Should all the major intelligence leaders have been fired after 9/11?

Question

After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt cleaned house & got rid of all the admirals & generals in charge during that attack.

And now Gates is using Air Force generals as scapegoats, citing unpreparedness.

Yet, none of the intelligence chiefs, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc, at the time of the attack on the World Trade Center & the Pentagon were fired.

Answer 1

No.

One of the things you have to remember is that hindsight is always perfect.  On the other hand - trying to predict the future.  The fact of the matter is that the 'clues' about 9/11 were only obvious after the event.  

Intelligence work is to art of sorting out a few nuggets of truth from rumor, ambiguous information, outright lies, and speculation.  Then that analyst has to try to figure out what that information means.

There is a reason why the products produced by the intelligence services are called: 'estimates.'  

Another thing to remember is that the 9/11 operation was conducted with excellent operational security and carefully took advantage of our own laws and policies in order to prevent our figuring out what what happening before it was too late.  

Finally - remember that the people sacked after Pearl Harbor were scapegoats.

Answer 2

Yes. Responsibility has nothing to do with hindsite or being a scapegote. Your the one in charge. Joe Torre had a great team in NYC, but he still got canned-couldn't bring in the pennant. U F up,  U get fired. True in the real world. Should be true for government.

These guys in charge during 9/11 had & still have the stigma of not stopping it. Dam, I'd quit. I'd never be able to concentrate on the job today, fretting about all I SHOULD have done to prevent it.

Answer 3

this always stuck in my craw.I'm an ex Marine,and if my unit showed that much incompetence after an event like that,heads would roll. I really lost my respect for the CIA and all after the attack.

Answer 4

No one in the government was fired or reprimanded for their action or inactions on 9/11.  

As for the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt knew the Japanese fleet was approaching Hawaii on December 4.  He didn't stop them because he knew Germany had to be stopped.  And he knew the American people wouldn't agree to go to war unless we were attacked first.

Answer 5

If the government's account of the attacks was to be at all credible, many people at top levels of government and military should have been fired or charged with criminal negligence years ago.

If people are being held to account now, then I agree they are probably being used as scapegoats.

Contrary to what the skeptics think, it is a minority of Americans who believe the government has told the truth about 9-11.  The government needs to do something about its growing problem that the vast majority of people don't believe it.   Hopefully the people won't be fooled into thinking that discipline of air force generals covers it.  The media will spin it so.

If the official fairy tale is to stand up, people at the top must be held accountable for the negligence, not people in the middle or the bottom.

Answer 6

Congress should have held open investigations to see who allowed it to happen.

FBI agents in the field had been reporting that known terrorists had been receiving lessons in flying air liners.  Just as in the case of the Murrah Building, there was prior knowledge on the part of some individuals who just sat back an allowed it to happen.

Why would anyone allow a terrorist act like this to happen?  Why would anyone allow innocent people to be killed like this?  You have to ask yourself, who benefited?  And the only beneficiaries that I can see are the people who are destroying our freedoms, allegedly to "protect us from terrorism".  I am referring to those who are enslaving us with un-American legislation like the Patriot Act, the Protect America Act, the Military Commissions Act, the National ID Card Act, the removal of habeas corpus, the authorization of torture, and other measure that deprive us of our civil rights.

Not only should some individual be fired, they need to go to jail.  We cannot allow the Justice Department to sweep this under the rug, like they did the Oklahoma Bombing.  There are some guilty parties who are drawing a federal paycheck, and we need to know who they are.

The vast majority of people working in law enforcement and intelligence are patriotic Americans, but obviously, not all of them.  We need to find out who the bad apples are, and to deal with them.