THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Opinion
Senate Democrats and 9/11 Amnesia
The Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA interrogations fails to acknowledge
the Pearl Harbor-esque emergency following the terror attack.
By
Louis J. Freeh
Dec. 10, 2014 8:00 p.m. ET
Seventy-three years ago this week, on a peaceful, sunny morning in Hawaii, a Japanese armada carried out
a spectacular attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403, wounding 1,178 and damaging or
destroying at least 20 ships. Washington immediately declared war and mobilized a peaceful nation. In
another unfortunate Washington tendency, the government launched an investigation about who to blame
for letting the devastating surprise attack happen. A hastily convened political tribunal found two senior
military officers guilty of dereliction of duty, publicly humiliating them, as some political leaders sought to
hold anyone but themselves accountable for the catastrophe.
With the Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee this week releasing a report on their
investigation holding the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency accountable for the alleged
“torture” of suspected terrorists after 9/11, some lessons from the Pearl Harbor history should be kept in
mind.
First, let’s remember the context of the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when President George W. Bush and
Congress put America on a war footing. While some critics in and out of government blamed the CIA and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation for failing to prevent the terrorist attack, the 9/11 Commission later
concluded that part of the real reason the terrorists succeeded was Washington’s failure to put America on a
war footing long before the attack. Sept. 11, 2001, was the final escalation of al Qaeda’s war-making after
attacking the USS Cole in 2000 and U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.
The Intelligence Committee’s majority report fails to acknowledge the Pearl Harbor-esque state of
emergency that followed the 9/11 attack. One week after the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history,
President Bush signed into law a congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which
granted the president authority to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations,
organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that
occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future
acts of international terrorism against the United States.”
This joint congressional resolution, which has never been amended, was not a broad declaration of a “war
on terror,” but rather a specific, targeted authorization to use force against the 9/11 terrorists and to prevent
their future attacks.
Similarly, the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program, which included the use of
enhanced interrogation techniques, was designed and implemented as the direct result of the president and
Congress putting the country on a military, law-enforcement and intelligence war footing after 9/11. The
program was carefully targeted and sought to apprehend the 9/11 terrorists and prevent them from striking
again.
More important, the RDI program was not some rogue operation unilaterally launched by a Langley
cabal—which is the impression that the Senate Intelligence Committee report tries to convey. Rather, the
program was an initiative approved by the president, the national security adviser and the U.S. attorney
general, backed by a legal opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which functions
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as the president’s outside counsel in such matters. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their
closest advisers at the time have confirmed that they were unified behind the RDI program; they should
have been interviewed by the Democratic majority in preparing the report on the CIA interrogations.
The RDI program, including the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, was fully briefed to the
chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees. The Senate committee’s
new report does not present any evidence that would support the notion that the CIA program was carried
out for years without the concurrence of the House or Senate intelligence committees, or that any of the
members were shocked to learn of the program after the fact.
Facts matter, including the fact that the Senate committee’s Democratic majority failed to interview the
three CIA directors and three deputy directors, or any other CIA employee for that matter, who had briefed
them about the program and carried it out.
Such a glaring investigative lapse cannot be fairly explained by the Democratic majority’s defense that it
could make such crucial findings solely on the “paper record,” without interviewing the critical players.
Nor does the committee’s other explanation for avoiding interviews make sense: The Democratic senators
say they didn’t want to interfere with the Justice Department’s criminal inquiry into the RDI program, but
that investigation ended in 2012 and found no basis for prosecutions. And no wonder: These public
servants at the CIA had dutifully carried out mandates from the president and Congress.
CIA leaders and briefers who regularly updated this program to the Senate Intelligence Committee
leadership took what investigators call “copious, contemporaneous notes.” Without a doubt, the Senate
Intelligence Committee and congressional staffers at these multiple briefings also took a lot of their own
notes. Will the committee now declassify and release all such notes so that Americans will know exactly
what the senators were told and the practices they approved?
Did the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program develop sufficient leads to connect the dots to Osama bin
Laden ’s redoubt in Abbottabad, Pakistan, or serve to fulfill the executive and congressional mandate to
prevent another 9/11? That is a fair operational and analytical question for the report by the Senate
Intelligence Committee’s Democratic majority to raise and argue. Likewise, it can and should be debated
whether America should ever again use such methods to prevent terrorist attacks. What is decidedly unfair
is to belatedly attack the brave and dedicated men and women and their leaders at the CIA who had the
nation’s highest political and legal authorizations for this program.
Mr. Freeh, a former FBI director and federal judge, is a partner and chairman emeritus with the law firm
Pepper Hamilton and chairman of Freeh Group International Solutions.
COMMENT
Tom Kimmel Dec 16, 2014
Mr. Freeh is, of course, primarily referring to the recent "unfortunate Washington tendency" of political
leaders to cast blame regarding 9/11 torture allegations, however, there is a further Pearl Harbor-9/11
connection. The same President and Vice President that sit at the heart of today's 9/11 torture allegations,
previously denied a petition by the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association to provide posthumous relief for
their wrongfully accused and humiliated Hawaiian commanders--my grandfather, Rear Admiral Kimmel-and General Short.
Although Mr. Freeh's article disappointingly does not denounce torture, nor advocate seeking true
accountability, he does speak to the evil of scapegoating. It's a start.
Regards,
Tom Kimmel
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