat.

We, the people would not have allowed the government to take the actions neccesary to prevent 9-11, pre 9-11.

We, the people realized the truth on the morning of 9-11, and we,the people changed the rules at that time. That is why there wasn't a second burning building in Washington, DC. It still remains to be seen how long the rules remain changed.

I don't blame Bush. I don't blame Clinton (much). I blame myself. I'm sorry that I didn't do more to stop the terrorists pre 9-11, but I was caught up in my own life and my own petty concerns. I wish I could go back to that state, but I can't.

Byna, responsible.

There are *always* solutions in hindsight. Those of us who are John LeCarre fans know that the Brits call this "taking back bearings."

The problems is this: along with the intelligence "thread" which, if acted upon, would have prevented 9-11, there might very well have been another "thread" asserting elves in the Black Forest were baking an extra-special birthday cake for Jane Galt.

The birthday cake thread might even have come from a source with high reliability.

What you're looking at is the problem with incoming intelligence; there's so much of it, picking out the truly important stuff is partly intelligence, partly experience, partly magic. In other words, the existance of a thread doesn't mean a knowledgeable analyst would have followed it.

Lots of good points. I think most anyone who has had serious responsibility--for a business, for a farm, for an infantry unit--will understand the difference between: (a) making the decision at the time, with time pressures and incomplete information, and (b)evaluating the decision retroactively, at leisure and with relatively complete information.

The problem is that we have many people today who've never had any serious responsibility and accountability, and don't really understand the above point. A person who has spent his entire life in the House and the Senate (without ever being a Mayor or a Governor) has really never learned to live with personal responsibility. The same is true of many professors and media types.

Dr. Rice said it perfectly:
"We have to be right every time, they only have to be right once."

Of course, you're a hundred percent correct, which must prove something about the irrelevance of watching these things (or your brilliance!). Also, having had a little personal experience of intelligence agents over the years, I long ago came to the conclusion that rarely is spy work of any value whatsoever (and that's being polite about it).

Of course, everything Jane says is not only true, but, I think, fairly obvious to any reasonably intellegent and well-informed person. Never the less, Jane's arguments about security and hindsight bias have unusual force, persuasiveness, and clarity. (Aside: For an innovative and powerful alternative presentation of these ideas, check out Greg Easterbrook's blog at The New Republic.) Unfortunately, I think that some people, when confronted with powerful arguments such as those given by Jane, will become willfully obtuse. These people have developed such an apoplectic hatred of George Bush that they will adopt almost any belief that makes him look bad.

I think you're off in your characterization of the American populace. People are not "frightened," expecting that we can "prevent all [emphasis mine] this stuff in the future," or "trying to blame this failure on someone." What they want is to reduce the chances of future attacks, and we have already taken actions both domestically and internationally toward this end. It's indisputable that it would be more difficult for Arab terrorists to carry out a large scale attack on American soil at present than it was on 9/10/01.

Certainly without a complete erosion of civil liberties we will never be able to approach zero possibility of terrorism, but because we are faced with weapons and tactics aimed at killing tens of thousands, rather than the relatively small numbers targeted by conventional terrorists with guns and car bombs, or the occasional madman-in-a-clocktower, people are more desirous of solutions and tolerant of sacrifices.

Just because we can't know about all events doesn't mean we can't know about more events. We need the commission(s) to determine what steps would have made 9/11 less likely to have occured.

Although I can certainly see your point, your argument sounds too much like, “Well, since we can’t stop all potential forms of attack, we may as well not do anything” Surely you would not argue that we are not safer flying today than we were a year ago. An example is El Al airlines; their tactics of screening passengers has prevented any major incidents for years.

Regardless of how I feel about the Bush administration, I have to give them and the rest of the national security apparatus credit for preventing any major domestic attacks since 9/11. It’s unlikely that this would have happened without the extra precautions that have been put in place.

I think you are making the case that we are always fighting the last war, and don’t know what to expect in the next war. That however is not a reason to close our eyes to the possibility that we can learn from past mistakes.

(And now to descend into partisanship) For instance, was a full month of vacation for the Leader of the Free World really appropriate when all the signs were pointing in the same direction?

Murder / suicide is a very unsatisfying form of both crime and terrorism. The murderer or terrorist willing to die in the process is difficult to identify before the fact and beyond "law enforcement" solutions after the fact. The act is far simpler, because there is no need for escape planning or avoiding detection. The simplicity of the act makes establishment of "probable cause" far more difficult, so interdiction is more difficult.

However, we have now begun to recognize that terrorism requires two essential ingredients, fanatics and money, both of which are "consumables". Increasing levels of cooperation from other governments is making interdiction of the flow of money easier, which will help to reduce terrorism worldwide. The establishment of a "state of war" by and with terror organizations changes the rules on interdiction of fanatics, since mere membership in the warring organization makes the fanatic a legitimate "target", rather than a "suspect".

Mac,
The concept of a "full month of vacation for the Leader of the Free World" is laughable. It would be interesting to know how few "non-leader" hours occur during these "vacations".

Hi Ed,
You could be right – President Bush may be much more engaged in the policy process than I have noticed. From the limited amount of detail about the president’s schedule that I am privy too – no doubt the same amount that you see also – he seems to be engaged quite a bit less than say, Nixon or Carter or Reagan. That was my point.

Am I looking through the prism of bias? – maybe.

Mac, I think Ed had the same reaction as I did when I read your "vacation" remark; does the President of the United States ever get a vacation in the way the you and I might think about vacations? While he may change his surroundings by going to Texas, I doubt that his daily schedule is significantly altered.
I wouldn't hazard a guess as to whether he is more, or less, "engaged" than other Presidents; I don't have the access to make that judgement.

Thanks for keeping me honest guys. I thought about that response while I was in the shower and I guess I set my own argumentative trap. Goes to show - don't get partisan.

But let's get back to my main point, which was to rebut Jane's argument, that the investigation into the causes of 9/11 is less than productive. Although I also am not crazy about the directionn that it has gone I still think it is necessary.

Back to Jane's commentary.
I did watch the Rice testimony, even recorded it so that I wouldn't miss anything when the inevitable telemarketer's call interrupted my viewing. And, I did get caught up in seeing the bias that various Commissioner's expressed in both their tenor and questions. So, I am glad to have Jane Galt around to bring perspective to the matter.
Eliminating the danger may not be possible, I just wish there was a way to empower the instincts of people who see that something isn't right (i.e. the flight instructor that reported to the authorities of a student that was not interested in learning to land) without the information needing to run up the channels to the top and then back down for action. Centralizing intelligence is important for seeing the big picture, and tearing down the legal and bureaucratic obstacles to that happening is imperative. But, I think, we need not just a government enabled and prepared to act, but a populace that understands when something isn't right, and a populace that is willing to get involved to stop it, and coincidentally, this is exactly what we are asking of the Iraqi people right now. We need, (again, I think), to strike a balance between vigilance and the avoidance of vigilanty justice, too intrusive neighbors, profiled reaction, and other such freedom suppressors; finding such a balance and educating the populace to understand and act on it gives us the broadest base of defense. But, for such a thing to happen we need first obey Shakespeare's advise, "first we kill the lawyers": by which I don't mean to condone anyone's death, just the death of political correctness and the supression of change it encourages. Seems to me that PC is just general fear verbalized, and it is ineffective in a time of threats that can only be stopped when identifed specifically.
signed, A Verbose Dreamer

"Although I also am not crazy about the directionn that it has gone I still think it is necessary."
No argument there Mac, I am just so tired of the grandstanding: such as the so-called importance of getting Rice in public, only to have Kerrey and Ben-Veniste use her appearance as a source of sound bites! Can you actually believe that Kerrey tried to stop Rice from answering with his remark that they would get that answer from her in private session? I thought their contention was that the public needed to hear her? And, then R B-V asks two questions in one sentence and wants to allow only one answer; he had her give him the title of the PDB for political reasons, the content was then unimportant for his purpose.

hi meagan,

two points:

"Clinton didn't know. Bush didn't know. We didn't know. And the uncomfortable possibility remains that there are more events that we not only don't know about--but can't know about."

i can agree with all of this and still think that the commission investigating why we failed to detect the threat is worthwhile. at the moment, we don't know (no pun intended) whether 9/11 could have been prevented. what we want to ensure is that something like that does not happen again. because knowing history, and why something went wrong, allows you different policy choices. we still might not succeed, but then again, i think the odds of success will be improved.

second point:
as for the trade-off issue. your point assumes that we get a nice smooth continuous trajectory of trade-offs. unfortunately, we can be in a catastrophic state, with discontinuous choices, such as nuclear warheads detonating in manhattan (or a global warming winter). i was interested to read an article from the economist (i think) which pointed out the difference in thinking between europeans and americans. americans love cost-benefit analysis. europeans prefer to factor in worse case scenarios into their trade-off calculations. this would help explain why europeans are against genetically modifed foods, and for curbing global warming (even in the absence of final confirming evidence for either of these two cases).

taking a european approach, you would be more likely to spend money on safeguarding the country through tighter constraints on container shipping. rather than take the static approach that you offer, we could surmise a more dynamic set of interactions from this decision. you would probably rely on technological advances to scan containers more efficiently. such a device would probably be developed with the help of government grants to universities and/or private companies. a new demand would find a innovative solution to supply it. that is part of the american way, right?

another example of this "european" mode of thinking would be dr. rice's comment, regarding reasons for going to war with iraq: (roughly) we don't want a mushroom cloud over the white house. when you say that "government logic dictates that we will not impose a massive upfront cost to minimize a merely probable threat" i disagree with you. after all, isn't that what happened in iraq?

it is a question of choices, yes. but current history shows us that a government will in fact act in exactly this way, risking life, treasure, and political capital if it perceives the downside of the threat to be great enough.

I don't agree with the thrust of your comments. One advantage of open societies is they learn from mistakes instead of covering them up. If the Bush administration is now suffering from partisan attacks, it is their own fault for not voluntarily conducting a proper investigation. For example I think it is absurd that we spent hundreds of millions of dollars figuring out exactly why the space shuttle Columbia crashed and almost nothing to determine why the trade center buildings collapsed.

what about this one. The epicurist ate his own feet. Mmmm, they tasted good.

James,

The technical reasons the towers collapsed upon themselves, rather than falling over and creating far more carnage, will be the subject of intense analysis for years, for the same reasons the Challenger failure was studied to the extent it was.

The reasons 19 men were able to board flights the morning of 9/11 and were then able to overcome the crews of the planes, take control of the planes and use them as missiles have been investigated and measures have been put in place to prevent a recurrence (TSA).

The reasons the intelligence services did not successfully "connect the dots" prior to 9/11 have also been investigated and measures have been put in place to prevent a recurrence (the much reviled Patriot Act).

The reasons the intelligence services were poorly positioned to "connect the dots" are largely political. A review of the changes made in response to the findings of the Church Committee, the impact of spending the "peace dividend" rather than investing it, forcing the intelligence services to operate "with half their brains tied behind their backs, just to make it fair", the treatment of terrorism as a "law enforcement problem" and the absence of a strategic plan for dealing comprehensively with terrorism on a worldwide basis all have political roots.

Finger pointing and hand wringing, no matter how aggressive and well-meaning, non-partisan or otherwise, will not solve the problem. Only eliminating the terrorists and their backers will solve the problem. The US waited a very long time to begin to accept these truths. However, the process has now started. All that remains to do is to finish it, as quickly as possible.

Nels,

Certainly without a complete erosion of civil liberties we will never be able to approach zero possibility of terrorism

But there was no political will to do anything more than he did, and conservatives now attacking him would have gone ballistic if he'd, say, rolled into Afghanistan with tanks in 1999.

Really? So, you are saying there was plenty of political will to go into Kosovo, but none to go into Afghanistan? Despite the fact that nobody had been attacking us from Kosovo, while someone had been attacking us from Afghanistan? Oh, and re conservatives - I remember many (not all, but many) conservatives supporting Clinton's actions in Kosovo, including one George W. Bush.

Ed, much ignorant commentary to the contrary, it is not clear the towers should have collapsed so quickly (or at all for that matter). It is possible that with simple and cheap design changes they would held up much longer saving many lives. However it is difficult or impossible to conduct a proper investigation at this point because most of the debris was immediately destroyed without being examined carefully. The contrast with the space shuttle accident or even a normal plane crash is striking and hard to justify.

The various "alternative histories" being written are correct. I heard Steven Emerson in March, April, July, and August 2001 talk about Islamic terrorism in the US. He described how Senator Frank Church and his Committee in 1973 basically handcuffed the FBI and CIA. It was painful to learn that the kind of intelligence we needed the government to do had been prohibited. My friends and I tried over and over again to get our other friends and acquaintences to listen to Emerson and others about this, but to no avail.

The very same critics who are criticizing Bush for thinking there were WMD's in Iraq and then not finding them, are criticizing him for NOT having done something to stop 9/11. If he had been able to stop 9/11 they would have said he was overreacting to something that didn't happen.

Instead of the country pulling together to make the cost-benefit analysis referred to, we see an intellectually dishonest effort to pin blame for partisan advantage. What a shame! If this hinders us in the war -- and yes it is and should be a war -- on terrorism to save Western civilization, we will get what we deserve. And the history of it will be written in Arabic.

"For example I think it is absurd that we spent hundreds of millions of dollars figuring out exactly why the space shuttle Columbia crashed and almost nothing to determine why the trade center buildings collapsed."

Didn't a bunch of engineers explain why WTC fell the way it did?

The Alaskan Pipeline,
Any working refinery,
Any working nuclear plant
Any container at any port,
Any train crossing a bridge,
Any fuel truck or truck bomb in any tunnel at rush hour
Any where, any way, anytime.
That is our life from now on. We are a nation at war, like it or not. This is why we must work to re-elect Pres. Bush. Sen. Kerry makes me shudder at the thought of what he might do if elected. Pull out of Iraq? We'll be back within ten years and proabably Iran also.
Treat terrorist as law breakers? Let's invite them to blow something up.
I seriously think Kerry doesn't have a clue (as most Democrats) that this is a war to kill us. Take as many as you can war.
Will it take another 9/11 for them to wake up?

The most informative part of the 9-11 hearings in my humble opinion has been the staff reports. They steer clear of partisanship, because there's plenty of blame to go around, in hindshight. The public hearings have been a disappointment - too much partisan gotcha being played. What good comes out of the public hearings is buried by all the bickering and gamesmanship.

Nova (or was it Frontline?) on PBS had a nice piece called "Why the Towers Fell" that went into the engineering of it. Would a newer building have stood up? Possibly. But the WTC was designed and built in the late 60s and early 70s, and technology and know-how just weren't as advanced then.

Ed, much ignorant commentary to the contrary, it is not clear the towers should have collapsed so quickly (or at all for that matter). It is possible that with simple and cheap design changes they would held up much longer saving many lives.

Skyscrapers are not fortresses. They are designed for business purposes, and engineered for normal use and storms (and earthquakes in the west.) They shouldn't have to be fortresses, and it would probably cost too much to be worth it.

As it was, the World Trade Center took the hits particularly well. 2830 people were killed (including 403 emergency workers who would not have been there had there been no impact) in the buildings, out of the estimated 58000 occupants. So, the buildings saved 95.8% of their occupants. Few if any skyscrapers had the backup structure that WTC had, in the form of an outer bearing wall. The impact completely destroyed the core skeleton of each building, but the outer wall held the buildings up for an hour, and allowed basically everybody below the impact zones to escape. If the same impact had occurred in say the Empire State Building or Sears Tower, they probably would have collapsed immediately.

The buildings were ultimately failed by their fire suppression and protection systems, which were obviously never designed for that kind of fire.

Architectural experts were surprised by the eventual collapse, it is true, but that is because the expected outcome was either immediate collapse or building survival. No one expected a building that survived that kind of impact to be killed by fire.

For a full burecratese version of what I just wrote, see FEMA: World Trade Center Building Performance Study

One of the best opinions on this that I've read. Of course, there are things we can do, but nothing we do will eliminate all threat.

We all know there will be a World Series in the fall (except possibly by labor action etc.) but which ones of us can predict which teams will be in the playoffs or the series ? Not me and not you.

This is the problem with terrorist attacks. "Something big" means just what ? It could mean attacks on the WTC or perhaps it means that bin Laden intends to attend "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince"'s concerts as a guest bassist.

Just as so many still can't believe that one lonely man could kill the President of the U.S. in 1963, so many can't believe that a small group of terrorist couldn't keep a secret as to their exact time and targets. A secret that could forever be undetectable by the best intelligence agencies with the best resources and methods.
Even with all the dots that were known at the time and tied together now with the best of hindsight, this is still the case.

Ed, much ignorant commentary to the contrary, it is not clear the towers should have collapsed so quickly (or at all for that matter)....It is possible that with simple and cheap design changes they would held up much longer saving many lives....

Mr. Shearer, I think you owe us an elaboration for this statement. Anonymous Coward covered most of the talking points already, but I would add that the evidence he is pointing toward is very comparable to a university presentation I visited in early 2002, where the lecturer had been a junior engineer/gopher onsite for the WTC construction.

The idea that commercial jet aircraft carrying a long-distance fuel payload would be maneuvered into the towers, creating a fire so intense that it would soften the central steel core, was simply not on anyone's radar. This was a commercial project, not a blackhole DoD budget; nobody was going to pay for insulating asbestos tiles or some such to guard an enormous steel core from a fire temperature that could not conceivably occur in a substantial area for sufficient time to destabilize the structure. Bear in mind that this was back in the days when hijackers occasionally managed to sneak sub-machineguns onto aircraft; the typical result was a forced landing elsewhere, not "get out of the cockpit, we now control the horizontal and the vertical -- suckers."

First, it is silly to think that we could have avoided 9/11 for any number of reasons:
- what Dr. Rice characterized as systemic problems in the intelligence community - in particular legal and buracratic barriers to sharing information between CIA and FBI, and within the FBI. If this information had been shared, then maybe it could have been avoided - but then maybe the sharers would have gone to jail. Bad tradeoff for civil servants.
- We were still in the mind set of treating hijackings as hostage situations, and not suicide bombings. If any planes had been hijacked on 9/12, it is likely that they would have not crashed into anything bad. Rather, it is highly likely that many of the male passengers would have rushed the hijackers, as was done in the 4th plane that day. I traveled quite a bit after 9/11, and know that this was the general consensus of those other frequent flyers I talked with.
- Civil libertarians would have been aghast at any sort of ethnic profiling that would have highlighted having a large number of middle eastern males aboard a plane, esp. if their names were Mohammed. Law suits would have been filed immediately.
- Ditto for shutting down U.S. airspace, preventing travelers from carrying common household items aboard planes, etc.

Note on the WTC - apparently they were designed to withstand the crash of a 707, which was the biggest plane flying at the time of construction. They just didn't/don't carry nearly the fuel load of a transcontinental 747/757/767 today, and it was that fuel load that really caused the crashes of the two towers.

Forget the engineering analysis, a public hearing is not necessary for that.

This is just another government finger-pointing exercise at all involved. It is not Clinton's fault, it is not Bush's fault, it is everyon'w fault. The question is not whether they could have been prevented. Of course they could have been prevented. So could, earthquake damage (just don't build anthing).

The real political question is whether we wanted to spend our resources to prevent it. That is where the politics come into play and the commission is not the way to answer that question.

We have elections to answer those questions.

The problem with the Commission is not the Commission itself. It is that the Commission is reflective of our society in that it seeks to place blame for all events, and establish liability. It is what I call, "Trial Lawyer's Mentality."

It is not possible for something to be merely accidental. Someone must have been negligent, and we must identify the culpable in order to obtain "closure" and levy "damage" claims. It is not enough that someone be made whole. Punitive damages must be assessed to teach the lesson that taking risks is bad.

This mentality will cripple us if we do not change our collective mindset. I can categorically say that I personally would not have supported either Clinton or Bush going to War prior to 9/11. And in retrospect, that was a mistake. But that is not the same as saying 9/11 could have been prevented.

Can anyone explain to me the cognitive dissonance of those who simultaneously blast Bush for going to pre-emptive war against Iraq and for not engaging in pre-emptive war in Afghanistan against Al Queda? The hypocrisy of such a position is almost as astounding as its audacity and cynicism. Who are these people who have possession of these crystal balls to see the future?

There is also a certain quality of racism and elitism that is inherent in the accusation that we could have stopped 9/11. Is it really possible that not one, not a single solitary Arab Muslim out of about 1 billion Muslims, is smart enough to have pulled off an attack against America without the sinister help of a cabal of uber-connected Americans? That's it. We are so much smarter and better than any other creatures on the face of the earth that someone (oil cartel, big business, vast right-wing conspiracy) in America is really the brains behind 9/11. We just cannot believe that the Arabs, obviously a little lower on the Darwinian evolutionary scale, could pull such an attack off without assistance.

Those who advise us to "be sensitive" to the Arab Street and be mindful of the collective Muslim psyche never finish their thoughts. Here is the completed thought. (...because they are obviously inferior and we are responsible to take care of them just as we take care of children.) Prior to WWII, there were others who didn't take Japan seriously because Orientals were so obviously inferior that there military forces could be dismissed. These so-called racially sensitive people are really just bigots.

The people responsible for 9/11 were Radical Islamofascist Arabs bent on taking over the world. Their perverted world view warps their thinking and skews their judgement. But they should be taken just as seriously as Hitler, Stalin, and other tyrants of History. They are cunning and intelligent, and are capable of inflicting great harm. They fully recognize that they are militarily inferior, but seek to use their weakness as a strength by using the press.

No American needs to feel guilty for vigorously defending ourselves against an enemy who is totally 100% responsible for 9/11 and the slaughter of untold millions across the world. Rather, we should be grateful that the death toll was not higher. Doesn't anyone remember the Arabs dancing in the streets and rejoicing at the fall of the towers. Do you think George Bush paid them to dance? Do you think Clinton did? This type of behavior cannot be met with tolerance and understanding. It must be met and overcome with force.

This is all I can remember of the PBS show that dissected the fall of the towers:

The WTC was built to withstand the mechanical impact of a 737; none of the designers anticipated a (nearly) fully-fueled 767 impact. The failure mechanism was, as I understand it, this:

The aircraft violated the integrity of the load-bearing exterior wall of the tower, and partially violated the integrity of the core. It also spilled an enormous fuel load into the building, which eventually weakened cross-members that distributed stress to the portions of the building that were still intact. These cross-members ultimately failed, which further loaded the external walls and caused them to fail. This in turn began a catastrophic sequence of structural failures that had the whole tower fall.

I'm thinking OBL couldn't have known this was going to happen. But I believe he was praying for the possibility.

Scratch the 737; insert 707.

Regarding the trade center collapses.

The 58000 people figure is for the entire WTC complex, less then half were in the twin towers.

The towers were designed to withstand comparable plane impacts. In fact they did hold up at first saving many lives until the fireproofing failed.

The burning jet fuel itself didn't cause the fireproofing to fail. A lot of fuel burned in the fireballs and the rest would have burned up in a few minutes. What the jet fuel fires did do was ignite the existing flammable material in the offices. Fireproofed steel frame structures are not supposed to fail from fires and prior to 911 none had despite some major fires. Note besides the twin towers, WTC 7, a 47 story building, failed from fire alone (it is believed it did not suffer significant structural damage).

It has been claimed that the fireproofing failed because the impacts knocked it off the steel. There is no real proof of this, perhaps it just wasn't thick enough. The port authority was exempt from all building codes. It chose to follow a minimal fireproofing standard. The calculations showing it met this standard seem to be missing. Prior to the attack it had been decided that the original fireproofing was too thin and should be doubled in thickness. This had been done in the damaged area of the North tower but not in the South tower. Is that why the South tower failed first? Some people think so but because the collapses were not properly investigated it is difficult to know.

There is a link to the FEMA report in an earlier comment. A couple of NYT stories about this are:

"New Evidence is Reported that Floors Failed on 9/11" by James Glanz, 12/3/2003.

"Trade Center Fireproofing Tests Suggest a Wider Safety Problem" by James Glanz, 12/14/2003.

The second story states:

"Whether the collapse of the twin towers was inevitable given the structural damage done by the hijacked planes, or whether the towers would have been able to stand with better fire protection is still not known. The exact sequence of failures that led to the towers' falling has not been determined either. ..."

Thanks.

Agreed, James. As usual, my memory is just not quite good enough. What I've read since indicates that it wasn't the impact, or the heat, but the impact AND the heat AND the distortion due to unequal heating.

Slartibartfast, my point is no one knows for sure what caused the collapses although there are lots of theories. This is because a proper investigation was not done for no good reason.

Comments are Closed.