GLOBE EDITORIAL
Piercing 9/11 secrecyTWO REPORTS issued yesterday by the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States have intrinsic value. The assumption underlying such a project -- the commission will issue a final 500-page report in July -- is that an open society must not be shielded from grave matters known to those who govern.
Yesterday's reports on the planning and background of the Sept. 11 plot and on the history of Al Qaeda may, at the least, dispel some myths and allegations that have gained currency since the attacks. The reports find no evidence of any involvement in or financing of the plot by the Saudi government or the royal family. They discovered no evidence of an Iraqi involvement with the plotters. The commission's investigators -- who draw on previously classified testimony from key Al Qaeda captives but did not interrogate those captives themselves -- also corrected a popular misconception that the plotters carried out their scheme without a hitch. On the contrary, the report on Sept. 11 recounts several changes of plans and discord among the hijackers and between their leaders and Al Qaeda bosses including Osama bin Laden. There were also lapses in the conspirators' security that might have caused the plot to be discovered, had US intelligence and law enforcement agencies been more aware of Al Qaeda's intentions and capabilities. A mastermind of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, told interrogators that in the summer of 2001, according to the report, "he was widely known within Al Qaeda to be planning some kind of operation against the United States. Many were even aware that he had been preparing operatives to go to the United States, as reported by a CIA source in June 2001." This glimpse of how loosely information about the plot had been held suggests that US intelligence failed to do the one thing it most needed to do: infiltrate informants into Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. John Walker Lindh, the unworldly spiritual seeker from Marin County, managed to be trained in one of those camps and receive an audience with bin Laden. The Chicago gang member, Jose Padilla, penetrated deep enough into Al Qaeda to discuss the merits of various terrorist operations inside the United States with its commanders. If the CIA had been able to place the right kind of informants in those same camps, it might have been able to connect what it heard from a source in June 2001 to other, more explicit hints of what was coming.
The great virtue of the commission's reports, however, lies not with its depiction of particular intelligence failings but with its faith in transparency -- a refusal to fall for the authoritarian fallacy that certain unpleasant matters must be kept secret from the general populace. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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