"...bin Laden was planning to exploit [an] operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.
"...Al Qaeda members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.
"...FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York [the World Trade Center held federal offices]."
Imagine if, instead, that briefing had been given to the New York Times, CNN and Fox News. Not leaked to them, but given to them publicly. Would al Hazmi been stopped going to or coming from Yemen, or driving through Oklahoma? Would airport security have let the bombers on the planes? Would the FBI have refused to ask for a warrant to open Moussaui's computer? Would the FBI have ignored it's own agents when they wanted to investigate middle eastern men at flying schools?
After 9/11, the president declared a War on Terror. The main event of that war has been the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
That war was mostly sold through speeches on television, but insofar as there was a document to support the allegations that Saddam Hussein had terrible weapons and programs that could produce terrible weapons almost instantly, it was the National Intelligence Estimate report on "Iraq's Continuing Programs of Weapons of Mass Destruction." An NIE is a document produced at the top level by the top people amalgamating all information from all sources, especially all the secret sources.
There were two versions of this NIE. One was Top Secret for the president and key leaders. Then there was a public version.
We might reasonably expect that the Top Secret version had the names of spies inside enemy territory, espionage technology and cryptology, and that those things were removed, for reasons of national security, in the public version.
What was removed from the top secret version was doubt. It was full of caveats and alternate interpretations and warnings of uncertainty. Those were the things that were removed.
The top secret version said, "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [Chemical Biological Weapons] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington with a stronger case for making war." That was removed. The top secret version expressed doubts that a nuclear weapons program was actually running. It suggested that unmanned drone aircraft were being developed for surveillance only, not to deliver weapons.
Things were also added. Like the assertion that Iraq's biological weapons could somehow be delivered against the US homeland.
In this case secrecy did not merely hinder effective action. In this case, the truth was classified so that the falsehoods and exaggerations could not be challenged.
The world has changed since 1942.
We don't have too little information, we have more information than we know what to do with. There is no lack of surveillance technology, we retrieve more information than we can ever look at.
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