what we have here is a failure to imaginate

The 9/11 Commission Report is long, but fascinating, reading. It is a strong indictment of "business as usual," the fractious, inefficient mess among the intelligence agencies. The previously-noted, misleading phrase "failure of imagination" (quoted, in the report, as coming from the lips of Paul Wolfowitz, who is given responsibility for directing Bush's cabinet's attention toward Iraq), is discussed in section 11.1, "Imagination." Contrary to popular belief, and as pointed out before, the planes-as-weapons scenario had been floated many times in various agencies. Some further, more detailed examples, straight from the report, with commentary:

Clarke had been concerned about the danger posed by aircraft since at least the 1999 Atlanta Olympics. There he had tried to create an air defense plan using assets from the Treasury Department, after the Defense Department declined to contribute resources. The Secret Service continued to work on the problem of airborne threats to the Washington area. In 1998, Clarke chaired an exercise designed to highlight the inadequacy of the solution. This paper exercise involved a scenario in which a group of terrorists commandeered a Learjet on the ground in Atlanta, loaded it with explosives, and flew it toward a target in Washington, D.C. Clarke asked officials from the Pentagon, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and Secret Service what they could do about the situation. Officials from the Pentagon said they could scramble aircraft from Langley Air Force Base, but they would need to go to the President for rules of engagement, and there was no mechanism to do so. There was no clear resolution of the problem at the exercise (345).

Some items of note. Richard Clarke's name appears often in the report, which describes a multitude of his efforts that ended in frustration and fruitlessness. Second, the President's inaction for seven full minutes (as documented elsewhere) can be seen in a new light. He alone could grant authority to shoot down any potential D.C. attacker, a fact I was not aware of. Third, the Secret Service allowed the problem to go unresolved; perhaps this is one of the reasons Clarke apologized to the American people, saying "I failed you."

In a separate scenario,

...[t]he North American Aerospace Defense Command imagined the possible use of aircraft as weapons, too, and developed exercises to counter such a threat--from planes coming to the United States from overseas, perhaps carrying a weapon of mass destruction. None of this speculation was based on actual intelligence of such a threat. One idea, intended to test command and control plans and NORAD's readiness, postulated a highjacked airliner coming from overseas and crashing into the Pentagon (346).

In summarizing the "failure of imagination," the report states, "The methods for detecting and then warning of surprise attack that the U.S. had so painstakingly developed in the decades after Pearl Harbor did not fail; instead, they were not really tried (348)." Or, as Kurt Cobain put it, "Who needs action when you got words?"

If the report does not lead to wholesale change in the intelligence infrastructure, we are doomed to repeat 9/11 in years to come.