9-11 Commission

9-11 Commission, bipartisan study group created by U.S. Pres. George W. Bush and the United States Congress on November 27, 2002, to examine the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The commission’s report served as the basis for a major reform of the U.S. intelligence community, marking some of the most far-reaching changes since the creation of the modern national security bureaucracy at the start of the Cold War in the late 1940s.

The commission was initially to be chaired by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former U.S. senator George Mitchell, but each resigned shortly after their appointments due to conflicts of interest. Former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean and former congressman Lee Hamilton subsequently agreed to chair and vice-chair the commission, which was composed of five Republicans and five Democrats. A staff of experts led by Philip Zelikow prepared the report after interviewing 1,200 individuals and studying thousands of classified and unclassified reports. Nineteen days of public hearings were held. The commission’s findings, compiled as The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, were delivered in July 2004.

The report detailed the planning and execution of the al-Qaeda attacks, the response of the intelligence and policy communities to the intelligence warnings of an attack in the preceding months, and the response of the national security system to the attacks when they occurred. The commission concluded that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had inadequately assessed the threat posed by al-Qaeda and had not taken sufficient steps to disrupt its planning. The report said that the most important failure in both the intelligence and policy communities was one of imagination, in understanding the depth of the threat al-Qaeda posed.

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The 9/11 Commission Report narrated in detail the development of al-Qaeda, its evolution into the organization that carried out the September 11 attacks, and the central leadership role played by Osama bin Laden. The report discussed al-Qaeda’s attacks on American targets before September 11, 2001, with a special focus on the August 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000. The commission also studied foiled al-Qaeda attacks like the so-called “Millennium Plot” to attack Los Angeles International Airport with a suitcase bomb in late December 1999. Much of the data on al-Qaeda’s planning and execution of the September 11 and other attacks derived from the statements of captured al-Qaeda operatives.

The commission also carefully assessed the role of foreign states in the plot and the attacks. Significantly, it concluded that Iraq had no role in the events of September 11, 2001, and was not involved in the al-Qaeda plot. This was notable because alleged Iraqi involvement in the attacks had served as a casus belli for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Despite the commission’s finding that there was “no credible evidence” linking the government of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, members of the Bush administration continued to assert that such ties existed. The report noted that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens but found no evidence of Saudi government participation in the attacks. The commission assessed that Pakistan played a central role in the development of Islamist extremism and urged the administration to take steps to strengthen democracy there. It applauded the administration for its intervention in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, and urged a fully resourced effort to build a stable government in that country. The commission reviewed evidence of Iran’s involvement with al-Qaeda and suggested that further investigation was needed in this area.

The report concluded with a series of recommendations for reforming and restructuring the U.S. intelligence community and other national security agencies to deal with the threat of 21st-century terrorism. It called for the creation of a national intelligence director with authority over all agencies in the intelligence community; this suggestion led to the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). It also called for the creation of a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to replace the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which had been created in May 2003; the NCTC was duly created in the aftermath of the report.

The commission also recommended extensive changes in the manner in which the CIA and FBI conduct their work. The CIA was mandated to put a higher emphasis on human intelligence collection programs and to expand its analytical capabilities. The FBI was encouraged to develop new intelligence-gathering capabilities and develop an analytical cadre to match its traditional field agent structure. Above all, both agencies were tasked with sharing information about future threats and working collaboratively to combat them.

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The commission’s work and its final report received a generally positive response from both Republicans and Democrats. The report itself became a best seller and was lauded for the quality of its prose. The New York Times even cited its “uncommonly lucid, even riveting” style, unusual for a government report by a large number of experts.