In the third section of Mayer's The Dark Side, a shocking revelation is made. While it would seem as though the terrorists who scarred the country on that fateful day would have planned for their attacks completely under the radar, that was not the case; the CIA, at several points in time, had information on individuals that would eventually prove significant to the attacks of September 11th. The CIA knew of several meetings, one in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where members of Al-Qaeda were meeting. As they attempted to gather intelligence, a number of things fell through the cracks. The CIA was working with the Malaysians to obtain valuable information about the meeting. They were unable to record the conversation. When two marked individuals left for Bangkok, no one tracked them, they got away. Eventually, they found there way to Los Angeles where they were roaming abroad. "By March 2000 fully fifty or sixty individuals within the CIA knew that two Al Qaeda suspects ha come to America-but no one officially notified the FBI about this" (Mayer 153). It was the CIA's responsibility to notify the FBI of any domestic threats. From researched information, Mayer writes, "The two guys' names were just sitting in someone's outbox. It just didn't get done" (Mayer 16).
"What 9/11 is really all about was the lack of follow-up on these two people, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi" (Mayer 17). How could the CIA make such a gigantic blunder? Yes, while the CIA was attempting to track many other individuals, they had become caught up in a frenzy of work, but a blunder that cost the lives of many Americans is unforgivable. Mayer attempts to explain the blunder. A former top officer of the CIA stated, "The problem, he said, was not a lack of urgency, but rather a failure of management" (Mayer 16). He goes on to say, "In short, the errors were painfully mundane: misfiled paperwork, inattentive government employees, misunderstandings and miscommunications - just commonplace incompetence" (Mayer 16). The loss of countless American lives could have been prevented if the CIA were doing their jobs. It was not an inability to target those who threatened America, it was an inability to follow through on a task.
"What 9/11 is really all about was the lack of follow-up on these two people, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi" (Mayer 17). How could the CIA make such a gigantic blunder? Yes, while the CIA was attempting to track many other individuals, they had become caught up in a frenzy of work, but a blunder that cost the lives of many Americans is unforgivable. Mayer attempts to explain the blunder. A former top officer of the CIA stated, "The problem, he said, was not a lack of urgency, but rather a failure of management" (Mayer 16). He goes on to say, "In short, the errors were painfully mundane: misfiled paperwork, inattentive government employees, misunderstandings and miscommunications - just commonplace incompetence" (Mayer 16). The loss of countless American lives could have been prevented if the CIA were doing their jobs. It was not an inability to target those who threatened America, it was an inability to follow through on a task.
No comments:
Post a Comment