Failures have been a popular topic in the 9/11 hearings. CIA Director George J. Tenet has confessed to multiple failures and shortcomings within the intelligence communities in the months leading up to September 11. He simultaneously defended the CIA, saying it did all it could under the given restrictions. Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that the intelligence community failed to establish a proper means of dispersing vital information about brewing terrorist threats.
They chalked much of this up to being understaffed, under funded, having too many other investigations going on at the time (approximately 70 according to Mueller) and some very basic “errors in communication.” Various memos passed through the intelligence community in the months proceeding September 11. These memos contained leads on terrorist suspects. Because they were passed around, ignored or, according to President Bush, didn’t present enough specific “new” information to bother acting upon, the CIA didn’t make much use of them.
While Tenet and Mueller’s admissions to failure aren’t outright “Yeah, we screwed up; we’re only human and we’re sorry” ones, I still respect them for having the courage to go that far. After all, to err is human and admitting error, especially in positions of power takes serious guts.
Having the guts to admit to failure is not a trait the President and his cabinet seem to share with Tenet and Mueller. When questioned by the 9/11 committee, cabinet members Condoleeza Rice and John Ashcroft both refused to answer questions concerning Bush’s potential failures directly, resorting instead to thick doublespeak, long roundabout answers or just shifting blame onto the same “errors in communication” cited by Tenet and Mueller. In President Bush’s press conference this past Tuesday night he publicly decreed that he felt he and his cabinet to have never made any errors in judgment or actions in the war on terror. When posed with the question of whether he had any regrets about any actions he’d taken thus far in the war on terror, President Bush said he regretted 9/11’s happening at all (but did not count this as something he could have done anything more about) and beyond that stated he had no regrets, admitted no failures.
Tenet and Mueller have been good and honorable to admit to their agencies’ faults to any degree, however small. Bush’s cabinet has yet to join them in this showing of good faith to America. Once more, to err is human and there is no shame in admitting to failure. There is, however, great shame in admitting to pure negligence.
Perhaps someday soon the 9/11 committee will break through the armor of pride worn by Bush and his cabinet and discover why they are part of the same errors of the intelligence community whom they oversee. It’s not like saying “Yeah, I goofed’ would shatter any illusions voters might have of Bush being Superman. Perhaps the people would sooner vote for a confessed human than one too proud to confess to human error. Then again, it IS an election year, and logic like that is a risky thing to think about.
Dan Goldstein can be contacted at [email protected]