9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable NEW YORK, Dec. 17, 2003
For
the first time, the chairman of the independent commission
investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could
have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.
"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean.
"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea
what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was
not something that had to happen."
Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican
governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the
administration and laying blame.
"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not
be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They
simply failed," Kean said.
To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a
political landmine, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the
president's top-secret daily briefs. Those documents may shed light on
one of the most controversial assertions of the Bush administration –
that there was never any thought given to the idea that terrorists
might fly an airplane into a building.
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to
use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," said
national security adviser Condoleeza Rice on May 16, 2002.
"How is it possible we have a national security advisor coming out
and saying we had no idea they could use planes as weapons when we had
FBI records from 1991 stating that this is a possibility," said Kristen
Breitweiser, one of four New Jersey widows who lobbied Congress and the
president to appoint the commission.
The widows want to know why various government agencies didn't
connect the dots before Sept. 11, such as warnings from FBI offices in
Minnesota and Arizona about suspicious student pilots.
"If you were to tell me that two years after the murder of my
husband that we wouldn't have one question answered, I wouldn't believe
it," Breitweiser said.
Kean admits the commission also has more questions than answers.
Asked whether we should at least know if people sitting in the
decision-making spots on that critical day are still in those
positions, Kean said, "Yes, the answer is yes. And we will."
Kean promises major revelations in public testimony beginning next
month from top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, National
Security Agency and, maybe, President Bush and former President
Clinton.
