Continuing from previous blogs . . . All things considered, the strikes of September 11, 2001, from the perspective of the skyjackers, amount to a miracle of timing. Let’s start with the timing of appointments of key U.S. personnel.  

Part of this topic has been canvassed elsewhere, but a quick overview with the 20-20 of hindsight still comes as something of a shock. Everybody recalls that, among key personnel, Robert Mueller, new Director of the FBI, took his position one week before 9/11. Former FBI man and the globe’s premier bin Laden nemesis John O’Neill had left the Bureau only the month before 9/11, taking his final, fatal position as chief of security at the World Trade Center in August 2001. As everyone also knows by now, the first meeting of Principals regarding counterterrorism – that is, the first time Richard Clarke as counterterrorism chief expert for the executive branch was able to meet with heads of pertinent agencies – was also one week before the attacks, on September 4.

There were other relatively new men in the biggest jobs. The president had announced the appointments of his new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard B. Myers, and of his Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Pete Pace, on August 24, 2001. A brand new member and Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board was announced on September 4, 2001, along with other appointments including the new Commissioner of Customs. The new Associate Attorney General of the United States was named on September 10, 2001.

The heads of the branches of the armed forces were also comparatively new, although they were at least in their respective positions by the date of the strikes; Thomas E. White at Army, Gordon England at Navy, and Thomas Roche at Air Force had been named in May 2001 and took their offices that summer. A new Assistant Secretary of the Air Force was named on July 31, among other appointments.

The National Operations Manager at the FAA, Ben Sliney, was in his first day on the job on September 11, 2001. Bush’s Director of Security for the FAA, Mike Canavan, was comparatively speaking an old hand, having taken his job at the end of 2000. (Unfortunately, Canavan was in Puerto Rico on 9/11.)

Top officials were by no means the only government personnel new on the job, or not yet on the job, as of 9/11. The president has taken well-deserved heat for his inattentiveness to filling key positions, for heedlessness about warnings, and for his lengthy vacationing (and superficial politicking) during the summer of 2001. But anyone who looks closely will note that actually Bush appointed a slew of federal officials throughout August 2001 and up through September 10. Indeed, with regard to federal appointments he seems to have had a fire lighted under him, naming 12 new U.S. Attorneys on August 2, 2001 to replace those whose resignations he had compelled; another 6 U.S. Attorneys (“DAs,” on the state level) on August 3, among other appointments; another 13 new U.S. Attorneys on September 5; another U.S. Attorney and two U.N. appointments on September 7; and a replacement for the Associate Attorney General on September 10. There seem to have been no nominations scheduled for September 11, when the president was on a photo-op visit to Booker Elementary School in Saratoga, Florida.

(Bush nominations to government positions can be looked up by name on the White House web site here; it used to be possible to look them up by date, but the link no longer works.)

Throughout the controversial summer and early fall of 2001, Bush named a veritable slew of federal judges, federal officials in entities including the Export-Import Bank, and U.S. diplomats. On September 4, for example, he named ambassadors to sensitive areas including the ambassadors to Vietnam, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Moldova and the Slovak Republic.

(In separate actions, the White House also waived sanctions on the export of military products to Pakistan on August 9 of summer 2001; and the used Air Force One carried Bush for the last time on August 29, retired to be replaced by a newer and safer plane.)

It is generally acknowledged that August is the dog days for high-level activity. This is the case not only in policy-making but also to some extent in law enforcement and domestic security. But this particular August, 2001, saw its share of activity on some level (Bush appointed more federal officials within a few weeks than any other president in the same time frame at the same point in the calendar). Meanwhile, appointments of neocon members and signatories of PNAC (the Project for the New American Century), the network founded by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Jeb Bush with others, had proceeded apace from Bush’s earliest days in the White House.

The cumulative result of the above is that the counterterrorist project – what there was of it – was new; and the persons immediately responsible for handling public safety and counterterrorism were either new, or overwhelmed, or outnumbered, outgunned and outmaneuvered by entrenched neocons bristling to go to war in the Middle East. It might have been better for the nation had some pertinent offices been vacant, because then we would have known we had to fill them, and they could have been filled with some public scrutiny and some view to accountability.

The Bushes are scheduled to appear with Larry King for a joint interview tonight. It is to be hoped that if Larry King cannot ask about the lead-up to 9/11, he can at least ask about the lead-up to the Iraq war.