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al Qaeda might kill, and how soon it might do it.At some level that is hard to
define, we believe the threat had not yet become compelling.
It is hard now to recapture the conventional wisdom before 9/11. For exam-
ple, a New York Times article in April 1999 sought to debunk claims that Bin
Ladin was a terrorist leader, with the headline "U.S. Hard Put to Find Proof
Bin Laden Directed Attacks."
8
The head of analysis at the CTC until 1999 dis-
counted the alarms about a catastrophic threat as relating only to the danger of
chemical, biological, or nuclear attack--and he downplayed even that, writing
several months before 9/11:"It would be a mistake to redefine counterterror-
ism as a task of dealing with `catastrophic,'`grand,' or `super' terrorism, when in
fact these labels do not represent most of the terrorism that the United States
is likely to face or most of the costs that terrorism imposes on U.S. interests."
9
Beneath the acknowledgment that Bin Ladin and al Qaeda presented seri-
ous dangers, there was uncertainty among senior officials about whether this
was just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary terrorist threat
America had lived with for decades, or was radically new, posing a threat
beyond any yet experienced. Such differences affect calculations about
whether or how to go to war.
Therefore, those government experts who saw Bin Ladin as an unprece-
dented new danger needed a way to win broad support for their views, or at
least spotlight the areas of dispute, and perhaps prompt action across the gov-
ernment.The national estimate has often played this role, and is sometimes con-
troversial for this very reason.
10
Such assessments, which provoke widespread
thought and debate, have a major impact on their recipients, often in a wider
circle of decisionmakers.The National Intelligence Estimate is noticed in the
Congress, for example. But, as we have said, none was produced on terrorism
between 1997 and 9/11.
By 2001 the government still needed a decision at the highest level as to
whether al Qaeda was or was not "a first order threat," Richard Clarke wrote
in his first memo to Condoleezza Rice on January 25, 2001. In his blistering
protest about foot-dragging in the Pentagon and at the CIA, sent to Rice just
a week before 9/11, he repeated that the "real question" for the principals was
"are we serious about dealing with the al Qida threat? . . . Is al Qida a big deal?"
One school of thought, Clarke wrote in this September 4 note, implicitly
argued that the terrorist network was a nuisance that killed a score of Ameri-
cans every 18­24 months. If that view was credited, then current policies might
be proportionate. Another school saw al Qaeda as the "point of the spear of
radical Islam." But no one forced the argument into the open by calling for a
national estimate or a broader discussion of the threat. The issue was never
joined as a collective debate by the U.S. government, including the Congress,
before 9/11.
We return to the issue of proportion--and imagination. Even Clarke's note
FORESIGHT--AND HINDSIGHT
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