Questions left unanswered since 9/11 attack

It's been a little more than three years now since the Sept. 11 attacks, and many concerned Americans are still waiting for answers to a number of key questions. The most important question in all of this is what did the White House know and when did they know it?

Condoleeza Rice, Bush's National Security Advisor, in her testimony to the 9/11 Commission, claimed that she never considered the use of airplanes as weapons. This statement flatly contradicts the events of the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, in July of 2001. Bush spent the entire summit aboard an aircraft carrier, fearing assassination.

Bush had been warned that terrorists were planning to hijack an airplane in order to crash into his hotel. Rice also claimed that all of the warnings about Al-Qaeda were historical, and did not constitute a new threat. If this was true why did top Pentagon officials, according to Newsweek, suddenly cancel travel plans on 9/11 because of a high state of alert, and a particularly urgent warning received on Sept. 10?

Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to CBS news, stopped traveling by commercial airline in July 2001 due to a[n] unidentified threat. This same man "did not want to hear about” the terrorist threat prior to 9/11. If Ashcroft considered the threat serious enough to alter his own plans, why didn't he take action to mitigate the threat? Why hasn't Ashcroft been held accountable for this?

By now, many Americans have seen the footage of Bush on the morning of the attacks, reading with children in a Florida classroom. Fifteen minutes elapsed between the time that the first plane hit the towers, and Bush began reading to the children. Bush decided to go ahead with the program, and was informed of the second plane crash 20 minutes later. Surprisingly, no Secret Service agents rushed in to escort the president to safety. The president's whereabouts were public knowledge before the attacks, and would-be assassins could have targeted him.

If it was true that the president commented at the time that we're at war, why were no efforts made immediately to ensure his safety?

The story of the initial military response to the hijackings is perhaps one of the most disturbing. Consider the comments of the commander in chief of the Russian Air Force just one day after the attacks: "As soon as something like that happens here, I am reported about that right away and in a minute we are all up.” Apparently, American air defense was not up to par with the Russians, a real scandal in light of the enormous disparity in military spending. Even more scandalous is the fact that Boston flight control waited twenty minutes after the first plane was hijacked to alert the proper authorities.

What conclusions can we come to regarding the 9/11 attacks? The 9/11 commission recommended increased intelligence spending, and the consolidation of the FBI, CIA and others. The evidence, however, points in a different direction. 9/11 was not an intelligence failure. The various agencies had information regarding the attacks and the attackers.

The odd behavior of the president that morning also leads to questions which will not be addressed by increased intelligence spending. Nor does it address the desire of the administration before 9/11 for a "new Pearl Harbor,” in order to galvanize public support for increased military involvement in the Middle East. That the Sept. 11 attacks were a political godsend to the administration is not seriously in question.

What is not clear however, is if the American public will hold those tacitly responsible for the attacks accountable come November.

For more information, see www.cooperativeresearch.org.

Sterling Harris is a history major at California State University, Long Beach.