Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Learning from errors

Thursday, Nov. 29, 2001 | 8:31 a.m.

Because of the damage done, and an even more brutal attack in the future being possible, the politicians had better forget about whose feelings are hurt or where the blame lands. Americans don't need, or deserve, a repetition of that infamous day.

Nevada's Rep. Jim Gibbons will be on one of the committees holding the hearings next year. Allow me to suggest some people the investigators should spend more than a little time with during the congressional hearings. Jean Charles Brisard, a security expert with many years spent reviewing Osama bin Laden's financial empire, is one of the people who visited with John P. O'Neill just two months prior to his death at the World Trade Center. O'Neill had been director of antiterrorism for the FBI's New York office before resigning in August and becoming security chief at the twin towers.

Brisard's recently published book, "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth," contains some heavy quotes made by O'Neill. The book, written in French, says that O'Neill was frustrated by the lack of Saudi cooperation and our own Department of State. The problems all appear to boil down to one word, which is oil.

Another expert that should spend lots of time in the committee hearings is no stranger to Congress. He is Yossef Bodansky, who has been the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. Bodansky is also the author of several books on international terrorism and other crises. In 1999 he wrote "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America." It's a book every congressional investigator should read and then wonder why we were caught off guard. Some of them will probably want to return for a closer look at the TWA Flight 800 tragedy of July 17, 1996, off the Long Island Coast.

Bodansky gives names of people and places and even describes actual training and hiding places for bin Laden's followers. For example: "Bin Laden and his followers are very serious about the use of chemical and biological weapons in future terrorist strikes. Already in summer 1998 senior field commanders of the Islamic Front were aware of the availability of chemical weapons and specific contingency plans for their use. This was confirmed by Ahmad Salamah Mabruk, a prominent commander of Zawahiri's Islamic Jihad, who was captured in Azerbaijan and extradited to Egypt in September 1998. Mabruk told his interrogators that bin Laden's World Islamic Front against Jews and Crusaders, of which Islamic Jihad is a member organization, 'has biological and chemical weapons which it intends to use in operations against U.S. and Israeli targets.' "

Didn't anybody in intelligence and police agencies read Bodansky's book, which was in print two years before Sept. 11, 2001? If not, then somebody had better catch up on their reading before the hearings start next year.