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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

9/11 Commission releases final report

Aired July 22, 2004 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
It will come as no surprise to those of you who join us often that virtually the entire program tonight deals with the 9/11 Commission report, what went wrong, what needs to be changed, the complications of making those changes, all those big and important issues.

The basic rules of journalism say we should begin with the big and work our way down, so forgive us tonight if we seem to do this a bit backwards. They say the devil is in the details and we begin with the devils and a bit of the detail that set in motion the most important and most horrible day of our national lives.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The detail is full of could haves and should haves. Many of the 19 hijackers failed even the limited security checks in place three years ago, failed before they even arrived at the metal detectors to be screened.

Mohamed Atta, the alleged ringleader, was red-flagged at the ticket counter in Portland, Maine on his way to Boston and American Airlines Flight 11, which would eventually hit the North Tower.

The CAPS system, the prescreening security in place also red- flagged all five of the hijackers on American Airlines 77 at Dulles Airport. All were later seen being screened at the metal detectors.

One of the hijackers at Dulles spoke no English, had no photo identification. Others just looked suspicious at the ticket counter but they all were eventually cleared to board after their luggage was screened for explosives.

A bit more detail, United Flight 93, which became famous for the passenger revolt before it crashed in Pennsylvania, the commission says the passengers never actually entered the cockpit as many believe. A passenger is heard yelling "roll it," perhaps in reference to a food cart being crashed into the cockpit door.

Here is the commission's narrative. "The hijackers remained at the controls but must have known that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them. The airplane headed down. The control wheel was turned hard to the right. The airplane rolled onto its back and one of the hijackers began shouting: "Allah is the greatest; Allah is the greatest." On American Flight 77, which would crash at the Pentagon, the only known instance of the word "box cutters" was used by Barbara Olson, the wife of then Solicitor General of the United States Ted Olson in a phone call to him.

Says the report: "The solicitor general then informed his wife of the two previous hijackings and crashes. She did not display signs of panic."

On board United 175, which would crash into the South Tower in New York, a young man named Peter Hanson called his dad. "It's getting bad, dad. A stewardess was stabbed. They seem to have knives and mace. It's getting very bad on the plane." And then a few seconds later: "Don't worry, dad. If it happens, it'll happen very fast. My God. My God."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Neither an easy moment to relive nor an easy night to get through we expect but worthwhile we hope.

So on to the whip and our Senior White House Correspondent John King, John a headline.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the narrative in the report is both compelling and very depressing. It says the government did not take the al Qaeda threat seriously early enough and it said the government had so many clues that something was coming but didn't share that information and didn't do enough -- Aaron.

BROWN: John, thank you.

Next to what the commissioners want done and they want much done. CNN's Kelli Arena worked that part of the report today, so Kelli a headline.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the commissioners say that the U.S. has to act and act fast to make changes in the way that it gathers, shares and acts on intelligence.

BROWN: Kelli, thanks.

Finally the venue where the changes will be weighed and the battles will be fought, Joe Johns, our Congressional Correspondent, is there for us tonight, Joe the headline from there.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the commission put in a tall order today. It wants the Congress to reform itself and it wants it done quickly. This could be a lot to ask this late in an election year.

BROWN: Joe, thank you. We get back to you and the rest quite quickly tonight.

An hour devoted to exploring the repercussions of today's report also, and perhaps inevitably so, for measuring the distance between then and now and, as much as we can all hope otherwise, between now and the next time, all that to come.

But we begin with the findings and the recommendations of the commission, two reports beginning with CNN's John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): Could it have been prevented? The 9/11 Commission report did not answer that nagging question with certainty but its account of what went wrong details stunning failures.

THOMAS KEAN (R), 9/11 COMMISSION CHAIR: This was a failure of policy, management, capability and, above all, a failure of imagination.

KING: December, 1998, President Clinton received a highly classified briefing with this headline. "Bin Laden Preparing to Hijack U.S. Aircraft and Other Attacks." The commission concludes had that warning been shared across the government, "it might have brought more attention to the need for permanent changes in domestic airport and airline security" procedures.

Many of the mistakes are well known now. Two of the hijackers were suspected terrorists but were not placed on watch lists that would have barred them from entering the United States.

The FBI knew Zacarius Moussaoui was in the states for flight training and suspected a possible hijacking. The CIA knew al Qaeda planned a spectacular attack soon, possibly involving airplanes. But the FBI didn't pass on all it knew. The dots never connected.

JAMES THOMPSON (R), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: Could that have prevented 9/11? We don't know but that failure is there.

KING: All the more striking because in 1999, worried about millennium attacks, the government had come together to confront al Qaeda threats. "Information about terrorism flowed widely and abundantly. The flow from the FBI was particularly remarkable because the FBI at other times shared almost no information."

Attacks were thwarted. The nation celebrated peacefully and the report says, "The government relaxed. Counterterrorism went back to being a secret preserve," so secret the commission says Presidents Clinton and Bush were not given the full picture of al Qaeda's capabilities and hatred.

BOB KERREY (D), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: How in God's name are you supposed to imagine a threat if the facts are being withheld from you?

KING: In the summer of 2001, CIA Director George Tenet warned, "The system was blinking red." Al Qaeda was poised to strike. The acting head of the FBI arranged a national conference call but "did not task field offices to try to determine whether any plots were being considered within the United States." And, while Tenet was raising alarms not everyone was convinced. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz questioned the reporting.

Lots of specifics about what went wrong but a more cautious approach on the question of who's to blame.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Now the commission says it would be wrong to blame one person or one government agency but it does say that a number of senior officials in the government, including the Congress and the two most recent presidents, certainly share the responsibility -- Aaron.

BROWN: Just a footnote. As we sit here tonight almost three years since that horrible day has anyone been fired, held accountable in that way for what happened that day?

KING: The FBI says it has restructured. Has anyone been fired? We'd have to go back and look at the records. The CIA director recently resigned but he resigned he said for personal reasons and the big controversy, of course, in his case is the "slam dunk" case about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, so hard to say anyone has been directly fired, Aaron, because of the failure to connect the dots prior to 9/11.

And President Bush has said it, former President Clinton has said it and the commission said it today, they say they believe that should not be the approach that what you should try to do is learn from your mistakes and go forward but it certainly is a question many of the families ask.

BROWN: It is indeed. John, thank you, John King our Senior White House Correspondent tonight.

As we said a moment ago the report is organized into findings and in recommendations. Some more now on the second part, the recommendations, and CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEAN: This report represents a unanimous conclusion.

ARENA (voice-over): The message from the commission is clear. The U.S. cannot afford to wait to make changes.

KEAN: Every expert with whom we spoke told us an attack of even greater magnitude is now possible and even probable. We do not have the luxury of time.

ARENA: The 9/11 report calls for significant reform covering everything from the way the U.S. deals with Muslim nations to putting together response plans in the case of another attack.

LEE HAMILTON (D), 9/11 COMMISSION CO-CHAIRMAN: There is no silver bullet or decisive blow that can defeat Islamic terrorism. It will take unity of effort.

ARENA: The commission recommends creating a new counterterrorism center to coordinate more than a dozen intelligence agencies. In charge would be a new national intelligence director reporting to the president, confirmed by the Senate.

The director would have control over intelligence budgets and the ability to hire and fire deputies, including the CIA director and top intelligence officials at the FBI, Homeland Security and Defense Departments.

The commission did not endorse the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency but it did back the FBI's move toward a new intelligence service within the bureau. The report also called for a reworking of congressional committees to provide stronger oversight.

HAMILTON: The intelligence community needs a shift in mind set and organization.

ARENA: The FBI embraced many of the recommendations and says it will look closely at others. Senior CIA officials say they want to proceed carefully. "We are in the middle of a war," one said "and do not want to disrupt that activity." The president called the report constructive but made no commitments.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I look forward to studying their recommendations and look forward to working with responsible parties within my administration to move forward on those recommendations.

ARENA: Commission member and former Senator Bob Kerrey says he's hopeful changes will be implemented but not optimistic.

KERREY: In my experience in politics when somebody's asked to give up something they will come up with all kinds of reasons, other than the most important one, which is they don't want to surrender authority.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: Commission members say that even though their charter expires they will not go out of business. They promise to come back in a year with a report card judging what, if any, progress has been made -- Aaron.

BROWN: This may be a little premature. I apologize if it is. Just looking at your area of responsibility, you deal with the Justice Department, the FBI and so on, where there will the resistance come, if it comes?

ARENA: Well actually, Aaron, the FBI has already started to implement some of the changes that the commissioners recommended and, as I said in the report, they are really supporting and embracing many of those ideas. Justice had nothing to say on this report today.

I think the intelligence community, though, from the CIA you may get some resistance. The CIA director will be a deputy of this new national intelligence director, so lots of changes in store on that side of the fence -- Aaron. You know and when you're talking budgets and budget authority that gets everybody crazy in Washington.

BROWN: And everywhere else. Kelli, thank you, Kelli Arena, a long day.

There are moments in Washington when having labored mightily the mountain coughs up a mouse. This, safe to say, was not one of those days. A commission that was resistant at the outset, threatened with a premature end, found itself with a mandate and the time it needed, if just barely, to get the job done. That it resulted in neither a witch hunt nor a whitewash is a reflection of the magnitude of 9/11 but also, we think, a tribute to the commission itself.

We spoke tonight with two members, former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a Republican, and Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Let me address this to both of you but Secretary Lehman take the first whack at it. Everybody has said sort of the right things today. I think as you read the report what you have is a great sense of urgency the government needs to act. It needs to act quickly. Do you believe that sense of urgency is just coming from you or do you think that the policymakers get it?

JOHN F. LEHMAN (R), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: I think they're beginning to get it. I think that the fact that all of us fairly well known as Republicans on one side and fairly well known as Democrats on the other side reached unanimity, not only on the findings but on the lessons learned and on the urgency of the recommendations, very thoughtfully developed recommendations, no dissents, no footnotes.

And I think already we're seeing from some of the comments from the Hill today that that has really had an impact up there and they are sensing the urgency and I think we're going to see action.

BROWN: Mr. Ben-Veniste do you agree with that?

RICHARD BEN-VENISTE (D), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: Yes, I do. I think we have brought the public along and those in a position to make a difference have now received our report. Our recommendations are based almost entirely on our observations and our investigation.

BROWN: Let me just briefly get from each of you this too. Mr. Ben-Veniste why don't you go ahead on this first? Of these recommendations, and they aren't that many, where do you think the most difficulty lies?

BEN-VENISTE: The recommendations are of a piece, Aaron. They are interlocking and interdependent. They start with reforming the foreign intelligence gathering apparatus and we have a director of national intelligence and that person now at the top of the food chain gets the information and directs the collection of information from a variety of agencies and, most importantly, controls the budget for intelligence. That is new. It's important.

Under that we have our counterterrorism center, which improves the existing situation greatly. We have made recommendations respecting the FBI's operation. And finally, in Congress, we have made recommendations to streamline oversight to make it more effective and more efficient.

BROWN: Secretary Lehman in that laundry list of important items is there one that you think will be more difficult to get passed into law, to make happen than all the rest?

LEHMAN: Well, I think the most likely obstacle, of course, will be on the reforms of Congress itself. As Richard said, our reforms are really a systemic, deep systemic and cultural reform. It's not a Chinese menu. You can't pick and choose and Congress can't get away with just saying, "Oh, we'll take that one because that will be least controversial."

It's a fundamental systemic change and it requires fundamental systemic change in Congress and that will be the most difficult because there are so many little baronies in the subcommittees and committees. Everybody wants to be a member. They're on six different committees. They have no time for any of them.

There is no real substantive oversight and coherent partnership in developing policy and carrying it out in the intelligence world in Congress. We've called for first and foremost a joint committee on the model of the former Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. That's going to be very difficult for a lot of people. They're going to have to give up power and influence but the nation requires it.

BROWN: A final question. If you had had more time, another six months, another year, would it substantively change the work product you delivered today, Mr. Secretary?

LEHMAN: No, it would not change the basic story. We're confident we have the fundamentals of the story. We have put a great deal of detail and fact in there. If we had more time, we could certainly use it productively.

One of the first things I would do would be the next -- spend the next several months really holding hearings on congressional oversight and its lack and how we go about fixing that. But, yes, we could use it productively but, no, it would not change the conclusions and the recommendations.

BROWN: I know you all will be watching what happens next and holding some feet to the fire. We shall too. Just personally thank you for your work and I think the country owes you thanks for your work as well. We appreciate your time.

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, Aaron, and we appreciate your focus on these issues.

BROWN: Thank you, sir, very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: For everything we now know many questions, of course, remain. We'll ask some of those after the break.

First, a moment of another of the 9/11 commissioners, former Congressman Timothy Roemer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIM ROEMER (D), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: The eyes of history are on our backs. The claws of al Qaeda are on our shoulders and the grief of 9/11 is still in so many American's hearts. I think those indicators and reasons are all going to come together and compel members of Congress and others to pass what's in this report and to act on this. We don't have time to waste with another attack coming.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: New York City tonight.

When the World Trade Towers fell almost three years ago, it seemed unthinkable. Now, we are told, the attacks, awful as they were, shouldn't have come as a surprise, a shock perhaps but not a surprise.

Today the 9/11 Commission said those in charge of protecting the country displayed a failure of imagination. The report spells out many of the dots they failed to connect and answers many of the questions but not all.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): There are many questions that will never be resolved.

KEAN: There are still some unanswered questions because, obviously, the people who were at the heart of the plot are dead.

BROWN: Question, was there an active relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, one of the primary reasons given for going to war with Iraq? A key piece of evidence often mentioned by Vice President Cheney is an alleged meeting between lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.

The commission's report carefully lays out the evidence, a photo of Atta at a bank machine in the United States, records of his cell phone calls in the United States, making a strong case that the meeting probably never occurred. But, in the end, the commission says this:

"These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9, 2001."

Questions were also raised about former Defense Secretary William Cohen's testimony before the commission, testimony stating that the Clinton administration felt that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated in building a nerve gas factory in Sudan, a factory the U.S. destroyed in 1998.

KEAN: The evidence is so -- it's not there and the facts are being argued against and we could not come to a fact-based conclusion on that one.

BROWN: Another question were people in the United States ready and willing to help the hijackers? The commission admits it has no firm answers.

"We explored suspicions about whether these operatives had a support network of accomplices in the United States," says the report. "The evidence is thin, simply not there for some cases, more worrisome in others."

Eleanor Hill was the staff director of the Joint Congressional Committee on 9/11 and she has worried ever since about the existence of such a network.

ELEANOR HILL, FMR. STAFF DIRECTOR JOIN 9/11 INQUIRY: If those types of persons were here before 9/11 we need to know are they still here and, if so, what are they doing and are our law enforcement and intelligence agencies really aware of their activities and their presence?

BROWN: In the end, there is a terrible question, an accusation really, that most certainly will remain to haunt us for a long, long time to come, reporter Chris Mondics.

CHRIS MONDICS, "PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER": We wanted government, spanning both administrations, to not react more aggressively in the face of this threat for which there was significant -- a significant amount of evidence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Questions.

Larry Johnson is a former CIA officer who also worked at the State Department for the Office of Counterterrorism. He's worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations and he joins us again from Washington tonight. It's good to see you.

LARRY JOHNSON, FMR. CIA OFFICER: Hi, Aaron.

BROWN: Explain to me, if you believe it would be helpful, why a national intelligence cabinet level sort of job would be a good thing.

JOHNSON: It would provide somebody with the means of the budget and the hiring and firing control to try to get these agencies to work together. What's really frustrating is that sometimes on a personal level people from FBI and CIA will work together OK.

But I can tell you of an experience within the last three weeks over in the Middle East where there was a meeting between the U.S. military and the CIA and, in the midst of this meeting, the FBI walked in. The CIA person stood up and said, "We're not having this meeting if they're here."

Now, back in Washington, Director Mueller and acting Director McLaughlin they get along great but out in the field you still have some people that say they're not cleared for this. They don't have access to this.

BROWN: Wait, I thought all that ended on 9/11. I thought everybody was talking to everybody.

JOHNSON: It hasn't. It hasn't. It has not. There was about a six-month window where there really was genuine cooperation but there has been a breakdown and I've heard it from people who have been on the ground in those meetings and that's distressing because these people are right in the midst of hunting for bin Laden and, instead of working together, they're fighting with each other over turf.

BROWN: Maybe this is just a waste of time and purely tangential but how do these people, I mean given the stakes that are at play, given what we know the bad guys are capable of, given everything, how can they play these little games still?

JOHNSON: Because you get a professional ethic in each of these organizations and the people who are working in these organization, they're good Americans, they're hardworking generally but, for example, at CIA you're told to protect sources and methods and you're told certain information is so sensitive you can't share it with someone else and that ends up including people that are, you know, still getting U.S. government paychecks from like say the FBI or the U.S. military Central Command.

So, part of it is changing the leadership at the top where the leadership is insisting that the people below that they supervise we will share this information.

One of the things that the report from 9/11 Commission highlights was there was -- there have been FBI agents out at the counterterrorism center since like 1993. One of the first ones assigned there was a good friend of mine, yet they've not been able to pass that information back to FBI headquarters.

In the 9/11 Commission reports there was information about the two hijackers in the country. The FBI guy there heard it but he was told by CIA personnel, "You can't tell FBI headquarters." That's what the commission, I think, has put their finger on. You've got to break that down.

BROWN: Well, those are the stakes and we'll watch it all play out. Larry, it's good to have you with us again tonight. Thank you.

JOHNSON: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you, sir.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the report has only been out a few hours but already the political squabbling begins. We'll get to that.

But first another commissioner on what they reported today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think after our discussions the answer that we came to and the reason you see the recommendations we have is the question is if not now when?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Earlier tonight we asked John Lehman and Richard Ben- Veniste if they thought the policymakers got it. They said, yes, so did the lawmakers, so does the president. Everyone is saying what everyone says at moments like this, sometimes more out of hope than expectation, certainly far in advance of an accomplished fact, given the changes being discussed and the turf involved.

With that side of the story CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The commission issued a blunt warning.

JAMES THOMPSON, 9/11 COMMISSIONER: If something bad happens while these recommendation are sitting there, the American people will quickly fix political responsibility for failure.

JOHNS: The challenge, act now, which was aimed almost squarely at Congress, which must take up the commission's recommendations.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: The sooner we act on this commission's recommendations, the better off we're going to be.

JOHNS: But that won't be easy. The commission is calling for a complete overhaul of congressional oversight of intelligence and homeland security, which the panel called dysfunctional.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D-CT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: These recommendations demand change. And institutions in the executive branch, in Congress resist change, even if its necessary to protect national security.

JOHNS: Impediments to change include turf battles between committee chairman, who reports to whom and who controls the money, also the supercharged election-year atmosphere. Democrats say Republicans aren't doing enough on homeland security.

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: There's almost a quality here in Washington and in the Senate that we're fiddling while Rome burns.

JOHNS: And Republicans blame Democrats for failing to see the warning signs and act decisively in the years before September 11. REP. TOM DELAY (R-TX), MAJORITY LEADER: For eight years in the 1990s, international terrorism was at war with us, the World Trade Center bombing, Khobar Towers, the African embassies, the USS Cole, and we treated it like jaywalking.

JOHNS: Meanwhile, with Congress set to take the rest of the summer off for political conventions and the elections coming this fall, time is running out this year and the speaker of the House is talking about putting on the brakes.

REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R-IL), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: You know, let me just say, we're not going to rush through anything. We're going to make sure that we look at this carefully.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: Now, at the other end of the spectrum, some are calling essentially for a special session during the August break, or, in the alternative, to bring the entire Congress back after the election to look into the recommendations.

And we just got a little bit of news just a few minutes ago. Senators Bill Frist and Tom Daschle, the leaders of the Senate, said that they are setting an August 1 target deadline for evaluation of these recommendations, so clearly the leaders over in the Senate side are taking it seriously -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, that's quite intriguing. What would you guess the chances are that in a campaign year they will come back and work on this?

JOHNS: Well, it's really hard to say. You know, I would have said slim and none a couple years ago. But we have the experience of the Homeland Security Department, where everyone was saying, that's not going to happen. And then, all of a sudden, it happened. So when you talk about 9/11 and homeland security issues, it is clear that the Congress can take these things very seriously and really get them rolling. It's just very hard to predict right now.

BROWN: It also just serves, if I were making the argument to these men and women, it takes an issue on the table. You can't blame the other guy for not doing it. We are working on it.

Anyway, we'll see what happens, Joe. Thanks for staying up late with us tonight.

Still to come on the program, from the shoes we wear at the airport to the way we look at certain types of people, the world is a different place than it was three years ago. We'll get to that.

First, as we go to break, the reaction from the presidential candidate John Kerry today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Nearly three years after the terrorists have attacked our shores and murdered our loved ones, this report carries a very simple message for all of America about the security of all Americans. We can do better. We must do better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Perhaps the simplest and most obvious legacy of the terror attacks almost three years ago is the shorthand, the two numbers that suddenly took an unshakable and awful association. In a few short hours, 9/11 exposed our vast vulnerability and the hatred intent on exploiting it. It changed us in ways large and small.

Here is CNN's Keith Oppenheim.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Chicago, you can't just walk into one of America's oldest ballparks anymore. Backpacks are now checked for hazards. In New York, you can't just park at one of the city's largest hotels. Cars are checked for explosives and crisis plans are ready.

MIKE STENGEL, MARRIOTT MARQUIS TIMES SQUARE: If we had to house people in our ballroom, we're prepared to do that within minutes.

OPPENHEIM: In post-9/11 America, technology as a form of security has taken flight. In Arizona, unmanned planes patrol the Mexican border. In Minneapolis, a pilot program was launched to screen airline passengers faster by scanning retinas and fingerprints.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's going to take three scans of each index finger.

OPPENHEIM: Surveillance is getting higher-tech, too. Consider this crisis center in Chicago.

(on camera): It's a state-of-the-art facility that can integrate live video feeds with a computerized layout of all the floor plans in the city's major high-rises, enabling emergency managers to see and evaluate a crisis in ways they never could before.

RON HUBERMAN, CHICAGO OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MGMT. & COMM.: The city has invested heavily in cameras around key infrastructure and other locations, giving us the capacity in real time to be able to monitor what's going on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody has a different attitude about terrorism and terrorists. And just everybody is more paranoid.

OPPENHEIM: Perhaps, but some believe paranoia is one change that is fading. At this Illinois supply store, sales of gas masks and water jugs spiked after September 11.

PHILIP CABLE, AMERICAN SCIENCE AND SURPLUS: And we haven't seen any significant increase in sales on any of these types of products since then. It's been as if 9/11 hasn't happened.

OPPENHEIM: But in some places, the changes are simple. This paralegal service near ground zero now has an emergency plan.

SALVADOR UY, AMERICAN CLERICAL SERVICE: I wish I had told people to evacuate a little earlier that day. I'm much more prepared to make that decision.

OPPENHEIM: Feelings of regret or loss come with memories of that day, something no level of higher security and technology can easily diminish.

Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Chicago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Three cities are indelibly linked with 9/11. And our next three guests happen to be in each one of them tonight.

CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield is in Boston. Carol Marin is a television journalist and columnist for "The Chicago Tribune." She joins us from Washington, but Chicago is home. And in New York, journalist Jeff Jarvis, former television critic for "TV Guide," "People" magazine," and the creator of "Entertainment Weekly." And we're glad to see all of you.

Let me get from each of you on different subjects about 20 seconds on how life has changed.

Jeff, starting with you, politically, 9/11 changed us how?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: I think, if it weren't for 9/11, you might have seen John Edwards or even Howard Dean emerge as the nominee. And if 9/11 had happened 12 years ago, you wouldn't have seen Bill Clinton. And if happened four years ago, you wouldn't have seen George W. Bush.

It has put national security squarely back on the political agenda. And a candidate for president, to succeed, has to have national security credentials and has to convince the public he can keep America safe. That's the first time that kind of issue has been with us really since the '80s.

Carol, in the Midwest, far from where the attacks took place, obviously, life changed some at the start. Is life different now?

CAROL MARIN, JOURNALIST: I think life is, but I think in small little ways that we bargain about our security.

I work with a cameraman whose daughter was offered a job in the Sears Tower. What she decided was, if she could work on the 12th floor, as opposed to the 89th floor, she would have a chance of getting out of the building. And she took the job. I know a woman who was transferred from Chicago to Paris. She always took mass transportation. She won't take an underground train. I think there are lots of little ways. But I think the biggest way that we undercount is the way we're terrified of what will happen to the economy, as well as our lives and our safety, if there's another attack, because people still haven't really felt that they have recovered from that.

BROWN: Just one more on the Midwest. Does it seem in Chicago and around -- and you travel around quite a bit -- that this was somebody else's problem? Or do they still, three years later -- of course they did initially -- connect to it?

MARIN: I think they connected to it. We personalize things a great deal.

BROWN: Yes.

MARIN: And so in the East Coast, there were so many people who knew someone who knew someone. But, in Chicago, you know, I think that there was always that sense of personalization and they saw it and they felt it.

But their connection wasn't geographic. And what the real rolling thunder of terrorism is for a lot of people are all the things around us. There are nuclear power plants all over those urban areas. There's a V.X. gas dump right over the border in Indiana. I think there are a lot of things that people think about and concern themselves with.

BROWN: Jeff, here, the personal changes. Right after 9/11, we loved our spouses more. We hugged our kids better. We were better congregants in whatever religion we believed in. Do you think any of that has lasted?

JEFF JARVIS, JOURNALIST: I wish there were a silver lining like that.

I talked to a woman the other night who said that she obsessively watches CNN to make sure there is not breaking news, because breaking news is bad news. It's news that could affect any of us, that could affect a family member, anyone.

I think there's an ongoing sense of fear and anger and disappointment and unsureness about life. And that's going to continue. Yes, family matters more. I think that lasted, priorities. Work goes on. But I do think that what really has lasted here is the sense that we don't know. As Bill Clinton said the other week introducing a film about him, there are these hinge points in history when we get into fights about things.

BROWN: Yes.

JARVIS: And right now here in this country, we're fighting about what it means to be an American in this century. We're not sure, because it is surely different.

BROWN: Jeff Greenfield, Jeff, we have got about maybe 40 seconds left. Do you think at a personal level, it has changed us?

GREENFIELD: I think what Carol and Jeff said is both true.

But here's what it hasn't done. And we talk about this as if it were a war. It's the first war, going all the way back to the Civil War, where there hasn't been a draft. There hasn't been rationing. There hasn't been a tax increase to pay for it. And so I think there's this weird disconnection, on the one hand, particularly those of us who lived in New York or Washington, feel. We look around and we can see where the next terrorist attack might hit.

On the other hand, as a nation, and maybe because it's just a different kind of conflict, it is totally different from the "we're all in this together" spirit that, like, in World War II, you had to be all it, because you were either in the Army working on a defense plant or you couldn't buy meat or sliced bread. In that sense, the gap between the personal fear and what we're asked to do about this greater war on terror is a chasm, Aaron.

BROWN: Jeff, Carol, and, Jeff, good to have you with us tonight. Thank you. Thank you all.

Ahead on the program tonight, the families of 9/11 eagerly awaiting the commission report and getting some answers, and we'll hear from them.

We'll take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If you know the history of the 9/11 Commission, you know that when it was first proposed, the White House shot it down. It wasn't necessity, it would be a distraction, the White House said.

Presidents can do a lot of things, but the one thing the president couldn't do was stop the families of the victims and the survivors of the attacks. They didn't trust the Congress to do it right. They wanted an independent commission. And whenever things got rocky -- and they were rocky at times -- the families and the survivors were there to ensure the commission had the time and the information it needed.

They are the heroes of this story. And here is what a few of them had to say today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The first-responders on that awful day are often the last we think of now. Bonnie Gibfri (ph), a social-worker- turned-paramedic, got to the trade center shortly after the second plane hit.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The tower blew up and a fireball came towards us. We basically came to a point where there was no oxygen. And, basically we said, you know, God, take care of my family. I knew I was going to die. BROWN: She didn't lose her life, of course, but she lost a lot.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's three years later. It's been a struggle with my health. I suffer from asthma attacks. I was on a million medications, 14 medications to deal with my breathing. I am now out of work, trying to live life. And it's been very difficult. I've been told it's all in my head, which is probably the most upsetting thing, because I'm not crazy.

BROWN: To her and many other of the survivors and the families of the victims, the commission's work matters a lot.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I hope they do right by what they found in the reports. In the beginning, it was like kind of a finger-pointing thing. This agency didn't do this and that agency didn't do that. You know, stop the quibbling, get over the crap, and do what you need to do to sit and protect citizens.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jacqui (ph) was a 23-year-old mother of one, full-time worker, part-time student. She had a full life.

BROWN: Jacqueline Sanchez (ph) worked on the 104th floor of tower No. 1. Her mother, Kim Coleman (ph), has followed the hearings.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I needed some answers. And the answers that I got kind of angered me. And to sit there and hear them say that they made a decision 10 minutes after the plane hit that they weren't going to help anyone made me angry.

She was my life. She not only was just my daughter, but she was my best friend. And I miss that. I miss being able to pick up the telephone and call her or something going wrong in my life to be able to talk to her. And a lot of times, I will be by myself and I will just cry about that, more so now than ever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Loren (ph) walked into the lobby of the north tower just as the first plane hit. And she was terribly injured, severe burn injury. And she survived the impossible.

BROWN: Burned over 80 percent of her body, Loren Manning (ph) almost died after 9/11. During her long hospitalization, her husband Greg's (ph) e-mail to friends became a book. He watched some of the commission's press conference on Thursday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had all the information before the attacks that we would have needed to stop it. The lesson we really learned was that we need to share the information and that we need to imagine our worst nightmare, because I can tell you that it could come true.

Loren continues to amaze us, as she has for the last three years. From the moment this happened, the prime objective was to make sure that Tyler's (ph) life was not interrupted by this and that Loren's life, to the maximum extent it was possible, that she could return to it and the two of them could have a wonderful relationship. And if there was nothing else that was accomplished in the aftermath of September 11, we have been successful with that. And that's a source of overwhelming joy to me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The families.

We'll take a break. Morning papers. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check the morning papers from around the country, around the world.

As you can imagine, the 9/11 Commission report leads most of them, if not all. We'll do a few of those.

"International Herald Tribune," published by "The New York Times". "A Failure to Protect the United States. Scathing 9/11 Report Predicts Even Greater Terror Attacks." Also a very good story on the front page. "Al Qaeda Captives Stir Concern On a New Strike," this new warning that came out last week. Apparently, the source, not the usual chatter, but al Qaeda operatives captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Doug Jehl doing the reporting there, a former guest on the program and a future guest on the program.

"Christian Science Monitor." "Failure of Imagination Led to 9/11. Final Report Assigns Little Blame, But Cites Many Errors and Lays Out Bipartisan Steps" -- we'll see -- "To Avert Future Terror Acts." On the convention, "A Political Pageant That Few May Notice. As Kerry Hones His Message, Most Americans Won't Tune In." Come on. We're spending a lot of dough to cover that thing. Got to watch.

"The Oregonian" out West. "We Are Not Safe." This was the quote that many newspapers used on their front page. "Diplomacy, New Structures Keys in Anti-Terror Fight." Down over here in the corner, "The Oregonian" out in Portland. "For Swimmers Good Clean Fun Is Hard To Find. Algae, Sewage and Nasty Virus in Lakes and Rivers." Yikes.

"We Are Not Safe" is the headline in "The Detroit News."

I like this headline a lot, "The Dallas Morning News." "Plot Unfolded While No One Was Looking."

And, finally "The Philadelphia Inquirer." "A Failure Over Many Years and Administrations," the way they headlined it.

The weather tomorrow. Oh, wait, "Catwoman" comes out tomorrow and "The Chicago Sun-Times" says "Four-Star Body, One-Star Film." "Nice and easy" is the weather in Chicago.

We'll take a break and wrap it up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Before we say goodbye, tomorrow on the program, we'll take you to Glacier National Park, but we better take you there quickly, because it's disappearing. Really. It will be gone in about 30 years. But it's a very cool piece and we'll have that for you tomorrow. We'll also ratchet up our political coverage some in anticipation of the convention. So we'll see you tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time.

Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired July 22, 2004 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
It will come as no surprise to those of you who join us often that virtually the entire program tonight deals with the 9/11 Commission report, what went wrong, what needs to be changed, the complications of making those changes, all those big and important issues.

The basic rules of journalism say we should begin with the big and work our way down, so forgive us tonight if we seem to do this a bit backwards. They say the devil is in the details and we begin with the devils and a bit of the detail that set in motion the most important and most horrible day of our national lives.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The detail is full of could haves and should haves. Many of the 19 hijackers failed even the limited security checks in place three years ago, failed before they even arrived at the metal detectors to be screened.

Mohamed Atta, the alleged ringleader, was red-flagged at the ticket counter in Portland, Maine on his way to Boston and American Airlines Flight 11, which would eventually hit the North Tower.

The CAPS system, the prescreening security in place also red- flagged all five of the hijackers on American Airlines 77 at Dulles Airport. All were later seen being screened at the metal detectors.

One of the hijackers at Dulles spoke no English, had no photo identification. Others just looked suspicious at the ticket counter but they all were eventually cleared to board after their luggage was screened for explosives.

A bit more detail, United Flight 93, which became famous for the passenger revolt before it crashed in Pennsylvania, the commission says the passengers never actually entered the cockpit as many believe. A passenger is heard yelling "roll it," perhaps in reference to a food cart being crashed into the cockpit door.

Here is the commission's narrative. "The hijackers remained at the controls but must have known that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them. The airplane headed down. The control wheel was turned hard to the right. The airplane rolled onto its back and one of the hijackers began shouting: "Allah is the greatest; Allah is the greatest." On American Flight 77, which would crash at the Pentagon, the only known instance of the word "box cutters" was used by Barbara Olson, the wife of then Solicitor General of the United States Ted Olson in a phone call to him.

Says the report: "The solicitor general then informed his wife of the two previous hijackings and crashes. She did not display signs of panic."

On board United 175, which would crash into the South Tower in New York, a young man named Peter Hanson called his dad. "It's getting bad, dad. A stewardess was stabbed. They seem to have knives and mace. It's getting very bad on the plane." And then a few seconds later: "Don't worry, dad. If it happens, it'll happen very fast. My God. My God."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Neither an easy moment to relive nor an easy night to get through we expect but worthwhile we hope.

So on to the whip and our Senior White House Correspondent John King, John a headline.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the narrative in the report is both compelling and very depressing. It says the government did not take the al Qaeda threat seriously early enough and it said the government had so many clues that something was coming but didn't share that information and didn't do enough -- Aaron.

BROWN: John, thank you.

Next to what the commissioners want done and they want much done. CNN's Kelli Arena worked that part of the report today, so Kelli a headline.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the commissioners say that the U.S. has to act and act fast to make changes in the way that it gathers, shares and acts on intelligence.

BROWN: Kelli, thanks.

Finally the venue where the changes will be weighed and the battles will be fought, Joe Johns, our Congressional Correspondent, is there for us tonight, Joe the headline from there.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the commission put in a tall order today. It wants the Congress to reform itself and it wants it done quickly. This could be a lot to ask this late in an election year.

BROWN: Joe, thank you. We get back to you and the rest quite quickly tonight.

An hour devoted to exploring the repercussions of today's report also, and perhaps inevitably so, for measuring the distance between then and now and, as much as we can all hope otherwise, between now and the next time, all that to come.

But we begin with the findings and the recommendations of the commission, two reports beginning with CNN's John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): Could it have been prevented? The 9/11 Commission report did not answer that nagging question with certainty but its account of what went wrong details stunning failures.

THOMAS KEAN (R), 9/11 COMMISSION CHAIR: This was a failure of policy, management, capability and, above all, a failure of imagination.

KING: December, 1998, President Clinton received a highly classified briefing with this headline. "Bin Laden Preparing to Hijack U.S. Aircraft and Other Attacks." The commission concludes had that warning been shared across the government, "it might have brought more attention to the need for permanent changes in domestic airport and airline security" procedures.

Many of the mistakes are well known now. Two of the hijackers were suspected terrorists but were not placed on watch lists that would have barred them from entering the United States.

The FBI knew Zacarius Moussaoui was in the states for flight training and suspected a possible hijacking. The CIA knew al Qaeda planned a spectacular attack soon, possibly involving airplanes. But the FBI didn't pass on all it knew. The dots never connected.

JAMES THOMPSON (R), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: Could that have prevented 9/11? We don't know but that failure is there.

KING: All the more striking because in 1999, worried about millennium attacks, the government had come together to confront al Qaeda threats. "Information about terrorism flowed widely and abundantly. The flow from the FBI was particularly remarkable because the FBI at other times shared almost no information."

Attacks were thwarted. The nation celebrated peacefully and the report says, "The government relaxed. Counterterrorism went back to being a secret preserve," so secret the commission says Presidents Clinton and Bush were not given the full picture of al Qaeda's capabilities and hatred.

BOB KERREY (D), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: How in God's name are you supposed to imagine a threat if the facts are being withheld from you?

KING: In the summer of 2001, CIA Director George Tenet warned, "The system was blinking red." Al Qaeda was poised to strike. The acting head of the FBI arranged a national conference call but "did not task field offices to try to determine whether any plots were being considered within the United States." And, while Tenet was raising alarms not everyone was convinced. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz questioned the reporting.

Lots of specifics about what went wrong but a more cautious approach on the question of who's to blame.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Now the commission says it would be wrong to blame one person or one government agency but it does say that a number of senior officials in the government, including the Congress and the two most recent presidents, certainly share the responsibility -- Aaron.

BROWN: Just a footnote. As we sit here tonight almost three years since that horrible day has anyone been fired, held accountable in that way for what happened that day?

KING: The FBI says it has restructured. Has anyone been fired? We'd have to go back and look at the records. The CIA director recently resigned but he resigned he said for personal reasons and the big controversy, of course, in his case is the "slam dunk" case about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, so hard to say anyone has been directly fired, Aaron, because of the failure to connect the dots prior to 9/11.

And President Bush has said it, former President Clinton has said it and the commission said it today, they say they believe that should not be the approach that what you should try to do is learn from your mistakes and go forward but it certainly is a question many of the families ask.

BROWN: It is indeed. John, thank you, John King our Senior White House Correspondent tonight.

As we said a moment ago the report is organized into findings and in recommendations. Some more now on the second part, the recommendations, and CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEAN: This report represents a unanimous conclusion.

ARENA (voice-over): The message from the commission is clear. The U.S. cannot afford to wait to make changes.

KEAN: Every expert with whom we spoke told us an attack of even greater magnitude is now possible and even probable. We do not have the luxury of time.

ARENA: The 9/11 report calls for significant reform covering everything from the way the U.S. deals with Muslim nations to putting together response plans in the case of another attack.

LEE HAMILTON (D), 9/11 COMMISSION CO-CHAIRMAN: There is no silver bullet or decisive blow that can defeat Islamic terrorism. It will take unity of effort.

ARENA: The commission recommends creating a new counterterrorism center to coordinate more than a dozen intelligence agencies. In charge would be a new national intelligence director reporting to the president, confirmed by the Senate.

The director would have control over intelligence budgets and the ability to hire and fire deputies, including the CIA director and top intelligence officials at the FBI, Homeland Security and Defense Departments.

The commission did not endorse the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency but it did back the FBI's move toward a new intelligence service within the bureau. The report also called for a reworking of congressional committees to provide stronger oversight.

HAMILTON: The intelligence community needs a shift in mind set and organization.

ARENA: The FBI embraced many of the recommendations and says it will look closely at others. Senior CIA officials say they want to proceed carefully. "We are in the middle of a war," one said "and do not want to disrupt that activity." The president called the report constructive but made no commitments.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I look forward to studying their recommendations and look forward to working with responsible parties within my administration to move forward on those recommendations.

ARENA: Commission member and former Senator Bob Kerrey says he's hopeful changes will be implemented but not optimistic.

KERREY: In my experience in politics when somebody's asked to give up something they will come up with all kinds of reasons, other than the most important one, which is they don't want to surrender authority.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: Commission members say that even though their charter expires they will not go out of business. They promise to come back in a year with a report card judging what, if any, progress has been made -- Aaron.

BROWN: This may be a little premature. I apologize if it is. Just looking at your area of responsibility, you deal with the Justice Department, the FBI and so on, where there will the resistance come, if it comes?

ARENA: Well actually, Aaron, the FBI has already started to implement some of the changes that the commissioners recommended and, as I said in the report, they are really supporting and embracing many of those ideas. Justice had nothing to say on this report today.

I think the intelligence community, though, from the CIA you may get some resistance. The CIA director will be a deputy of this new national intelligence director, so lots of changes in store on that side of the fence -- Aaron. You know and when you're talking budgets and budget authority that gets everybody crazy in Washington.

BROWN: And everywhere else. Kelli, thank you, Kelli Arena, a long day.

There are moments in Washington when having labored mightily the mountain coughs up a mouse. This, safe to say, was not one of those days. A commission that was resistant at the outset, threatened with a premature end, found itself with a mandate and the time it needed, if just barely, to get the job done. That it resulted in neither a witch hunt nor a whitewash is a reflection of the magnitude of 9/11 but also, we think, a tribute to the commission itself.

We spoke tonight with two members, former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a Republican, and Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Let me address this to both of you but Secretary Lehman take the first whack at it. Everybody has said sort of the right things today. I think as you read the report what you have is a great sense of urgency the government needs to act. It needs to act quickly. Do you believe that sense of urgency is just coming from you or do you think that the policymakers get it?

JOHN F. LEHMAN (R), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: I think they're beginning to get it. I think that the fact that all of us fairly well known as Republicans on one side and fairly well known as Democrats on the other side reached unanimity, not only on the findings but on the lessons learned and on the urgency of the recommendations, very thoughtfully developed recommendations, no dissents, no footnotes.

And I think already we're seeing from some of the comments from the Hill today that that has really had an impact up there and they are sensing the urgency and I think we're going to see action.

BROWN: Mr. Ben-Veniste do you agree with that?

RICHARD BEN-VENISTE (D), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: Yes, I do. I think we have brought the public along and those in a position to make a difference have now received our report. Our recommendations are based almost entirely on our observations and our investigation.

BROWN: Let me just briefly get from each of you this too. Mr. Ben-Veniste why don't you go ahead on this first? Of these recommendations, and they aren't that many, where do you think the most difficulty lies?

BEN-VENISTE: The recommendations are of a piece, Aaron. They are interlocking and interdependent. They start with reforming the foreign intelligence gathering apparatus and we have a director of national intelligence and that person now at the top of the food chain gets the information and directs the collection of information from a variety of agencies and, most importantly, controls the budget for intelligence. That is new. It's important.

Under that we have our counterterrorism center, which improves the existing situation greatly. We have made recommendations respecting the FBI's operation. And finally, in Congress, we have made recommendations to streamline oversight to make it more effective and more efficient.

BROWN: Secretary Lehman in that laundry list of important items is there one that you think will be more difficult to get passed into law, to make happen than all the rest?

LEHMAN: Well, I think the most likely obstacle, of course, will be on the reforms of Congress itself. As Richard said, our reforms are really a systemic, deep systemic and cultural reform. It's not a Chinese menu. You can't pick and choose and Congress can't get away with just saying, "Oh, we'll take that one because that will be least controversial."

It's a fundamental systemic change and it requires fundamental systemic change in Congress and that will be the most difficult because there are so many little baronies in the subcommittees and committees. Everybody wants to be a member. They're on six different committees. They have no time for any of them.

There is no real substantive oversight and coherent partnership in developing policy and carrying it out in the intelligence world in Congress. We've called for first and foremost a joint committee on the model of the former Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. That's going to be very difficult for a lot of people. They're going to have to give up power and influence but the nation requires it.

BROWN: A final question. If you had had more time, another six months, another year, would it substantively change the work product you delivered today, Mr. Secretary?

LEHMAN: No, it would not change the basic story. We're confident we have the fundamentals of the story. We have put a great deal of detail and fact in there. If we had more time, we could certainly use it productively.

One of the first things I would do would be the next -- spend the next several months really holding hearings on congressional oversight and its lack and how we go about fixing that. But, yes, we could use it productively but, no, it would not change the conclusions and the recommendations.

BROWN: I know you all will be watching what happens next and holding some feet to the fire. We shall too. Just personally thank you for your work and I think the country owes you thanks for your work as well. We appreciate your time.

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, Aaron, and we appreciate your focus on these issues.

BROWN: Thank you, sir, very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: For everything we now know many questions, of course, remain. We'll ask some of those after the break.

First, a moment of another of the 9/11 commissioners, former Congressman Timothy Roemer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIM ROEMER (D), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: The eyes of history are on our backs. The claws of al Qaeda are on our shoulders and the grief of 9/11 is still in so many American's hearts. I think those indicators and reasons are all going to come together and compel members of Congress and others to pass what's in this report and to act on this. We don't have time to waste with another attack coming.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: New York City tonight.

When the World Trade Towers fell almost three years ago, it seemed unthinkable. Now, we are told, the attacks, awful as they were, shouldn't have come as a surprise, a shock perhaps but not a surprise.

Today the 9/11 Commission said those in charge of protecting the country displayed a failure of imagination. The report spells out many of the dots they failed to connect and answers many of the questions but not all.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): There are many questions that will never be resolved.

KEAN: There are still some unanswered questions because, obviously, the people who were at the heart of the plot are dead.

BROWN: Question, was there an active relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, one of the primary reasons given for going to war with Iraq? A key piece of evidence often mentioned by Vice President Cheney is an alleged meeting between lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.

The commission's report carefully lays out the evidence, a photo of Atta at a bank machine in the United States, records of his cell phone calls in the United States, making a strong case that the meeting probably never occurred. But, in the end, the commission says this:

"These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9, 2001."

Questions were also raised about former Defense Secretary William Cohen's testimony before the commission, testimony stating that the Clinton administration felt that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated in building a nerve gas factory in Sudan, a factory the U.S. destroyed in 1998.

KEAN: The evidence is so -- it's not there and the facts are being argued against and we could not come to a fact-based conclusion on that one.

BROWN: Another question were people in the United States ready and willing to help the hijackers? The commission admits it has no firm answers.

"We explored suspicions about whether these operatives had a support network of accomplices in the United States," says the report. "The evidence is thin, simply not there for some cases, more worrisome in others."

Eleanor Hill was the staff director of the Joint Congressional Committee on 9/11 and she has worried ever since about the existence of such a network.

ELEANOR HILL, FMR. STAFF DIRECTOR JOIN 9/11 INQUIRY: If those types of persons were here before 9/11 we need to know are they still here and, if so, what are they doing and are our law enforcement and intelligence agencies really aware of their activities and their presence?

BROWN: In the end, there is a terrible question, an accusation really, that most certainly will remain to haunt us for a long, long time to come, reporter Chris Mondics.

CHRIS MONDICS, "PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER": We wanted government, spanning both administrations, to not react more aggressively in the face of this threat for which there was significant -- a significant amount of evidence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Questions.

Larry Johnson is a former CIA officer who also worked at the State Department for the Office of Counterterrorism. He's worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations and he joins us again from Washington tonight. It's good to see you.

LARRY JOHNSON, FMR. CIA OFFICER: Hi, Aaron.

BROWN: Explain to me, if you believe it would be helpful, why a national intelligence cabinet level sort of job would be a good thing.

JOHNSON: It would provide somebody with the means of the budget and the hiring and firing control to try to get these agencies to work together. What's really frustrating is that sometimes on a personal level people from FBI and CIA will work together OK.

But I can tell you of an experience within the last three weeks over in the Middle East where there was a meeting between the U.S. military and the CIA and, in the midst of this meeting, the FBI walked in. The CIA person stood up and said, "We're not having this meeting if they're here."

Now, back in Washington, Director Mueller and acting Director McLaughlin they get along great but out in the field you still have some people that say they're not cleared for this. They don't have access to this.

BROWN: Wait, I thought all that ended on 9/11. I thought everybody was talking to everybody.

JOHNSON: It hasn't. It hasn't. It has not. There was about a six-month window where there really was genuine cooperation but there has been a breakdown and I've heard it from people who have been on the ground in those meetings and that's distressing because these people are right in the midst of hunting for bin Laden and, instead of working together, they're fighting with each other over turf.

BROWN: Maybe this is just a waste of time and purely tangential but how do these people, I mean given the stakes that are at play, given what we know the bad guys are capable of, given everything, how can they play these little games still?

JOHNSON: Because you get a professional ethic in each of these organizations and the people who are working in these organization, they're good Americans, they're hardworking generally but, for example, at CIA you're told to protect sources and methods and you're told certain information is so sensitive you can't share it with someone else and that ends up including people that are, you know, still getting U.S. government paychecks from like say the FBI or the U.S. military Central Command.

So, part of it is changing the leadership at the top where the leadership is insisting that the people below that they supervise we will share this information.

One of the things that the report from 9/11 Commission highlights was there was -- there have been FBI agents out at the counterterrorism center since like 1993. One of the first ones assigned there was a good friend of mine, yet they've not been able to pass that information back to FBI headquarters.

In the 9/11 Commission reports there was information about the two hijackers in the country. The FBI guy there heard it but he was told by CIA personnel, "You can't tell FBI headquarters." That's what the commission, I think, has put their finger on. You've got to break that down.

BROWN: Well, those are the stakes and we'll watch it all play out. Larry, it's good to have you with us again tonight. Thank you.

JOHNSON: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you, sir.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the report has only been out a few hours but already the political squabbling begins. We'll get to that.

But first another commissioner on what they reported today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think after our discussions the answer that we came to and the reason you see the recommendations we have is the question is if not now when?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Earlier tonight we asked John Lehman and Richard Ben- Veniste if they thought the policymakers got it. They said, yes, so did the lawmakers, so does the president. Everyone is saying what everyone says at moments like this, sometimes more out of hope than expectation, certainly far in advance of an accomplished fact, given the changes being discussed and the turf involved.

With that side of the story CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The commission issued a blunt warning.

JAMES THOMPSON, 9/11 COMMISSIONER: If something bad happens while these recommendation are sitting there, the American people will quickly fix political responsibility for failure.

JOHNS: The challenge, act now, which was aimed almost squarely at Congress, which must take up the commission's recommendations.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: The sooner we act on this commission's recommendations, the better off we're going to be.

JOHNS: But that won't be easy. The commission is calling for a complete overhaul of congressional oversight of intelligence and homeland security, which the panel called dysfunctional.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D-CT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: These recommendations demand change. And institutions in the executive branch, in Congress resist change, even if its necessary to protect national security.

JOHNS: Impediments to change include turf battles between committee chairman, who reports to whom and who controls the money, also the supercharged election-year atmosphere. Democrats say Republicans aren't doing enough on homeland security.

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: There's almost a quality here in Washington and in the Senate that we're fiddling while Rome burns.

JOHNS: And Republicans blame Democrats for failing to see the warning signs and act decisively in the years before September 11. REP. TOM DELAY (R-TX), MAJORITY LEADER: For eight years in the 1990s, international terrorism was at war with us, the World Trade Center bombing, Khobar Towers, the African embassies, the USS Cole, and we treated it like jaywalking.

JOHNS: Meanwhile, with Congress set to take the rest of the summer off for political conventions and the elections coming this fall, time is running out this year and the speaker of the House is talking about putting on the brakes.

REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R-IL), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: You know, let me just say, we're not going to rush through anything. We're going to make sure that we look at this carefully.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: Now, at the other end of the spectrum, some are calling essentially for a special session during the August break, or, in the alternative, to bring the entire Congress back after the election to look into the recommendations.

And we just got a little bit of news just a few minutes ago. Senators Bill Frist and Tom Daschle, the leaders of the Senate, said that they are setting an August 1 target deadline for evaluation of these recommendations, so clearly the leaders over in the Senate side are taking it seriously -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, that's quite intriguing. What would you guess the chances are that in a campaign year they will come back and work on this?

JOHNS: Well, it's really hard to say. You know, I would have said slim and none a couple years ago. But we have the experience of the Homeland Security Department, where everyone was saying, that's not going to happen. And then, all of a sudden, it happened. So when you talk about 9/11 and homeland security issues, it is clear that the Congress can take these things very seriously and really get them rolling. It's just very hard to predict right now.

BROWN: It also just serves, if I were making the argument to these men and women, it takes an issue on the table. You can't blame the other guy for not doing it. We are working on it.

Anyway, we'll see what happens, Joe. Thanks for staying up late with us tonight.

Still to come on the program, from the shoes we wear at the airport to the way we look at certain types of people, the world is a different place than it was three years ago. We'll get to that.

First, as we go to break, the reaction from the presidential candidate John Kerry today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Nearly three years after the terrorists have attacked our shores and murdered our loved ones, this report carries a very simple message for all of America about the security of all Americans. We can do better. We must do better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Perhaps the simplest and most obvious legacy of the terror attacks almost three years ago is the shorthand, the two numbers that suddenly took an unshakable and awful association. In a few short hours, 9/11 exposed our vast vulnerability and the hatred intent on exploiting it. It changed us in ways large and small.

Here is CNN's Keith Oppenheim.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Chicago, you can't just walk into one of America's oldest ballparks anymore. Backpacks are now checked for hazards. In New York, you can't just park at one of the city's largest hotels. Cars are checked for explosives and crisis plans are ready.

MIKE STENGEL, MARRIOTT MARQUIS TIMES SQUARE: If we had to house people in our ballroom, we're prepared to do that within minutes.

OPPENHEIM: In post-9/11 America, technology as a form of security has taken flight. In Arizona, unmanned planes patrol the Mexican border. In Minneapolis, a pilot program was launched to screen airline passengers faster by scanning retinas and fingerprints.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's going to take three scans of each index finger.

OPPENHEIM: Surveillance is getting higher-tech, too. Consider this crisis center in Chicago.

(on camera): It's a state-of-the-art facility that can integrate live video feeds with a computerized layout of all the floor plans in the city's major high-rises, enabling emergency managers to see and evaluate a crisis in ways they never could before.

RON HUBERMAN, CHICAGO OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MGMT. & COMM.: The city has invested heavily in cameras around key infrastructure and other locations, giving us the capacity in real time to be able to monitor what's going on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody has a different attitude about terrorism and terrorists. And just everybody is more paranoid.

OPPENHEIM: Perhaps, but some believe paranoia is one change that is fading. At this Illinois supply store, sales of gas masks and water jugs spiked after September 11.

PHILIP CABLE, AMERICAN SCIENCE AND SURPLUS: And we haven't seen any significant increase in sales on any of these types of products since then. It's been as if 9/11 hasn't happened.

OPPENHEIM: But in some places, the changes are simple. This paralegal service near ground zero now has an emergency plan.

SALVADOR UY, AMERICAN CLERICAL SERVICE: I wish I had told people to evacuate a little earlier that day. I'm much more prepared to make that decision.

OPPENHEIM: Feelings of regret or loss come with memories of that day, something no level of higher security and technology can easily diminish.

Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Chicago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Three cities are indelibly linked with 9/11. And our next three guests happen to be in each one of them tonight.

CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield is in Boston. Carol Marin is a television journalist and columnist for "The Chicago Tribune." She joins us from Washington, but Chicago is home. And in New York, journalist Jeff Jarvis, former television critic for "TV Guide," "People" magazine," and the creator of "Entertainment Weekly." And we're glad to see all of you.

Let me get from each of you on different subjects about 20 seconds on how life has changed.

Jeff, starting with you, politically, 9/11 changed us how?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: I think, if it weren't for 9/11, you might have seen John Edwards or even Howard Dean emerge as the nominee. And if 9/11 had happened 12 years ago, you wouldn't have seen Bill Clinton. And if happened four years ago, you wouldn't have seen George W. Bush.

It has put national security squarely back on the political agenda. And a candidate for president, to succeed, has to have national security credentials and has to convince the public he can keep America safe. That's the first time that kind of issue has been with us really since the '80s.

Carol, in the Midwest, far from where the attacks took place, obviously, life changed some at the start. Is life different now?

CAROL MARIN, JOURNALIST: I think life is, but I think in small little ways that we bargain about our security.

I work with a cameraman whose daughter was offered a job in the Sears Tower. What she decided was, if she could work on the 12th floor, as opposed to the 89th floor, she would have a chance of getting out of the building. And she took the job. I know a woman who was transferred from Chicago to Paris. She always took mass transportation. She won't take an underground train. I think there are lots of little ways. But I think the biggest way that we undercount is the way we're terrified of what will happen to the economy, as well as our lives and our safety, if there's another attack, because people still haven't really felt that they have recovered from that.

BROWN: Just one more on the Midwest. Does it seem in Chicago and around -- and you travel around quite a bit -- that this was somebody else's problem? Or do they still, three years later -- of course they did initially -- connect to it?

MARIN: I think they connected to it. We personalize things a great deal.

BROWN: Yes.

MARIN: And so in the East Coast, there were so many people who knew someone who knew someone. But, in Chicago, you know, I think that there was always that sense of personalization and they saw it and they felt it.

But their connection wasn't geographic. And what the real rolling thunder of terrorism is for a lot of people are all the things around us. There are nuclear power plants all over those urban areas. There's a V.X. gas dump right over the border in Indiana. I think there are a lot of things that people think about and concern themselves with.

BROWN: Jeff, here, the personal changes. Right after 9/11, we loved our spouses more. We hugged our kids better. We were better congregants in whatever religion we believed in. Do you think any of that has lasted?

JEFF JARVIS, JOURNALIST: I wish there were a silver lining like that.

I talked to a woman the other night who said that she obsessively watches CNN to make sure there is not breaking news, because breaking news is bad news. It's news that could affect any of us, that could affect a family member, anyone.

I think there's an ongoing sense of fear and anger and disappointment and unsureness about life. And that's going to continue. Yes, family matters more. I think that lasted, priorities. Work goes on. But I do think that what really has lasted here is the sense that we don't know. As Bill Clinton said the other week introducing a film about him, there are these hinge points in history when we get into fights about things.

BROWN: Yes.

JARVIS: And right now here in this country, we're fighting about what it means to be an American in this century. We're not sure, because it is surely different.

BROWN: Jeff Greenfield, Jeff, we have got about maybe 40 seconds left. Do you think at a personal level, it has changed us?

GREENFIELD: I think what Carol and Jeff said is both true.

But here's what it hasn't done. And we talk about this as if it were a war. It's the first war, going all the way back to the Civil War, where there hasn't been a draft. There hasn't been rationing. There hasn't been a tax increase to pay for it. And so I think there's this weird disconnection, on the one hand, particularly those of us who lived in New York or Washington, feel. We look around and we can see where the next terrorist attack might hit.

On the other hand, as a nation, and maybe because it's just a different kind of conflict, it is totally different from the "we're all in this together" spirit that, like, in World War II, you had to be all it, because you were either in the Army working on a defense plant or you couldn't buy meat or sliced bread. In that sense, the gap between the personal fear and what we're asked to do about this greater war on terror is a chasm, Aaron.

BROWN: Jeff, Carol, and, Jeff, good to have you with us tonight. Thank you. Thank you all.

Ahead on the program tonight, the families of 9/11 eagerly awaiting the commission report and getting some answers, and we'll hear from them.

We'll take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If you know the history of the 9/11 Commission, you know that when it was first proposed, the White House shot it down. It wasn't necessity, it would be a distraction, the White House said.

Presidents can do a lot of things, but the one thing the president couldn't do was stop the families of the victims and the survivors of the attacks. They didn't trust the Congress to do it right. They wanted an independent commission. And whenever things got rocky -- and they were rocky at times -- the families and the survivors were there to ensure the commission had the time and the information it needed.

They are the heroes of this story. And here is what a few of them had to say today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The first-responders on that awful day are often the last we think of now. Bonnie Gibfri (ph), a social-worker- turned-paramedic, got to the trade center shortly after the second plane hit.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The tower blew up and a fireball came towards us. We basically came to a point where there was no oxygen. And, basically we said, you know, God, take care of my family. I knew I was going to die. BROWN: She didn't lose her life, of course, but she lost a lot.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's three years later. It's been a struggle with my health. I suffer from asthma attacks. I was on a million medications, 14 medications to deal with my breathing. I am now out of work, trying to live life. And it's been very difficult. I've been told it's all in my head, which is probably the most upsetting thing, because I'm not crazy.

BROWN: To her and many other of the survivors and the families of the victims, the commission's work matters a lot.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I hope they do right by what they found in the reports. In the beginning, it was like kind of a finger-pointing thing. This agency didn't do this and that agency didn't do that. You know, stop the quibbling, get over the crap, and do what you need to do to sit and protect citizens.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jacqui (ph) was a 23-year-old mother of one, full-time worker, part-time student. She had a full life.

BROWN: Jacqueline Sanchez (ph) worked on the 104th floor of tower No. 1. Her mother, Kim Coleman (ph), has followed the hearings.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I needed some answers. And the answers that I got kind of angered me. And to sit there and hear them say that they made a decision 10 minutes after the plane hit that they weren't going to help anyone made me angry.

She was my life. She not only was just my daughter, but she was my best friend. And I miss that. I miss being able to pick up the telephone and call her or something going wrong in my life to be able to talk to her. And a lot of times, I will be by myself and I will just cry about that, more so now than ever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Loren (ph) walked into the lobby of the north tower just as the first plane hit. And she was terribly injured, severe burn injury. And she survived the impossible.

BROWN: Burned over 80 percent of her body, Loren Manning (ph) almost died after 9/11. During her long hospitalization, her husband Greg's (ph) e-mail to friends became a book. He watched some of the commission's press conference on Thursday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had all the information before the attacks that we would have needed to stop it. The lesson we really learned was that we need to share the information and that we need to imagine our worst nightmare, because I can tell you that it could come true.

Loren continues to amaze us, as she has for the last three years. From the moment this happened, the prime objective was to make sure that Tyler's (ph) life was not interrupted by this and that Loren's life, to the maximum extent it was possible, that she could return to it and the two of them could have a wonderful relationship. And if there was nothing else that was accomplished in the aftermath of September 11, we have been successful with that. And that's a source of overwhelming joy to me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The families.

We'll take a break. Morning papers. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check the morning papers from around the country, around the world.

As you can imagine, the 9/11 Commission report leads most of them, if not all. We'll do a few of those.

"International Herald Tribune," published by "The New York Times". "A Failure to Protect the United States. Scathing 9/11 Report Predicts Even Greater Terror Attacks." Also a very good story on the front page. "Al Qaeda Captives Stir Concern On a New Strike," this new warning that came out last week. Apparently, the source, not the usual chatter, but al Qaeda operatives captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Doug Jehl doing the reporting there, a former guest on the program and a future guest on the program.

"Christian Science Monitor." "Failure of Imagination Led to 9/11. Final Report Assigns Little Blame, But Cites Many Errors and Lays Out Bipartisan Steps" -- we'll see -- "To Avert Future Terror Acts." On the convention, "A Political Pageant That Few May Notice. As Kerry Hones His Message, Most Americans Won't Tune In." Come on. We're spending a lot of dough to cover that thing. Got to watch.

"The Oregonian" out West. "We Are Not Safe." This was the quote that many newspapers used on their front page. "Diplomacy, New Structures Keys in Anti-Terror Fight." Down over here in the corner, "The Oregonian" out in Portland. "For Swimmers Good Clean Fun Is Hard To Find. Algae, Sewage and Nasty Virus in Lakes and Rivers." Yikes.

"We Are Not Safe" is the headline in "The Detroit News."

I like this headline a lot, "The Dallas Morning News." "Plot Unfolded While No One Was Looking."

And, finally "The Philadelphia Inquirer." "A Failure Over Many Years and Administrations," the way they headlined it.

The weather tomorrow. Oh, wait, "Catwoman" comes out tomorrow and "The Chicago Sun-Times" says "Four-Star Body, One-Star Film." "Nice and easy" is the weather in Chicago.

We'll take a break and wrap it up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Before we say goodbye, tomorrow on the program, we'll take you to Glacier National Park, but we better take you there quickly, because it's disappearing. Really. It will be gone in about 30 years. But it's a very cool piece and we'll have that for you tomorrow. We'll also ratchet up our political coverage some in anticipation of the convention. So we'll see you tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time.

Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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