THE IRREPRESSIBLE JOHN LEHMAN [Rod Dreher]
We had a robust editorial board session with 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman today here at DMN [Dallas Morning News]. He's got strong opinions, and isn't shy about sharing them. Here are my summary notes:
1. "The biggest problem today is Congressional oversight. It's chaotic."
He meant by this that the major obstacle toward making America safer from terrorism is the fact that something like 88 separate committees have oversight over aspects of the government's anti-terror war. He said Congress views homeland security as an opportunity for revenue sharing. He was blistering on the idiocy of Montana receiving around $47 per capita from the feds for homeland security, while New York receiving only $5 per capita, when everybody knows that NYC (and Washington, and L.A., and Houston, etc.) are the main targets. The only thing that's going to make Congress quit acting like pork-barrel bureaucrats is for the media to galvanize the public.
2. "When you don't perceive a threat, everything becomes like the post office. It's all process."
This was his comment about the many failures to see 9/11 coming, particularly regarding the solid info many agencies had, but did not share with each other. He said, about the August 6, 2001 PDB (the one that said al Qaeda might use planes to attack), that -- and this is a quote -- "We can't quote from our interview with the president, so let me just say that a very, very senior goverment official told us he could have gotten better information from the daily papers" than from the CIA. Lehman said it was absolutely shocking to committee members to discover how poorly served Presidents Bush and Clinton were by intelligence agencies.
3. "If you ask us on the committee what worries us most about the future, it's not what we can't imagine, but what we can."
He said that there are no real failures of imagination today. People are quite aware of the chemical, biological and nuclear threats against America, and how easy it would be to carry them out. He said nuclear worries are the most serious.
4. "Today's is an enviroment that only a somnolent person would be happy in. Common sense is not prevailing."
He said that the various government bureaucracies reward complacency and process, and marginalizes imaginative thinkers and risk takers. The govt has got to shake up their way of doing business and bring creative thinkers to decision-making positions.
5. There is insufficient attention being paid to Islam in this country. Saudi funding goes into building and maintaining Wahhabist mosques and institutions in America, and we are not on top of this. Lehman noted that the 9/11 hijackers were taken into a web of supporters throughout the country, webs that started in mosques.
6. He agreed that Homeland Security officials are so cagey with the public about the information they have regarding security threats because they don't want people to know how little they know.
7. "We are not fighting the war of ideas."
The US has got to realize that this war cannot be won solely by military might, Lehman said. We've got to pay for a media assault on the Arab world, but also for charitable and educational endeavors to educate and win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.
8. "The Secretary of Transportation is obsessive about [racial profiling]. He will not relent on it. It's kept CAPPS II from being implemented."
He raked Norm Mineta over the coals for his "absurd" fear of racial discrimination, which prevents common sense screening at airports. Lehman said we have limited resources, so we should apply them intelligently.
"We're spending nine-tenths of the money we have on people who have 99/100ths of one percent of the likelihood of being terrorists, because we want to be politically correct. It's crazy," Lehman said.
One of my colleagues suggested that perhaps as a Japanese-American who was interned as a child during WW2, he has a special perspective on how badly things can go when profiling goes too far. Lehman wasn't having any of this.
"Look, that's his problem, not my problem," he said. "I've got problems too, and I don't take them out on [public policy]."
Lehman has this figured out. If he'd take it, I'd recommend him for the new National Intelligence Director position...or Homeland Security Director after the election when Ridge leaves.
John Kerry Delenda Est!
