The federal government received failing and mediocre grades Monday from the former Sept. 11 commission, whose members said in a final report that the government has balked at enacting numerous reforms that could prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
The 10-member bipartisan panel issued a “report card” on the Bush administration and Congress that included five F’s, 12 D’s and two “incompletes” in categories such as airline passenger screening and improving first responders’ communication systems.
It issued only one A–actually an A-minus–for the administration’s efforts to curb terrorist financing. The report also listed 12 B’s and nine C’s.
The group said there has been little progress in forcing federal agencies to share intelligence and terrorism information, and it sharply criticized government efforts to keep weapons of mass destruction out of terrorists’ hands or establish clear standards for the proper treatment of U.S. detainees.
“We believe that the terrorists will strike again,” said the panel’s chairman, Thomas Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey. “If they do, and these reforms that might have prevented such an attack have not been implemented, what will our excuses be?”
Leading Democrats on Capitol Hill immediately seized on the report, accusing the Bush administration and the GOP-controlled Congress of failing to prepare adequately for future terrorist strikes. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that “an F is too high a grade for the Bush White House and Washington Republicans.”
Republicans and the White House countered that the government has adopted many of the commission’s proposed reforms and that administration policies have helped prevent additional catastrophic attacks in the United States.
The White House outlined a lengthy list of changes already implemented after the Sept. 11 commission’s findings and highlighted other areas, such as homeland security funding, in which the administration has supported changes.
“We have taken significant steps to better protect the American people at home,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. “There is more to do. This is the president’s highest responsibility.”
The report card marks the last official act by commission members, whose hearings and findings have sparked three years of public debate over government mistakes before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. After the release of the “9/11 Commission Report” last year, the commission re-created itself as a private, non-profit group focused on pressuring Congress and the Bush administration to adopt its recommended reforms.
In nearly half the categories, the government merited a D, an F or an incomplete grade, according to the report card. Kean and other panel members said all the goals should be achievable but many have languished amid political skirmishing and bureaucratic turf battles.
“None of this is rocket science,” said John Lehman, a former Navy secretary in the Reagan administration. “None of it is in the `too hard’ category.”
One of his colleagues, former Rep. Timothy Roemer (D-Ind.), said that “Al Qaeda is quickly changing and we are not. Al Qaeda is highly dynamic and we are not. Al Qaeda is highly imaginative and we are not.”
Kean and other panel members focused particular attention on two issues stalled in Congress. One proposal would change the way the Department of Homeland Security distributes state grant money, most of which currently is allocated evenly among the states–leading small-population states such as Wyoming to receive nearly twice as much per capita as major terrorist targets such as New York.
An amendment to a House bill reauthorizing the USA Patriot Act would place primary emphasis for homeland security funding on risk assessments, but the proposal currently is not included in a proposed House-Senate compromise bill because of opposition from small-state senators.
The panel also sharply criticized Congress for failing to enable first responders to communicate easily by setting aside part of the broadcast spectrum for their use. A pending budget bill would open part of the spectrum for first responders in 2009, but the Sept. 11 panel said that date is “too distant given the urgency of the threat.”
The FBI received a C grade from the panel, which said the bureau was transforming itself too slowly and that “significant deficiencies remain.” While FBI officials “agree that more remains to be done,” Assistant Director John Miller said, “the pace of the FBI’s change has been sweeping and continuous.”
Mary Fetchet, founder and director of Voices of September 11th, a victims’ family group that has closely monitored the panel’s work, tearfully praised the commission Monday.
“I really do feel that it’s only a matter of time before our country is going to be struck again, and it would just be tragic if there were other families like ours that suffered a tragic loss,” said Fetchet, whose son, Brad, was killed at the World Trade Center.
But another prominent relative of a Sept. 11 victim, Kristen Breitweiser, said Monday that the panel undercut its credibility by failing to publicly identify those within the government responsible for mistakes before the attacks.
“Part of the problem is that the commission didn’t hold anyone accountable,” said Breitweiser, whose husband, Ronald, was killed at the World Trade Center. “When you don’t name names, people don’t tend to take you seriously.”
