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RIGHT NOW
A 9/11 anniversary message
BY DEIRDRE FULTON
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Since the 9/11 Commission Report was released in July, we’ve heard damning evidence of how unprepared the United States was for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. To be reminded of that fatal incompetence — or told for the first time — on the night before the three-year anniversary of those attacks seems almost insulting. Then again, so is the extent to which warnings were ignored, partisanship got in the way of decision-making, and utter disorganization put the country in grave danger. Using a combination of clips from the commission’s public hearings and interviews with intelligence experts, Bill Moyers details mistakes and failures that will make your jaw drop in "9/11: For the Record," a special edition of NOW with Bill Moyers, slated for broadcast on PBS at 9 p.m. on Friday. As the commission strove to do, Moyers refrains from placing blame specifically on one person or group of people. Instead, the responsibility is spread out among two administrations, several institutions, and a network of people. In 1998, for example, though he knew the exact location of Osama bin Laden, then-president Bill Clinton ordered the US military to stand down and possibly missed an opportunity to kill the man who later orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. Similar missteps led all the way to the morning of the hijackings, when two men who would later help fly American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon were allowed to board despite setting off metal detectors. Combine stories like those with chilling audio recordings of conversations between air-traffic officials (one controller is heard asking another, "Is this real-world or an exercise?"), and what’s left is the inevitable question: how could this have happened? Throughout, Moyers keeps a respectful distance and lets the story speak for itself. Whatever the commission’s report may be lacking (some people, including Senator Bob Graham, have asserted that the commission was pressured to omit certain parts of the 585-page account), it remains the most complete and credible account of what happened and why. Culled from two million pages of documents, it is boiled down here to one hour of fact upon frightening fact indicating how the attacks might have been prevented. What an unfortunate, yet necessary, way to honor their anniversary.
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