Information Related to "What Do You Know -- And What Will You Do About It?"
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What Do You Know --
And What Will You Do About
It?
While America slept, the nation was caught unprepared for the Sept. 11 attacks
on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Some have questioned how much advance information the government had—and
whether that could have prevented the attacks.
But a larger question to consider is: What does it take for a people to
awaken to the urgency of the times?
by Darris McNeely
It was inevitable that, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, many would ask how such an atrocity could be planned and carried out without catching the attention of the CIA or the FBI, America's vaunted intelligence agencies.
CIA director George Tenet was having breakfast at a Washington hotel when he learned of the attack. Like everyone else, he was taken by surprise. In spite of the nearly 10 years of attacks on American interests here and abroad, including the 1992 bombing of the World Trade Center, the country was caught unawares by the audacity of men willing to commit suicide for their cause while taking thousands of innocent lives with them.
That questions would arise, either trying to pin the blame or make political capital out of the tragedy, is part of the wartime scenario. It happened after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attack on the Hawaiian military base that led to America's entry into World War II.
The May 27 issue of Newsweek, in an article titled "What Went Wrong?," compared the process of gathering and analyzing intelligence to "taking a metal detector to a city dump." The amount of information that comes in each day from around the world is staggering. In addition to the FBI's and the CIA's sophisticated operations, each branch of the armed services maintains separate intelligence-gathering operations. Unless the information is properly processed and analyzed, it is worthless. Analyzing it properly takes a combination of skill and intuition to connect the dots and develop a clear picture.
An intelligence breakdown
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