THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
SCOT LEHIGH
This time, Hart's blunt warnings hit home
By Scot Lehigh, Globe Columnist | December 5, 2006
GARY HART has long been one of America's most interesting political intellectuals, someone not just provocative but prescient.
The bipartisan national security commission he and Warren Rudman chaired from 1998 to 2001 predicted both that the United States was becoming increasingly vulnerable to terrorist attack and that "Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers."
So Hart is well worth listening to when he talks about terrorism.
And his message is blunt.
"We are going to be attacked again, it is just a question of when," he said in a sit-down last week. "These are patient people. . . and they are coming to get us."
His scenario: attacks in cities like Denver, Dallas, and Cleveland, possibly with biological weapons.
"If you want to terrorize people, you don't keep attacking New York," the former Colorado senator, a Democrat, says. "You strike the heartland."
But do terrorists really have the capacity to launch a successful operation against a nation now alert to the threat? It is, after all, pretty hard to take seriously the likes of would-be dirty bomber Jose Padilla, who apparently had neither radioactive material nor bomb-making equipment, or the Miami cell of aspiring terrorists who, whatever their malevolent intent, seemed to have little capacity to execute a plot.
"There are degrees of capability," Hart says. "The inner core are very capable."
Further, the Department of Homeland Security is a mess, Hart says.
So how to meet the continuing threat?
First, he says, the president should demand specific plans from industry leaders about how they are protecting their critical facilities; seaport security must be improved; and US Representative Ed Markey is right about the need to screen all cargo shipped in the belly of airliners. Further, we need to stockpile immunizations -- and inoculate law-enforcement agents and health workers against smallpox. And we should put a greater focus on terrorism drills in cities.
Although he acknowledges that he's "one of the few people" who think so, Hart believes that, had the Bush administration paid more attention to the alarms sounded by his commission and other terrorism experts, the Sept. 11 attacks could have been avoided.
"I think if the administration had taken these warnings seriously, not only ours, but the CIA's, we could have prevented 9/11," he says. "No question in my mind."
How? A truly determined president would have called the FBI and CIA heads in and told them, "We have been warned, I think this is a serious threat, I want you guys on this case 24/7." Under such pressure, the two agencies might have ended their long-running rivalry and started sharing information. Had that happened, "we had enough information on three or four of the hijackers that the dots could have been connected and we could have prevented it," Hart maintains.
Rudman, in a phone interview, agreed with Hart about the likelihood of another terrorist episode, but was skeptical that the Sept. 11 plot could have been foiled.
"It's possible, but it's very speculative," said the former Republican senator from New Hampshire. But "certainly there should have been more attention paid to that report and to other information that was available in early 2001."
Instead, Hart says, the administration's basic response was indifference.
Although Newt Gingrich, another commission member, tried to get them an audience with Bush, neither George W. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney would see the commissioners, Hart says. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice, then the national security advisor, did meet with them, but to little effect.
"The administration paid no attention," Hart says. "And with all due respect, very few people in the media did, either."
Although federal lawmakers showed some interest in the panel's recommendations, particularly its proposal for a national homeland security agency, the administration discouraged any quick congressional action, Hart says. The White House said Cheney would undertake his own review of US vulnerability to terrorism, while a new FEMA office would coordinate the response.
Hart and Rudman have proved themselves able analysts willing to tackle big problems in sober, bipartisan fashion -- and to speak uncomfortable truths. The Democrats once again have some power in Washington. Now that they do, the new Congress should call the former commissioners in and seek their unvarnished assessment about what remains to be done to protect this country.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is
[email protected].
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