9/11 Commission Report
Encyclopedia
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
. It was prepared by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (informally sometimes known as the "9/11 Commission
9/11 Commission
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to...
" or the "Kean
Thomas Kean
Thomas Howard Kean is an American Republican Party politician, who served as the 48th Governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990. Kean is best known globally, however, for his 2002 appointment as Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, widely known as the...
/Hamilton
Lee H. Hamilton
Lee Herbert Hamilton is a former member of the United States House of Representatives and currently a member of the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council. A member of the Democratic Party, Hamilton represented the 9th congressional district of Indiana from 1965 to 1999...
Commission") at the request of the President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
and Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
, and is available to the public for sale or free download.
The commission was established on November 27, 2002 (442 days after the attack) and their final report was issued on July 22, 2004. The report was originally scheduled for release on May 27, 2004, but a compromise agreed to by Speaker of the House
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, or Speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives...
Dennis Hastert
Dennis Hastert
John Dennis "Denny" Hastert was the 59th Speaker of the House serving from 1999 to 2007. He represented as a Republican for twenty years, 1987 to 2007.He is the longest-serving Republican Speaker in history...
allowed a sixty-day extension through July 26.
Findings
The commission interviewed over 1,200 people in 10 countries and reviewed over two and a half million pages of documents, including some closely guarded classified national security documentsClassified information in the United States
The United States government classification system is currently established under Executive Order 13526, the latest in a long series of executive orders on the topic. Issued by President Barack Obama in 2009, Executive Order 13526 replaced earlier executive orders on the topic and modified the...
. The commission also relied heavily on the FBI's PENTTBOM
PENTTBOM
PENTTBOM is the codename for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe into the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., the largest criminal inquiry in United States history. Its name stands for 'Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombing Investigation'...
investigation. Before it was released by the commission, the final public report was screened for any potentially classified information and edited as necessary.
After releasing the report, commission chair Thomas Kean
Thomas Kean
Thomas Howard Kean is an American Republican Party politician, who served as the 48th Governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990. Kean is best known globally, however, for his 2002 appointment as Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, widely known as the...
declared that both Presidents
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
and George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
were "not well served" by the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
and CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
.
In addition to identifying intelligence failures occurring before the attacks, the report provided evidence of the following:
- Airport security footage of the hijackers as they passed through airport security
- Excerpts from the United Airlines Flight 93United Airlines Flight 93United Airlines Flight 93 was United Airlines' scheduled morning transcontinental flight across the United States from Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco International Airport in California. On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the Boeing 757–222 aircraft operating the...
cockpit voice recording, which recorded the sounds of the hijackers in the cockpit and the passengers' attempts to regain control - Eyewitness testimony of passengers as they described their own final moments to family members and authorities on airphones and cellphones from the cabins of doomed airliners
The commission also concluded 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks were from Saudi Arabia, but found no evidence the government of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
conspired in the attacks, or that it funded the attackers. Mohamed Atta
Mohamed Atta
Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta was one of the masterminds and the ringleader of the September 11 attacks who served as the hijacker-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, crashing the plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center as part of the coordinated attacks.Born in 1968...
, the leader of the attacks, was from Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. Two hijackers were from the United Arab Emirates
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...
, and one was from Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
. According to the commission, all 19 hijackers were members of the al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
terrorist organization, led by Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
. In addition, while meetings between al-Qaeda representatives and Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
i government officials had taken place, the panel had no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
had assisted al-Qaeda in preparing or executing the 9/11 attacks.
The commission's final report also offered new evidence of increased contact between Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
and al-Qaeda. The report contains information about how several of the 9/11 hijackers passed through Iran, and indicates that officials in Iran did not place entry stamps in their passports. However, according to the report (Chapter 7), there is no evidence that Iran was aware of the actual 9/11 plot. Iran has since implemented several widely publicized efforts to shut down al-Qaeda cells operating within its country.
The commission report chose to place blame for failure to notify the military squarely upon the FAA. Ben Sliney, FAA operations manager at Herndon, Virginia, and Monte Belger, FAA Acting Deputy Administrator on 9/11 both stated to the commission that military liaisons were present and participating in Herndon's response as the events of 9/11 unfolded. Sliney stated that everyone who needed to be notified, including the military, was.
In addition to its findings, the report made extensive recommendations for changes that can be made to help prevent a similar attack. These include the creation of a National Intelligence Director over both the CIA and the FBI, and many changes in border security and immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
policy.
The report is available free of charge online, or can be purchased as a paperback (ISBN 0-393-32671-3). In addition, Barnes and Noble has independently published the report in hardcover with an index (ISBN 0-7607-6806-4).
Public Diplomacy and War on Terror
The 9/11 Commission9/11 Commission
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to...
Report states that “long-term success demands the use of all the elements of national power: diplomacy, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, public diplomacy, and homeland defense.” Quantitative numbers will not defeat the terrorists and insurgents; however the objectives of defeating the enemy need to be specific enough so that the public can determine whether the goals are being met. In order to defeat an insurgency
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
one must promote a stronger ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
, value system, and security environment, than the opposition. The 9/11 Commission emphasizes the use of public diplomacy
Public diplomacy
In international relations, public diplomacy or people's diplomacy, broadly speaking, is the communication with foreign publics to establish a dialogue designed to inform and influence. There is no one definition of Public Diplomacy, and may be easier described than easily defined as definitions...
. Defeating insurgents and terrorists is not based on traditional war tactics; it encompasses a national strategic effort that employs all elements of national power
National power
National power is defined as the sum of all resources available to a nation in the pursuit of national objectives.-Elements of national power:National power is composed of various elements, also referred to as instruments or attributes; these may be grouped into two categories based on their...
.
In 2003, the U.S. government realized how important political and cultural support was to the counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. An Afghan regional official claimed that Afghanistan was on the right track for a stable government and begged the United States not to leave the theater, claiming that Afghanistan would lose progress if the U.S. withdrew their political support and local outreach to the public. The Afghan population is able to interact with U.S. presence in their country, allowing them to feel more secure and safe, thus countering the insurgent ideology. The ability of the United States to interact with the local Afghan population has been an essential tool to winning the counterinsurgency operations in the country.
According to the 9/11 Commission, conducting public diplomacy with the local population of Afghanistan is necessary for long-term success within the country. “A former Under Secretary of the State for Public Diplomacy and both chairmen of the 9/11 Commission expressed the view that public diplomacy tools are at least as important in the war on terrorism as military tools and should be given equal state and increased funding.” Long-term public diplomacy efforts in Afghanistan will help show that the new Afghan government will be able to make their lives better and more secure than an insurgency controlled government.
The 9/11 Commission states that currently the United States envisions an eventual Afghan government that is able to build a national army, coordinate infrastructure, and coordinate public services in major provinces throughout the country. The 9/11 Commission also suggests an increased effort in the U.S. State Department and the international community
International community
The international community is a term used in international relations to refer to all peoples, cultures and governments of the world or to a group of them. The term is used to imply the existence of common duties and obligations between them...
to become involved with “the rule of law and contain rampant crime and narcotics trafficking” in the area. However, in order to carry out these long-term goals the U.S. should rely on civilian-military teams
Civil-military operations
Civil-military operations or CMO are activities of a military force to minimize civil interference on and maximize civil support for military operations to facilitate accomplishing the mission. CMO is conducted in conjunction with combat operations during wartime and becomes a central part of a...
in order to reach out to the population and listen to their concerns and implement them with the Afghan government effectively.
Currently there is a strong realization that negative public opinion about the U.S. could directly relate to how friendly countries in the Middle East will be in the war on terror, mainly in Afghanistan. Recently American involvement in the Middle East has not been accepted well; support for the United States has plummeted. The 9/11 Commission shows that favorable ratings for the United States has fallen from 61% to 15% in Indonesia and from 71% to 38% among Muslims in Nigeria. It also states that many disgruntled views about the U.S. develop from uninformed minds about America and that are distorted by cartoon ideologies. Local newspapers in Middle Eastern countries that reinforce the Jihadist theme, portraying the U.S. as anti-Muslim, influence these fragile views. These ideas need to be effectively countered in order to win our counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan and our ideological war against Muslim extremism. More recently Congress and the Administration has sought ways to use these public diplomacy tactics to influence Arab populations to combat insurgents and terrorists.
Most Muslims are moderate and do not agree with violence; the commission claims that it is possible, through the use of public diplomacy, to drive a wedge between those moderate Muslims and the violent terrorists or insurgents. The U.S. also needs to stand for a better future and illustrate it to the local population in Afghanistan and to the Muslim community. The U.S. needs to take the moral leadership role in Afghanistan and throughout the world. For parents, insurgents in Afghanistan can only offer their children violence and death; the U.S. should utilize public diplomacy to counter the insurgent ideology.
American values and ideals are something that the Muslim population can connect to, agree with, and feel secure with. The 9/11 Commission advises that the U.S. stands up for its values and ideals to prevent the insurgents from distorting the ideology of liberty to persuade the Muslim world into the insurgent or terrorist ideology. Only through use of public diplomacy can the U.S. counter these political and ideological distortions. Explaining and making clear the U.S. stance on morality, freedom, and liberty to the local populations in the Middle East allows the U.S. to promote the American counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan.
The 9/11 Commission elaborates on the example of humane treatment of prisoners of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
. In order for the local populations of countries like Afghanistan, the U.S. and allies need to project a higher image of morality by the civil and humane treatment of terrorists that are captured. Accusations that the U.S. abuses its prisoners make it more difficult to win political, social, and diplomatic relations in our civilian-military operations in Afghanistan. Without careful prevention of derogatory use of information by the enemy, the United States will become a victim of the enemy’s use of public diplomacy in war.
The 9/11 Commission believes that public diplomacy should be viewed as a dialogue with Arab populations, to enable a greater understanding between cultures and societies and to build those long-term relationships and trust that is needed to be successful at counterinsurgency warfare. “If we don’t have long-term relationships with Muslim populations, we cannot have trust. Without trust, public diplomacy is ineffective.”
Criticism
The report has been accused of not giving the whole story about the warnings the U.S. received prior to the attacks. While the report did describe that "the system was blinking red" and that an al Qaeda attack was imminent, it did not include the testimony of former CIA director George Tenet to the commission in January 2004, in which he claimed to have given a specific warning to the Administration in a July 2001 meeting with Condoleezza Rice. Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton stated that they had not been told about the meeting. But the Boston Globe reported that "it turns out that the panel was, in fact, told about the meeting, according to the interview transcript and Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, who sat in on the interview with Tenet."FAA counter-terrorism expert Bogdan Dzakovic
Bogdan Dzakovic
Bogdan Dzakovic is a 14-year veteran of the Security Division of the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States. He started off his FAA career as a field agent and Federal Air Marshal, then served as a Team Leader in the Air Marshal program...
believes that the security failures at airports that allowed the hijackers to board the planes were not due to the failures in the system that the report identified. Furthermore, he stated that "Many of the FAA bureaucrats that actively thwarted improvements in security prior to 9/11 have been promoted by FAA or the Transportation Security Administration." The report did not mention his name, despite Dzakovic giving the following testimony to the commission regarding his undercover checks on airport security prior to 9/11:
Other sources have criticized the commission for not digging deep enough to get to the core of the issues. In a 2004 interview, Bernard Gwertzman, of the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
, stated of the report:
In a 2004 article titled, 'Whitewash as Public Service: How The 9/11 Commission Report defrauds the nation,' Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
writer Benjamin DeMott
Benjamin DeMott
Professor Benjamin Haile DeMott was an American writer, scholar, and cultural critic...
stated that:
Literary praise
Although government reports are not known for their prose, the report garnered praise for its literary qualities. Richard PosnerRichard Posner
Richard Allen Posner is an American jurist, legal theorist, and economist who is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School...
, writing for the New York Times, praised it as "uncommonly lucid, even riveting" and called it "an improbable literary triumph". The report rose to the top of several bestseller list
Bestseller
A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
s. The National Book Foundation named the report a finalist in its 2004 National Book Awards' non-fiction
Non-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
category.
Adaptations
In 2006, The 9/11 Commission ReportThe 9/11 Commission Report (film)
The 9/11 Commission Report is a 2006 American drama film by The Asylum, written and directed by Leigh Scott. The film is presented as a docudrama based on the early findings of the 9/11 Commission Report, and deals with the events prior to the September 11 attacks, and how the attack might have...
, a straight to DVD movie, was released by The Asylum
The Asylum
The Asylum is an American film studio and distributor which focuses on producing low-budget, usually direct-to-video productions. The studio has produced titles that capitalize on productions by major studios; these titles have been dubbed "mockbusters" by the press.-History:The Asylum was founded...
. It is based on the findings of the original 9/11 Commission Reports, although it does fictionalize some elements.
The report inspired a controversial television miniseries, The Path to 9/11
The Path to 9/11
The Path to 9/11 was a two-part miniseries that aired in the United States on ABC television from September 10 – 11, 2006, and also in other countries. The film dramatizes the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City and the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks.The film...
. Dramatizing many specific scenes in the report, it is a synthesis of multiple (and in some cases partisan) sources in addition to the report itself.
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (ISBN 0-8090-5739-5), by Sid Jacobson
Sid Jacobson
Sid Jacobson is an American writer, having worked in the fields of children's comic books, popular music, fiction, biography, and non-fiction comics. He was managing editor and editor in chief for Harvey Comics, where he created the comics Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, and Casper the Friendly Ghost...
and Ernie Colón
Ernie Colon
Ernie Colón is an American comics artist, born on July 13, 1931,Colón was born in Puerto Rico and began his professional career at Harvey Comics as a letterer. He later worked, uncredited, as an artist on titles including Monster in My Pocket, Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost...
, and published by Hill & Wang, is an abridged graphic novel adaptation of the report.
On Native Soil
On Native Soil
On Native Soil: the documentary of the 9/11 Commission report is a 2005 documentary by Linda Ellman narrated by Kevin Costner and Hilary Swank...
is a documentary of the 9/11 Commission report narrated by Kevin Costner
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner is an American actor, singer, musician, producer, director, and businessman. He has been nominated for three BAFTA Awards, won two Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Costner's roles include Lt. John J...
& Hilary Swank
Hilary Swank
Hilary Ann Swank is an American actress. Swank's film career began with a small part in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then a major part in The Next Karate Kid , as Julie Pierce, the first female protégé of sensei Mr. Miyagi...
.
See also
- 9/11 Public Discourse Project9/11 Public Discourse ProjectThe 9/11 Public Discourse Project was a non-governmental organization with 501 nonprofit status, started by the ten members of the 9/11 Commission after the commission disbanded on August 21, 2004...
- 9/11: Press for Truth9/11: Press for Truth9/11: Press for Truth is a 2006 documentary film about the September 11 attacks on the United States, directed by the American filmmaker Ray Nowosielski, and partially based on The Terror Timeline, by Paul Thompson.-Development and release:...
External links
- The 9/11 Commission Report – Authorized Edition(2.3 MB PDFPortable Document FormatPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
) - Free audio version of the 9/11 Commission report, from LibriVoxLibriVoxLibriVox is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher...
. - XHTML version of the full 9/11 Commission Report (hand-converted XHTMLXHTMLXHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....
format) - Video of 9/11 events (split screen) supplemented with text from Commission Report findings
- Slate's The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón
- The Shea Memorandum to the 9/11 Commission
- CRS Report: U.S. Public Diplomacy: Background and the 9/11 Commission Recommendations
News articles
- 9/11 panel report: 'We must act' – from CNNCNNCable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
- Bush vows to heed 9/11 report advice – from MSNBCMSNBCMSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
- 9/11 Report: Key Findings from the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...