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9 11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA - Amazon Noir

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Page 34<br />

9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Synthetic</strong> <strong>Terror</strong>: <strong>Made</strong> <strong>in</strong> <strong>USA</strong> He then turned to the US<br />

<strong>in</strong>telligence community, which had manifestly failed its citizens <strong>in</strong> the<br />

most grievous way. He talked about the disproportion between the means<br />

allocated and the results obta<strong>in</strong>ed: It is reported <strong>in</strong> the media that the<br />

United States, <strong>in</strong> what would otherwise be a classified figure, may spend<br />

$30 billion per year on <strong>in</strong>telligence services, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g the CIA and the<br />

NSA. The Wash<strong>in</strong>gton Post reports the FBI counter-terrorism spend<strong>in</strong>g grew<br />

to $423 million this year, a figure which <strong>in</strong> the last 8 years has grown<br />

by 300 percent. It is not enough to ask for more. It is necessary to<br />

assess what went wrong. Did leadership fail? Were the plans <strong>in</strong>adequate?<br />

Did we have the wrong people, or were they on the wrong mission? This<br />

was a challenge to the CIA, FBI, and the other spy agencies. Torricelli<br />

then began to enumerate several concrete examples of <strong>in</strong>competence by<br />

these same agencies: Earlier this week, the Wash<strong>in</strong>gton Post reported<br />

that over the past 2 years the Central Intelligence Agency had provided<br />

to the FBI the names of 100 suspected associates of Osama b<strong>in</strong> Laden who<br />

were either <strong>in</strong> or on their way to the United States. Yet the Wash<strong>in</strong>gton<br />

Post concludes that the FBI "was ill equipped and unprepared" to deal<br />

with this <strong>in</strong>formation. Some of the allegations reported <strong>in</strong> the media are<br />

stunn<strong>in</strong>g and deeply troubl<strong>in</strong>g, not simply about what happened but<br />

reveal<strong>in</strong>g about our <strong>in</strong>ability to deal with the current crisis. Previous<br />

terrorist <strong>in</strong>vestigations, it is alleged, produced boxes of evidentiary<br />

material written <strong>in</strong> Arabic that rema<strong>in</strong>ed unanalyzed for lack of<br />

translators. Dur<strong>in</strong>g the 1993 World Trade Center bomb<strong>in</strong>g trial, agents<br />

discovered that photos and draw<strong>in</strong>gs outl<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g the plot had been <strong>in</strong> their<br />

possession for 3 years, but they had not been analyzed. S<strong>in</strong>ce 1996, the<br />

FBI had evidence that <strong>in</strong>ternational terrorists were learn<strong>in</strong>g to fly<br />

passenger jets at US flight schools, but that does not seem to have<br />

obviously raised sufficient concern, and there was no apparent action.<br />

In August, the FBI received notice from French <strong>in</strong>telligence that one man<br />

who had paid cash to use flight simulators <strong>in</strong> M<strong>in</strong>nesota was a "radical<br />

Islamic extremist" with ties to Afghani terrorist tra<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g camps.<br />

Regrettably, this <strong>in</strong>telligence <strong>in</strong>formation was apparently not seen <strong>in</strong><br />

the greater context of an actual threat that has now been realized.<br />

[...] Torricelli then raised his key demand, which was for the immediate<br />

convocation of a Board of Inquiry on 9/<strong>11</strong>, modeled on the boards of<br />

<strong>in</strong>quiry which had been convened after the explosion of the USS Ma<strong>in</strong>e,<br />

the Pearl Harbor attack, and the loss of the space shuttle Challenger:

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