Officials probing security breaches

By John Donnelly, Globe Staff, 9/11/2001

ASHINGTON - How could this have happened?

As the news spread today about the horrific plane crashes in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, counter-terrorism specialists and analysts say that the orchestrated effort came at a time of complacency among the US government and its citizens regarding terrorist attacks.

The multipronged terror, showing the handiwork of a group with a sophisticated logistical network inside the United States, also came without any advance specific intelligence warning from US officials, according to a Bush administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Now, investigators have begun to explore which groups could coordinate such an effort and how security in at least four points in airports, including Boston's Logan Airport, was breeched.

''This shows clearly that our borders can be infiltrated, and that obviously people can penetrate our airport security,'' said Warren Rudman, the former New Hampshire senator and cochair of the US Commission on National Security for the 21st Century.

Rudman's commission found that while US intelligence has had many successes in the past year, domestic security needed to be significantly tightened in order to help prevent tragedies on the scale of the events today.

The commission's opening paragraphs offer a chilling foreshadowing of today's events:

''America's present global predominance does not render it immune from these dangers. To the contrary, US preeminence makes the American homeland more appealing as a target, while America's openness and freedoms make it more vulnerable,'' the panel wrote.

Said Rudman today: ''It only takes one to slip through the net. We predicted in our report that these things would start to happen in America. We're not surpriseed we are right. It will take more vigiliance, more preparedness on the ground. You can't blame anyone for these things. When you have people willing to commit suicide, they are very hard to stop. This is exactly what the people of Israel have been facing.''

Neil Livingstone, chairman of GlobalOptions, an international risk management firm, said the United States now must respond quickly and firmly.

''I think we are at war. I liken this to Pearl Harbor,'' said Livingstone, who has served on a number of government panels on terrorism. ''This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think we can allow this to happen again. The economy is shut down, Americans are frightened, Americans are dead.''

''This is a price you pay for a weak response to the Lockerbie bombing, a weak response to the first World Trade Center bombing, a weak response to the bombing of the USS Cole, a weak response to the Africa embassy bombings,'' he said. ''We've allowed Osama bin Laden to go on with life, to be protected by the Taliban in Afghanistan.''

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the main suspect in the coordinated attacks was bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Four men belonging to his Al-Qaeda organization were found guilty by a federal jury in New York of plotting the bombings three years ago in Kenya and Tanzania.

Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, said members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have had a couple of updates from US intelligence officials, who said early signs point to Osama bin Laden as the mastermind behind the attacks.

''We know the basics,'' Kerry said. ''The basics are obvious to everybody. Most people believe it is bin Laden. My own judgment is that it's bin Laden based on the warnings we have received.''

John Donnelly can be reached by email at [email protected]

This story ran on page A7 of the Boston Globe on 9/11/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.