Editorial: It’s time for reason, not a circus

Friday, May 17, 2002 | 4:06 a.m.

Controversy has arisen over Wednesday's disclosure that President Bush received an intelligence briefing memo last August that indicated Osama bin Laden's terrorist group wanted to hijack airplanes. Legitimate questions have been raised about the wisdom of delaying the release of this information until eight months after Sept. 11, but it should be remembered that the memo Bush received on the hijacking threat wasn't based on new information -- it came from British intelligence developed in 1998 from a single source.

Still, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's attempts Thursday to downplay the importance of the president's briefing missed the mark when she said that there were no indications that bin Laden's followers would hijack planes and use them as missiles against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Even if the airplanes had been used only for a hijacking, and not a suicide bombing, that would have been bad enough.

Besides, a 1999 report written by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress, warned the executive branch that bin Laden's group might hijack an airplane and try to crash it into the Pentagon or other government buildings. A few years earlier, in 1996, Philippine officials told the FBI that Middle Eastern pilots had been receiving training at U.S. flight schools and that one of them had suggested hijacking an airplane for a suicide mission, crashing it into a federal building.

What has been overshadowed in recent days are some of the warning signs that arose in the immediate months leading up to Sept. 11, but inexplicably weren't followed up or passed along to other government agencies, let alone shared with the White House. For instance, two months before the terrorist attacks an agent from the FBI's Arizona office sent a memo to the bureau's Washington headquarters, warning that a large number of Arabs were seeking pilot training at one flight school in this country. The memo, which mentioned the possibility of bin Laden's involvement, also said other flight schools in the nation should be looked at.

Unfortunately that memo from Arizona wasn't circulated beyond the FBI's Washington and New York offices, which meant that the CIA and even an FBI office in Minnesota, weren't aware of the agent's findings. The FBI's Minnesota office had placed Zacarias Moussaoui in custody before the Sept. 11 attacks because of concerns that had been raised by him receiving pilot training. Federal prosecutors believe Moussaoui was supposed to be one of the Sept. 11 hijackers; he now is on trial for conspiring to attack Americans.

In light of the intelligence gathered, and bin Laden's history of attacking U.S. targets overseas and once before here -- the 1993 World Trade Center bombing -- warning bells should have gone off. Not only was there a communication failure within the FBI, but the FBI and the CIA should have done a better job of sharing information with each other.

The White House and Congress should acknowledge that the next step is to vigorously, yet calmly, investigate what occurred Sept. 11. A proposal that should be adopted, and one that might reduce the level of partisan politics found too often in congressional hearings, is the creation of a bipartisan commission of experts to look at what went wrong and, more importantly, to figure out how to prevent this from happening again. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., are jointly advocating just such a commission. This is a time for the federal government to rise above the partisan fray and ensure that it carries out one of its central tasks, the protection of its citizens from an enemy attack. An independent fact-finding commission might play an important role in this mission.