WASHINGTON – There were no high-level heroes. The fact-finding mission undertaken by the independent panel probing the terrorist attacks of 9/11 has stumbled upon this unsurprising fact.
We already knew about the firefighters. About the people who sifted the toxic dust at Ground Zero in the dreary search for remains. About the passengers aboard United Flight 93, who defeated the hijackers and crashed the aircraft in rural Pennsylvania. We did not know, until now, that long after the passengers had apparently saved the nation’s capital from attack, officials in Washington engaged in a frenzied and farcical exercise aimed at shooting the plane down. At one point, Vice President Dick Cheney claimed that on his orders, the military had “taken a couple of aircraft out.”
The 9/11 commission ended its public hearings with a dramatic depiction of a government in chaos that morning, unable to comprehend the unfolding disaster or to break free of communications glitches and bureaucratic constraints. Except, that is, at moments when underlings took control – and rose to the occasion.
The commander in chief was not in command. It is not only that George W. Bush sat in a Florida classroom reading with second-graders. This was an effort to project calm, the president told the commission.
Even after leaving the classroom, President Bush was not in the loop. White House chief of staff Andrew Card told Bush at 9:05 a.m. that “America is under attack.” Between 9:15 and 9:30, the commission staff reported, Bush consulted with advisers about his planned remarks to the country. No one was in contact with the Pentagon. “The focus was on the president’s statement to the nation. No decisions were made during this time,” the staff said.
Around 10 a.m. Bush “apparently” spoke to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The president complained to the panel about lapses in the secure phone system aboard Air Force One, blaming this for his inability to get information and give orders.
The revelation contrasts with a 2002 Republican fund-raising appeal. The Republicans sold a photo of Bush aboard Air Force One on Sept. 11, 2001, taken as he was speaking to Cheney by phone. The pitch for money sent with this picture lauded Bush’s “courageous leadership during this historic time.”
Meanwhile that morning, America’s workers did the best they could.
When air traffic controllers at the FAA’s Boston area control center first realized that American Airlines Flight 11 had been hijacked and was speeding toward New York, controllers threw out the rule book that called for military assistance to be requested through a strict chain of command. Instead they contacted the military through the FAA’s Cape Cod facility, alerting Otis Air Force Base.
When New York controllers, as well as those responsible for Boston, understood that a second plane had been hijacked, orders were given to halt all aircraft traveling through New York airspace. A Boston request to immediately heighten cockpit security never made it through. But FAA commanders in suburban Virginia did ask headquarters in Washington if they wanted a nationwide halt of air traffic. “While executives at FAA headquarters discussed it, the Command Center went ahead and ordered one anyway at 9:25,” the commission staff said. Later, controllers in Cleveland who tracked United Flight 93 would repeatedly suggest military help, only to be met with indecision.
“At the local level, people responded with great heroism,” commission member Bob Kerrey told Benedict Sliney, the FAA official who ordered the unprecedented national air traffic stop on his own.
There is a pattern to the mosaic of investigations into 9/11. The people at the bottom had better instincts and quicker reactions than those at the top.
FBI agents and lawyers in Minneapolis tried in vain to get headquarters in Washington to take seriously the detention of Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001. FBI agents in Phoenix were ignored when they alerted superiors to the suspicious flight school enrollments of Middle Eastern men.
On Aug. 4, 2001, customs officer Jose Melendez-Perez refused to admit al-Qaida member and presumed “muscle” hijacker Mohamed Kahtani into the United States through Florida’s Orlando airport. Melendez-Perez has said that after 9/11, he contacted the FBI to discuss al Kahtani, but agents never called him. No one did until the 9/11 panel reached him last October.
Sclerosis afflicts the bureaucracy in charge of our security. The 9/11 panel is inclined to point out that this condition persists today. But a larger truth, too, is revealed. Those who serve us best do not get much credit. Nor are they among those who seek it for themselves.
Marie Cocco is a Newsday columnist. Contact her by writing to cocco@newsday.com.
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