The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

RAY SUAREZ: Good evening. I'm Ray Suarez. Jim Lehrer is off this week. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; today's chilling record of what went wrong on 9/11, plus the assessments of Commissioners Gorelich and Lehman; the man who will represent the U.S. to the new Iraqi government, Ambassador John Negroponte; and a secret prisoner in Iraq held and hidden on orders of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.

NEWS SUMMARY

RAY SUAREZ: The 9/11 attacks quickly snarled communications and spread confusion among U.S. civil and military defense agencies. That was a conclusion announced by the 9/11 Commission today, at its final public hearing in Washington. Commission researchers said the disorder was so great that at one point Vice President Cheney mistakenly believed U.S. warplanes had shot down two hijacked aircraft. In his testimony before the panel, U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force General Richard Myers said the country's air defenses were focused on threats from abroad.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS: Our clear direction was to look outward, and in fact, as General Arnold said, we fought many phantoms that day. I remember getting to the MCC. We got a call that a bomb went off in trot of the State Department. So you think, oh, my goodness, what else is happening in this town. We got many aircraft calls that turned out to be phantoms.

RAY SUAREZ: We'll have extended excerpts from today's hearing right after this news summary. President Bush took issue today with a pronouncement the commission made yesterday, that it found no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. At the White House, reporters asked Mr. Bush why the administration continued to suggest otherwise.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, the reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship betweenIraq and Saddam and al-Qaida is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida. This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaida. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden ahead of al-Qaida in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.

RAY SUAREZ: In Iraq today, insurgents targeted Iraq's security forces in two deadly bombings today, one in Baghdad that killed 35 and wounded nearly 140. A second car bomb north of the capital killed six Iraqi security officers. We have a report on the Baghdad bombing narrated by Paul Davies of Independent Television News.

PAUL DAVIES: A suicide bomber has detonated a vehicle packed with explosives in a busy street -- with more than 30 people dead and many more dreadfully injured. The victims: Ordinary Iraqis. The suicide bombers' target: An Iraqi army recruitment center escaped the main blast and none of the recruits inside was injured.

COL. MIKE MURRAY: Most of those wounded more than likely came off of a bus that happened to be near the area when a bomb went off. There are no U.S. casualties. There are no Iraqi army casualties. This clearly, again, was an attack that has hurt the Iraqi people.

PAUL DAVIES: Iraq's new prime minister, visiting the scene with little short of an army of bodyguards said the bodyguards would not achieve their aim.

IYAD ALLAWI: This is an escalation that we have been expecting. We are going to face these escalations. We're going to face the enemies of Iraq and the Iraqi people are going to prevail.

PAUL DAVIES: American soldiers were seen arresting a number of people close to the scene of the bombing. They are on the highest state of alert.

RAY SUAREZ: Back in Washington, the new U.S. Ambassador- designate to Iraq, John Negroponte, told the NewsHour today he was confident the current Iraqi resistance would be overcome.

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Security is definitely a difficult issue, but I think there with the presence of the, continued presence of the multinational force and a major training effort that is being undertaken for Iraqi security forces, I think the prospects over time of stabilizing the security situation would appear to be good.

RAY SUAREZ: Negroponte has been U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations since 2001. He assumes his new duties in Baghdad next month. We'll have the rest of that interview later in the program. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the military to secretly hold a suspected terrorist in Iraq as a "ghost detainee," effectively hiding him from Red Cross inspectors. Published reports said the directive, made in November, was requested by CIA Director George Tenet and approved by top military personnel. The prisoner is allegedly a senior officer of the Iraqi terrorist group Ansar al-Islam. At a Pentagon briefing this afternoon, Rumsfeld was asked why a prisoner would not be registered.

DONALD RUMSFELD: I can guess some purposes. Some could be improper obviously, and that's the concern. You don't want to not register somebody for a reason that you're trying to prevent the ICRC from seeing something that you wouldn't want them to know. The only reason for a delay in it that I can think of would be that your interest is in not interrupting an interrogation process of some kind.

RAY SUAREZ: Army Major General Antonio Taguba said in his report on prisoner abuse that the practice of holding ghost detainees is "deceptive, contrary to army doctrine, and in violationof international law." President Bush told reporters he and Rumsfeld discussed the issue for the first time today. Mr. Bush said he was "never disappointed" in his secretary of defense and that Rumsfeld is doing a "fabulous job." We'll have more on the story at the end of the program. A federal grand jury in Raleigh, North Carolina, today indicted a CIA contractor for abusing a prisoner in Afghanistan. David Passaro, a former Army Ranger, was arrested and charged with assaulting an Afghan detainee in U.S. custody. The prisoner later died. Passaro is the first civilian to face criminal charges for activities in Afghanistan. The case was among three referred by the CIA to the Justice Department. Time was running out today for an American hostage being held by al-Qaida captors in Saudi Arabia. The kidnappers say Paul Johnson will be executed tomorrow unless the kingdom releases al-Qaida prisoners. U.S. and Saudi authorities are pursuing Johnson's release. The 49-year-old Apache helicopter technician has worked in Saudi Arabia 12 years. His family lives in New Jersey. Smoking among high school age youths is at its lowest level in more than ten years. The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said smoking by teens has dropped 14 percent since 1997, from 36 to 22 percent. The rate of teens who've tried smoking is also down. The CDC said rising cigarette prices and anti-smoking campaigns contributed to the decline. Inflation at the wholesale level grew in May. The Labor Department reported today the Producer Price Index rose 0.8 percent and a key measure of future U.S. Economic activity was also up last month. The Conference Board, a business research group, reported today its index of leading economic indicators rose 0.5 percent. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost two points to close at 10,377. The NASDAQ fell 14 points to close at 1983. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the new ambassador to Iraq, replaying the horror of 9/11, and off the books prisoners.

NEWSMAKER

RAY SUAREZ: Now to our newsmaker with the new American ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte. I spoke with him earlier today at the State Department.

Ambassador Negroponte, welcome to the program.

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Thank you.

RAY SUAREZ: This morning we got news from Baghdad that there were two more bombings, one of some considerable size and deadliness. I guess it just underscores what's leading up to your moving to Iraq to take charge of the American enterprise there.

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, the challenges are indeed daunting, but I think with the transfer of sovereignty, the full exercise of sovereignty to the government, interim government of Iraq on the 30th of June, I think there are great opportunities ahead in various areas, but certainly in the political area. The government will be planning for elections to take place not later than the 30th of January next year for a national assembly. Security is definitely a difficult issue, but I think there with the presence of the... continued presence of a multinational force and a major training effort being undertaken for Iraqi security forces, I think the prospects over time of stabilizing the security situation would appear to be good.

RAY SUAREZ: Given the daunting list, the Iraqi to-do list, can you build a state that's in this current situation? Can you start doing the things you need to do to make life in Iraq normal when this kind of thing is happening in the capital city?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, first of all, yes, the to-do list may be long, but I think one has to focus and prioritize, and I think that first of all there's the political, that we mentioned, moving towards these elections. Second there's security, where I think training and enabling the Iraqi security forces-- police, armed forces, border police and so forth-- is an extremely important priority, and we plan to devote substantial effort to that, including the assignment of a three-star general who will have full responsibility for the training of those forces, and last but certainly not least, working on the reconstruction efforts and the revival of the Iraqi economy where we have substantial resources at our disposal -- $18.4 billion -- which has been voted by our Congress to support the reconstruction of Iraq. So I think those are the three key priorities. The Iraqis do have past administrative experience. They have a well-educated society. They've had administrative experience in the past. This is not a completely failed state. I think it's a question of pulling these different elements together and moving forward, and I think that can be done.

RAY SUAREZ: You are entering the country as Paul Bremer leaves, and the coalition provisional authority sunsets. What changes about Iraq and what changes about the American presence when these comings and goings are accomplished?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, what changes, first of all, is that the interim government of Iraq will reassert the full exercise of sovereignty by the people and the government of Iraq. I'm not going out there to replace Ambassador Bremer. Ambassador Bremer will be handing off to the interim government of Iraq. And once he's done that, then I will present my credentials to the new government of Iraq as an ambassador and the role of my embassy, although it will be substantial and will be involved in a wide number of areas, will be one of support and assistance and not one of being the ultimate political authority in the country. So I think that's the fundamental difference.

RAY SUAREZ: But won't you be a unique ambassador in that 140,000 of your countrymen will also be in uniform on the ground in the country where you serve?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, there's no question that Iraq is a unique situation. There are 140,000 troops in the multinational force. We have this substantial reconstruction and development program that you mentioned, but it will be in the context of a fully sovereign Iraq and in the context of us supporting the Iraqis as they work to stabilize their country from a security point of view, establish a democracy, and bring hope to the people of Iraq through economic development and reconstruction.

RAY SUAREZ: Does it help to have the United Nations resolution in place, sort of defining the ground rules in addition to the presence of the new Iraqi government? Does it make it clearer where you fit in, in all of this?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: I think it helps in at least a couple of ways. First of all, I think that it involves an international endorsement, if you will, and legitimation of the continued presence of the multinational force. The resolution also endorsed the political timetable that has been established by the Iraqis, and as you know, they intend to have a national conference in the middle of July, and then the elections, which will take place later on. I think it also was important, the U.N. resolution, in terms of encouraging other countries to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq.

RAY SUAREZ: The coalition provisional authority set a lot of things in motion, a lot of development projects, a lot of investments, a lot of ongoing work that hasn't yet borne fruit. Are you in effect the executive who now inherits all of these open portfolios?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Yes. The short answer to that is yes. We will be establishing an office called the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office right in the embassy, which will have responsibility for overseeing the implementation of projects, and to the extent that there are monies that have not yet been committed or obligated, we will have the responsibility for identifying projects and prioritizing them. And I've given a lot of attention to identifying the right kinds of people to come in and assist me in that.

RAY SUAREZ: As a practical day- to-day matter, are you going to be in close contact? How do the lines of authority work with the armed forces of the United States that will be in the country while you're serving as ambassador?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, of course, the armed forces are responsible to the multinational force commander, who in turn has his military chain of command, which leads through General Abizaid and to the secretary of defense. So it is a separate chain of command. But we are committed-- and I've already had a number of meetings with General Casey-- we are committed to working extremely closely together because we realize that there is... that the military and political issues are inextricably linked, and I would expect that we would be working together on a daily basis, talking to each other several times a day and really coordinating in a partnership fashion.

RAY SUAREZ: So even though he answers to another person in uniform...

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Absolutely.

RAY SUAREZ: ...You're not going to find out about things by reading about them in the paper?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: No, in fact, it's an imperative. I think that one of the keys to our success out there is going to be the degree to which he and I and our respective organizations can work in the best of harmony, and I'm sure that can be done.

RAY SUAREZ: The Iraqi people, for their part, in a recent survey taking by the coalition provisional authority, say by a wide majority that they think continued American armed presence in the country makes them less safe rather than safer. When you saw those numbers, were you a little discouraged, and is it your interest to turn that perception around?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, first, I'm not privy to all the details of how that survey was carried out. I assume it was in the context of the occupation. And now that that is coming to an end on the 30th of June, perhaps that will have an effect in changing attitudes. Secondly, I think as we work on the training of Iraqi security forces, and we do want them to take on a greater and greater responsibility for their security so that we can over time make a corresponding reduction in our own security presence, I think that's going to help attitudes. And clearly if the security situation can be stabilized and some of these reconstruction monies can start having the kind of economic impact that we would like to see them have, maybe that, also, will help the situation.

RAY SUAREZ: And the U.N. It's been a couple of difficult years between the United States and the United Nations. You were ambassador during that time. With the new resolution, with the continued U.N. Involvement in Iraq, are some of those fences being mended?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: I think they have been. I think when we had the difficult debate on Iraq more than a year ago, the relationships were somewhat frayed. I think the attitude of most of our colleagues on the Security Council now is that we've got to look forward. We don't want Iraq to fail, we don't want U.S. and coalition policies in Iraq to be unsuccessful. Everybody has a stake in success in Iraq, and I think that that is the kind of spirit that we see prevailing now. There still have been some tough negotiations and tough discussions, but it's certainly been easier to get resolutions on Iraq passed in recent months than it was previously.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you've had a lot of postings over your long career, and you haven't been to Iraq yet. I guess I should point that out.

JOHN NEGROPONTE: No.

RAY SUAREZ: Is this looking like the hardest thing you've had to do?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, I've had aid assignments overseas during the course of my more than 40 years in the Foreign Service, and I would suppose that by an order of magnitude is this is going to be the most difficult challenge I've ever faced. I'm mindful of that fact, but I'm encouraged by the strong support that I feel I have from the president and from the Congress, and from the excellent team of people that I've been able to pull together who will serve with me in our new embassy in Iraq.

RAY SUAREZ: Ambassador Negroponte, thanks for being with us.

JOHN NEGROPONTE: It's been a pleasure.

FOCUS - DAY OF HORROR

RAY SUAREZ: The attacks of 9/11 overwhelmed the nation's emergency response system. At one point, President Bush was reduced to using a cell phone because it was so difficult to reach anyone in Washington on a more secure system. Those were some of the facts that came to light at today's hearing in Washington, as the 9/11 Commission wrapped up its final day of public hearings. Kwame Holman begins our report.

KWAME HOLMAN: With chilling audio tapes of the hijackers confronting their victims as a back drop, the 9/11 Commission painted a portrait of confusion and poor official communication throughout the frenzied morning of Sept. 11 2001. In the final day of hearings, the commission staff reported on the response by the Federal Aviation Administration and the military's North American Defense Command or NORAD. The staff said neither agency was prepared to react to hijacked planes that would become weapons.

PHILIP ZELIKOW: In sum, the protocols in place on 9/11 for the FAA and NORAD to respond to a hijacking presumed that, one, the hijacked aircraft would be readily identifiable and would not attempt to disappear. Two, there would be time to address the problem through the appropriate FAA and NORAD chains of command and, three, the hijacking would take the traditional form, not a suicide hijacking designed to convert the aircraft into a guided missile. On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen. What ensued was the hurried attempt to create an improvised defense by officials who had never encountered or trained against the situation they faced.

KWAME HOLMAN: The staff played air traffic control recordings of the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11, destined to strike the first world trade center tower. This is believed to be hijacker Mohammed Atta.

HIJACKER: We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you'll be okay. We are returning to the airport. Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try and make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet. Nobody move please. We are going back to the airport. Don't try to make any stupid moves.

KWAME HOLMAN: It was the day's first indication to air traffic controllers that a hijacking was underway. The staff said controllers alerted FAA headquarters of a possible hijacking, but were told by the FAA officer on duty that an emergency conference call already was underway. However, the Boston-based controllers of Flight 11 were not satisfied military help was on the way and called the Northeast Air Defense Sector, or NEADS.

SPOKESMAN: Hi, Boston center T.M.U., We have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to... we need someone to scramble some f-16s or something up there, help us out.

VOICE: Is this real-world or exercise?

SPOKESMAN: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.

JOHN AZZARELLO, 9/11 Commission Staff: NEADS promptly ordered to battle stations the two f-15 alert aircraft at Otis Air Force Base, about 153 miles away from New York City. The air defense of America began with this call. At NEADS, the reported hijacking was relayed immediately to battle commander Colonel Robert Marr. After ordering the Otis fighters to battle stations, Colonel Marr phoned Major General Larry Arnold, commanding general of the first air force and the continental region. Marr sought authorization to scramble the Otis fighters. General Arnold was instructed to "go ahead and scramble the airplanes and we'll get permission later." General Arnold then called NORAD headquarters to report. F-15 fighters were ordered scrambled at 8:46 from Otis Air Force Base. But NEADS did not know where to send the alert fighter aircraft. "I don't know where I'm scrambling these guys to. I need a direction, a destination." Because the hijackers had turned off the plane's transponder, NEADS personnel spent the next minutes searching their radar scopes for the elusive primary radar return. American 11 impacted the World Trade Center's north tower at 8:46:40.

KWAME HOLMAN: The FAA had given nine minutes warning before the impact, the longest warning time it would provide before any of the four crashes. There was similar confusion about the other hijacked planes-- United Flight 175, American Flight 77, and United Flight 93. According to the commission staff, the FAA failed to report one of the planes as having been hijacked, and believed American Flight 11, which had struck the World Trade Center, was still in the air.

SPOKESMAN: Military, Boston center. I just had a report that American 11 is still in the air, and it's on its way towards... heading towards Washington.

SPOKESPERSON: Okay. American 11 is still in the air?

SPOKESMAN: Yes.

SPOKESPERSON: On its way towards Washington?

SPOKESMAN: That was another... it was evidently another aircraft that hit the tower. That's the latest report we have.

SPOKESPERSON: Okay.

SPOKESMAN: I'm going to try to confirm an ID for you, but I would assume he's somewhere over... either New Jersey or somewhere further south.

SPOKESPERSON: Okay. So American 11 isn't the hijack at all then, right?

SPOKESMAN: No, he is a hijack.

SPOKESPERSON: He... American 11 is a hijack?

SPOKESMAN: Yes.

SPOKESPERSON: And he's heading into Washington?

SPOKESMAN: Yes. This could be a third aircraft.

KWAME HOLMAN: When Cleveland air traffic controllers heard screaming and sounds of a struggle aboard United Flight 93, FAA Headquarters was slow to respond.

SPOKESMAN: At 9:49, 13 minutes after getting the question from Cleveland Center about military help, command center suggested that someone at headquarters should decide whether to request military assistance.

VOICE ONE: They're pulling Jeff away to talk about united 9 3.

VOICE TWO: Do we want to think about scrambling aircraft?

VOICE ONE: Oh, God, I don't know.

VOICE TWO: That's a decision somebody's going to have to make probably in the next ten minutes.

VOICE ONE: Oh, you know, everybody just left the room.

KWAME HOLMAN: Moments later, Flight 93 crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, key FAA officials still were missing from a defense department teleconference on the crisis that started just before 9:30 am.

DANA HYDE: Operators worked feverishly to include the FAA In this teleconference, but they had equipment problems and difficulty finding secure phone numbers. NORAD asked three times before 10:03 to confirm the presence of FAA on the conference, to provide an update on hijackings. The FAA did not join the call until 10:17. The FAA representative who joined the call had no familiarity with or responsibility for a hijack situation, had no access to decision makers, and had none of the information available to senior FAA officials by that time.

KWAME HOLMAN: As FAA and NORAD officials fought through confusion, senior officials accompanying President Bush to an elementary school in Florida were scrambling as well. According to the commission staff, the president and Vice President Cheney had agreed to permit military jets to shoot down any airliner that did not respond to radio calls, but tapes of conversations between air controllers and the Northeast Air Defense showed confusion about the order.

VOICE: You need to read this. The region commander has declared that we can shoot down aircraft that does not respond to our direction. Copy that?

VOICE TWO: Copy, that sir.

VOICE: So if you're trying to divert someone and he won't divert...

VOICE TWO: They're saying no.

VOICE: It came over. Do you have a conflict on that direction?

VOICE TWO: Right now no.

VOICE: You read that from the vice president, right? The vice president has cleared us to intercept traffic. We can shoot them down if they do not respond.

JOHN FARERM: In the interviews with us, NEAD's personnel expressed considerable confusion over the nature and effect of the order.

KWAME HOLMAN: Joint chiefs chairman Richard Myers, a former commander of NORAD, was today's first witness. He was asked about a frequent topic of the hearings, the August 2001 memorandum to the president warning of a strike on the U.S. by Osama bin Laden.

RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Had you received such information tying together the potential reflected in the Aug. 6 memorandum that was titled "bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States" together with this additional information, might you have followed up on a training scenario at the least, such as the positive force training scenario where a hijacked plane was presumed to fly into the Pentagon, a proposal that was made and rejected in the year 2000?

GEN. RICHARD MYERS: Well, a couple of things. I don't know that we would have because exercising alone is not enough if you look at all, and you have, you've looked at all the policy guidance we've gotten through the '90s into early 2000 - 2001 -- all the policy guidance was that we treat terrorism primarily as a criminal event and the role of the Defense Department was to defend our forces primarily. It was force protection, anti-terrorism, not counter-terrorism. Counter-terrorism responsibilities domestically were FBI -- externally were the CIA.

KWAME HOLMAN: But the commission staff concluded that earlier warnings would not have allowed the military to intercept the hijacked planes. Commissioner James Thompson asked the current commander of North American Defenses about that.

JAMES R. THOMPSON: Would it have been physically possible for the military to have intercepted those three aircraft before they completed their terrible mission?

GEN. RALPH EBERHART: Sir, our modeling, which we've shared with the staff, reflects that giving the situation you've outlined, which we think is the situation that exists today because of the fixes, the remedies put in place, we would be able to shoot down all three aircraft -- all four aircraft.

KWAME HOLMAN: FAA witnesses said the agency had not practiced for such a scenario. Today, an FAA official said the focus on Sept. 11 was on getting hundreds of thousands of airline passengers safely to the ground.

MONTE BELGER: At 9:45 A.M., When the order was given to land all aircraft immediately at the closest airport, over 4,500 aircraft were in the system. Our focus at that time was to safely land those hundreds of thousands of passengers. By 12:16 P.M., for the first time in the history of the FAA, our U.S. airspace was empty of all aircraft, except for military and central emergency flights. Over 4,500 aircraft and hundreds of thousands of passengers were safely landed under unique and highly stressful conditions. Roughly one flight every two seconds under those stressful conditions landed throughout the country. FAA controllers, supervisors, pilot, flight crew, dispatchers and the automation equipment they used all performed flawlessly.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Commissioner Bob Kerrey criticized the FAA for allowing an inexperienced staffer to coordinate the key conference call between government agencies.

BOB KERREY: How in god's name could you put somebody on the telephone who joined the call with no familiarity or responsibility for hijack situations, had no access to decision-makers, and had none of the information available to senior FAA officials at that time? What the hell is going on that you would do such a thing?

MONTE BELGER: I did not specifically ask this question. One of the millions of questions I wish I would have asked that morning, but I didn't.

KWAME HOLMAN: After Chairman Tom Kean brought the hearing phase of the commission's work to a close, he and co-chairman Lee Hamilton met with the press. They disclosed that President Bush himself was affected by communications troubles on Sept. 11. Mr. Bush had appeared in private before the commission.

LEE HAMILTON: Keep in mind, they're trying to understand what happened, and they're trying to get the motorcade going and they're trying to get to Air Force One as quickly as they can. The president is on the phone and Andy Card is on the phone and a half dozen other people are on the phone calling a variety of people in Washington. So there was a real communication jam; at some point I think we heard that the president was using a cell phone. Is that right, Tom? I think I remember that.

THOMAS KEAN: Yeah, he was trying every way, as were his aides, to communicate. Here is the commander-in-chief, and there are decisions to be made and America is under attack and the commander-in-chief can't get through to the nation's capital. I mean, that's a serious problem.

KWAME HOLMAN: The commission plans to issue its final report on the events of Sept. 11 and recommendations by the end of next month.

RAY SUAREZ: Margaret Warner takes it from there.

MARGARET WARNER: For more on these latest findings, and today's testimony, we're joined by two 9/11 commissioners. John Lehman, former navy secretary in the Reagan administration. And Jamie Gorelick served as Defense Department general counsel and the deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. Welcome back to you both.

John Lehman, what do you think most or best explains the failure of the civilian and military agencies to respond effectively as these hijackings unfolded?

JOHN LEHMAN: I think it's a failure of the effectiveness of our entire intelligence apparatus. It's broken. It's dysfunctional. Its purpose is to gather intelligence and sort out the important and the critical from the unimportant and the background noise. Time and again in every one of your hearings, our hearings, you have seen that it failed to do this. It failed to bring to the attention of the top policymakers from the president on down through the military and the domestic security agencies the analysis that should have been done to highlight the threat that al-Qaida had become, was becoming and enable policies to be made by FAA and changes to protocols to be made by NORAD and more alert aircraft as well as national policy to do something about al-Qaida. This was a huge intelligence failure that permeates every part of this tragedy.

MARGARET WARNER: Is that where you'd pinpoint it, Commissioner Gorelick, that essentially these agencies never had the input, the intelligence input to make them get prepared for something like this?

JAMIE GORELICK: I think that's true, and I would agree with John and his assessment. I would just say, though, that, you know, agencies need to be good consumers of intelligence. If you just take the FAA and NORAD, what who we had before us today, they could have done a better job, in my view, of asking for intelligence, of scouring the landscape, of saying what threats are out there. I mean, NORAD has the job, among its other jobs, of protecting the airspace above the United States, and it says, well, we were postured to look out. Well, that's a choice that it's made based upon its own assessment and the military's assessment of the dangers. So I would agree with John, but I don't hold the other elements of the government blameless either.

MARGARET WARNER: You both were in the Defense Department, and Commissioner Lehman, going back to you, how do you explain NORAD's inability to respond? I mean, we heard stories today at one point when only jets were scrambled they didn't know which direction to go, there was the confusion over the shoot-down order, which Vice President Cheney had finally given too late, but it never got through to the fighter pilots. I mean, was the Department of Defense really equipped with this big agency created during the Cold War to defend the airspace of the United States?

JOHN LEHMAN: Well, they were not equipped. They were not prepared. And they had not trained. They had not foreseen. I agree with Jamie that just because the intelligence community has not put in front of their desk the fact that al-Qaida was a threat does not mean they should not have known that, and that the threat of aircraft used as missiles was not very real. Alan Dulles said that 80 percent of all good intelligence is public information. They've got to think for themselves. They never, never really got themselves organized to deal with the post-Cold War era, a different era with different kinds of threats. They were focused and remained, their exercising remained focused on the threats of incoming missile, incoming bombers. And to the extent they did exercise about hijackings, it was always foreign hijackings that were headed towards the United States. Everything was outward-looking.

MARGARET WARNER: Jamie Gorelick, you were in the Defense Department, as I recall, or certainly involved in the millennium plot business, and at that point, there were some anticipation that there might be aircraft used, weren't there?

JAMIE GORELICK: Yes. I was well out of both the Defense Department and the Justice Department by the millennium. I left government in early 1997.

MARGARET WARNER: Sorry.

JAMIE GORELICK: But we have studied the millennium, and one of the lessons you learned from studying the millennium and the response of the government, at least one of the lessons I've learned from it, is that when a government agencies aren't t naturally sharing information, when they are in old modes of operation, as John has said, one of the ways of getting them shaken from those old paradigms is to bring them together and knock heads. And that's what was done during the millennium. Now, it's very difficult to know in any linear fashion whether that produced the good results that occurred in that period, but you know, one of the examples we talked about today was the fact that the FAA's representatives at a very low level who went to White House meetings in the summer of threat didn't come back with any sense of urgency and didn't tell anybody outside of their offices. So the heads of the FAA, the secretary of transportation, had no knowledge and without that knowledge you really can't expect them to say, are we prepared. He has nothing to prompt the question.

MARGARET WARNER: Commissioner Lehman, you said today, you made a rather impassioned statement. You said, "If there's one real inescapable failure, it's the failure of performance of the headquarters of the FAA, " What most concerned you about that?

JOHN LEHMAN: Well, I think that it is a failure that goes back before this crisis. It was a failure that was revealed in the hearings we had a year ago, over a year ago in May, that there did not seem to be any interest in the intelligence issues and a kind of a sense that this was not their business. Secretary Mineta that told us that he had never... nobody had ever told him anything about the possibility of aircraft being used as missiles, and Jane Garvey, the administrator, told us the same thing. Well, it turns out that our staff demonstrated that indeed those very kinds of warnings were sent to their office but were winnowed out by their staffs presumably because they didn't place a high value on reading daily intelligence reports. Then on the day of 9/11, there was failure after failure. The system that the FAA had organized, the protocols required, everything to go forward up to headquarters for approval before things could be done, even notifying the military, had to be done after checking with headquarters. Every time from, as you heard witnesses today and read our report, things were set up to the headquarters, nothing happened, nothing came back, and to me that's inexcusable.

MARGARET WARNER: Commissioner Gorelick, there was a difference of opinion between your staff and the head of NORAD, General Eberhart. He said, "if we had been given -- alerted soon enough, we could have intercepted and shot down all four planes." Your staff report made clear they didn't agree with that. What is your view of that?

JAMIE GORELICK: You know, if you really listen to what he said, he didn't say that. John and I were talking about this earlier. He said, if you had in place all the fixes that you now have and you had them in place at the time, then...

MARGARET WARNER: Now.

JAMIE GORELICK: Then with the warning that NORAD had, it could have intercepted the planes. Well, that's a very big if. I don't think he could answer the question as you put itaffirmatively. He could not have said we would have been able to intercept those planes just based on earlier notice.

MARGARET WARNER: So do you think that if the same thing were to happen and-- we know it's unlikely that four cockpits would be breeched, given the fact they're all locked now and so on-- but if that situation were to present itself, how confident are you that the fixes have been made and that the whole system would respond, not only differently, but effectively?

JAMIE GORELICK: Margaret, across the board, the agencies of government have told our commission that they have made changes and that many things are much better and they are able to protect us. But as Lee Hamilton said today in the press conference after the hearing, you know, we have our doubts and our reservations. And even today we heard both advice from some of the government witnesses, particularly at the FAA saying, well, there are an awful lot of agencies that have to work together, and we're not sure whether they are. And we heard an example from very recently of a not pretty set of communications that could have led to a lot of harm if the aircraft in issue had really been bent on harming us. So I guess we would say progress but still some concern on our part.

MARGARET WARNER: Commissioner Lehman, what's your view on that?

JOHN LEHMAN: I totally agree with Jamie on that. Mr. Bulger today, our witness who is no longer at the FAA, has said that, has urged us to look into the issue of the exercising and protocols and communications between the new agencies, like DSA that have now taken over an important part of FAA's mission. The Pentagon, the NMCC and...

MARGARET WARNER: That's the military command center.

JOHN LEHMAN: That's right, the military command center. Still to this day there have been no exercises to sort out the communications issues and, you know, that's kind of inexcusable. That needs to be seen to. Yes, we're safer today. Yes, as Bulger also said, there's 16,000 pairs of eyes now among the controllers that are spring loaded to find anything that's deviating in the air system. That's the first line of defense. But we have not sorted out the need to exercise the command and control issues and the communications.

MARGARET WARNER: Commissioner Gorelick, when Commissioners Kean and Hamilton had their press conference, they offered some interesting information about President Bush's own communication problems. Can you shed any further light on that? Was this while they were still on the ground, before they got back on Air Force One? Or was this on Air Force One?

JAMIE GORELICK: On Air Force One, the president was unable to reach most of the people or at least many of the people whom he tried to reach. He could not functionally lead the government from Air Force One at a time of great national stress and national emergency. He told us when we interviewed him that this was a source of enormous frustration, as you can imagine it would be. He gave instructions and orders for that to be fixed. We had some testimony about that today. That's not a good situation.

MARGARET WARNER: Jamie Gorelick, John Lehman, thank you both.

JAMIE GORELICK: Our pleasure.

JOHN LEHMAN: Thank you.

NEXT - OFF THE BOOKS

RAY SUAREZ: The so-called "off the books" prisoner of war story. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took questions at the Pentagon today about a high level terrorist captured in Iraq, one whose identity was kept secret from the International Red Cross in a possible violation of international law.

DONALD RUMSFELD: I was requested by the director of central intelligence to take custody of an Iraqi national who was believed to be a high-ranking member of Ansar Al-Islam, and we did so. We were asked to not immediately register the individual, and we did that. It would... it was... he was brought to the attention of the department, the senior level of the department I think late last month, and we're in the process of registering him with the ICRC at the present time.

REPORTER: Well, why did you not register the individual, and has this man simply been lost in the system for... why didn't you tell the Red Cross that you had him?

DONALD RUMSFELD: The decision was made that it would be appropriate not to for a period, and he wasn't lost in the system. They've known where he was, and that he was there in Iraq for this period of time. So I think it's broadly understood that people do not have be registered in 15 minutes when they come in. What the appropriate period of time is I don't know. It may very well be a lot less than seven months, but it may be a month or more. There's no implication of any problem. He was not at Abu Ghraib, he is not there now, he has never been there to my knowledge. There's no question at all about whether or not he's received humane treatment.

RAY SUAREZ: For more on the hiding of Iraqi POW's from the Red Cross we turn to Edward Pound, assistant managing editor for investigations at "U.S. News and World Report." Edward Pound, did the secretary of defense shed any light, advance the story for you today?

EDWARD POUND: Not really. I mean, he was very nimble in the way he handled the Peace Corps at the Pentagon briefing. He said a couple things that I thought were of some interest. He said that the CIA, the director of the CIA, George Tenet, former director, had send him a letter some time back in October or November asking him to take custody of this detainee, this Iraqi terrorist, and, of course, that's what the Pentagon did. Rumsfeld issued a directive requiring the Pentagon to take the man into custody and put him into the detention facility at Camp Cropper.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, there's a lot of talk back and forth between the secretary and reporters today over registering him. Let's talk about what that is. What is done with the normal prisoner that wasn't done with this man?

EDWARD POUND: Well, what is normally done with these detainees in Iraq and in any other facility where we have these detention facilities around the world and what other countries are supposed to do is when a prisoner comes in, he is registered and put into an electronic database and give an serial number. That information is provided to the Red Cross. The Red Cross then is allowed to come to this facility and interview this prisoner and check on the conditions. If this name is not in the database, which is what happened here with this fella who was code named XXX, the Red Cross has no idea that he's there. In fact, the Red Cross inspectors came to the detention facility at Camp Cropper sometime after this prisoner was detained and put into the system, and not put into the system but put under guard into this facility, and they were not told that the-- the Red Cross, I mean, was not told that this prisoner was there. They had no reason to know he was there because he was not in the database, so he was therefore not in the roster of prisoners that were presented to the Red Cross.

RAY SUAREZ: We heard the secretary say, well, there's no law saying that someone has upon registered in 15 minutes. In fact, how long was this person held by the United States in a way that could not be checked by international authorities?

EDWARD POUND: Well, he's still there. He still has not been registered. Now, what happened here is this prisoner, XXX, had been taken into custody by the Kurdish military last year, turned over to the CIA. The CIA took him to an undisclosed location, according to military intelligence officials and then interrogated him for many, many months. Then they decided in October that he needed to be back in Iraq. He's an Iraqi national. He was then placed into, as I say, there was an order issued by General Sanchez at the behest of Mr. Rumsfeld placing this man into custody.

RAY SUAREZ: Does it appear to you from your reporting that the United States government is using the same theory that they used to cover the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, that of enemy combatant status for this man, XXX?

EDWARD POUND: I asked that question, and the answer I got was they weren't certain. This is what I asked a Pentagon official today. So I don't know the answer to that. I do think that they've decided that they could have held this guy basically as long as they wanted to without informing the Red Cross, and that's what they did. Now, what is interesting to me is we reported in our story this week a side bar story on a Capt. Wiedenbush, who was a captain in the 800 military police brigade, which was responsible for the detention facilities. She sent a letter to the Hill, to Senator John Warner in the Senate Armed Services Committee, complaining about the report that had been issued by General Tagubu, which, as you know, touched off this whole inquiry of abuses. In her letter, she makes reference to the order that Sanchez issued in November. It does not disclose any details because it's a classified order, but what's interesting about this is Secretary Rumsfeld said today in late May, they realized at the senior levels of the department that nothing had been done with this, with XXX, this detainee, for seven months. Her letter went to John Warner and other people in late May. She specifically cites this order, this Sanchez order. I'm wondering, and we don't know the answer to this, whether that was touched off by her correspondence.

RAY SUAREZ: Do we have any way of knowing how many other detainees have been unregistered, have gone hidden from the International Red Cross?

EDWARD POUND: We don't know, but we do know there were ghost detainees at Abu Ghraib. I saw reported several weeks ago based on an affidavit I obtained. Interestingly enough, Secretary Rumsfeld was quite nimble today when asked that question. He said they had been requested by the agency, the CIA, to hold certain prisoners, but when he was asked if they were registered, put into the electronic database, he said he didn't know the answer.

RAY SUAREZ: Very quickly, has the International Red Cross itself had any response to this story?

EDWARD POUND: Not as yet. I talked to them last week when I spoke to them, and they said they could not comment on the situation.

RAY SUAREZ: Edward Pound of U.S. News and World Report, thanks for being with us.

EDWARD POUND: Thank you.

RECAP

RAY SUAREZ: Again, the major developments of this day: The 9/11 Commission said at its last public hearing the terrorist attacks overwhelmed the nation's emergency response system, a federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted a CIA contractor for prisoner abuse in the death of a detainee in Afghanistan, and new federal data shows smoking among high school-aged youths dropped to just one out of five since 1997. The rate of teens who've tried smoking is also down. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening with Mark Shields and Bill Kristol, among others. I'm Ray Suarez. Thanks for being with us; good night.

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The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Thursday, June 17, 2004