The attack on the United States by followers of Mohammed, mostly Saudis, caused the President to almost immediately start one of the longest wars in US history: the invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq. The intelligence community, which “could of, should of, would of” given us warning of this impending disaster let us down… again.
On that day I was not surprised nor was I stunned by the devastation and loss of life. Totally saddened and angered, but not surprised.
I was four short years retired from a long Army career that had taken me into the darkness of terrorism. All through the Reagan Administrations’ war on terror I had been deployed over and over on missions to “find the bad guys that hijacked, or kidnapped, or murdered American citizens in the name of Allah.” My unit, the force that was born as a direct result of the failed raid into Iran in 1980 was also blind in terms of “actionable” intelligence. The Church Committee led by Senator Frank Church (D) Idaho, formed because of Watergate fallout, proffered the Foreign Intelligence Service Act in 1978 which caused a series of Attorney General “Guidelines” through the years, in essence to provide oversight for the FBI’s domestic intelligence efforts. This Act also put the CIA’s “covered” agent network operations systematically out of business. The overall effect of this unfortunate holdover from the Nixon era is an FBI that has been so overseen that it became a rarity for them to effectively communicate with any other agencies and a Central Intelligence Agency filled with bureaucrats that can’t seem to get out of their own way always playing “secret, secret, I’ve got a secret.”
This lack of ability to share data and data points contributed directly to the, oh let’s see, for starters: The US Embassy attack and hostage crisis in Tehran in November 1979, an event that made Ted Koppel a household name and left Jimmy Carter homeless. All through the 1980s we were plagued by the sons of Allah with scores of Americans taken off the streets in the Middle-East, TWA 847, TWA 840, Pan-AM 63, and Pan-Am 103, the Italian Cruise Liner Achille Lauro hijacked and hundreds of Americans killed. Sons of Allah blew up the US Embassy in Beirut killing 63 Americans, blew up the USMC Barracks in Beirut killing 241 Marines, and blew up the US Embassy in Kuwait. Then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, and on 26 February 1993 the first World Trade Center bombing (aka rehearsal) occurs; the run-up trying to feed the people of Somalia, then the 3 October 1993 Battle of the Black Sea, the fight of their lives for a hundred or so Special Operations guys in Mogadishu (“Blackhawk Down”); in 1995 a US complex in Riyadh is blown up; in 1996 Khobar Towers is bombed; US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya; USS Cole et al, ad nauseum!
So back to 9-11. My first feelings were of sadness and anger but I ran the timeline in my head and said, I’m not surprised because I was a participant in many of the events listed above. I closed my eyes and saw the incredibly haunting features of Abdul Abu Abbas, a murderer multiple times over and the mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijack, where wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer was slain and pushed into the sea by these Infidel-hating zealots. Abbas was standing in the door of a flag-carrying Egyptian Airliner that we had forced down in Sicily with the intent of taking back the four Palestinians that had hijacked the ship. Eventually we got them off the Airliner and put them in jail in Sicily. Clancy’s book Shadow Warriors chronicles this with our Commanding General. The Italians would not let us have Abbas as he was diplomatically covered by the Egyptian flag on the airplane and so was immune. But he stood in the door peering at us knowing he was once again getting away with murder and we stood frustrated, angry, and sad. I looked in that big bastard’s eyes and I saw the deadness that drives these fanatics.
9/11 was personal for me long before 2001, and long after.
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