It is a glaring error four years after 9/11. Still exists. Not resolved. There are bills pending in Congress but they're far from enactment, |
It is fair to ask how long the FBI will take to reform itself ... The terrorists will not wait, |
It's important to both Secretary Baker and me that we not raise expectations here. We know that whatever we do will be difficult. We really do not yet know how difficult this task will be. |
It's not a question of if. |
It's very disappointing, and even depressing, to see that four years after 9/11 we have not done many of things we should have done to get ready for a disaster. Things are moving, but they're just moving slowly. |
Just because we cannot accept what's going on in East Timor, that doesn't necessarily mean that we're the ones that charge in there. I think others can probably do that better than we -- the Australians (or) the New Zealanders, for example. |
Look, we want a bill on the desk of the president as soon as possible. |
No one could order the troops in, they couldn't get the equipment in, they couldn't evacuate the people who needed to be evacuated, ... that was glaringly absent. |
Now he's making a lot of assumptions there as far as almost instantaneous communication, and it's almost a hypothetical -- it is I guess a hypothetical question. But I heard that statement with some surprise, |
Oh, yes. A good bit, |
Our recommendations are good, and they're urgent, ... they are not intended to be a final solution and they need to be deliberated. |
Our sense is that the commission supports reform of the intelligence community, but we have come to no judgment about the nature of reform that we will recommend. |
Reforms are at risk from inertia and complacency. Reforms must be accelerated or they will fail. |
She's told us she's happy to have us come back, so we're going to get the information that we want in the commission, |
Some 18 months after that terrifying day, we still have no comprehensive analysis of 9/11, no authoritative record of the many forces that led to the attacks, no definitive narrative of the events of the day. |