"We were a county and a government that was at war and did not know it," said Philip Zelikow, 9/11 Commission executive director and executive director of the University's Miller Center of Public Affairs.
Just one day shy of the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a crowd of more than 480 people filled the Miller Center Friday morning to hear Zelikow's first-hand account of the Commission's findings.
Hundreds of reports and pieces of evidence pointing to a mounting threat posed by Islamic terrorists and al-Qaida filtered through the Central Intelligence Agency and the Oval Office for six years, yet no specific policy measures were taken to counteract that threat, Zelikow said.
"The last national intelligence estimate prepared on terrorism at all was prepared in 1995," he said. "We thought that was very unfortunate."
The 9/11 attacks revealed failures in high policy as well as failures in diplomacy and institutional management, Zelikow said.
In December 1998, former CIA Director George Tenet "declared war on al Qaida" and wrote a memo to all American intelligence chiefs identifying it as the most serious security threat to the nation, Zelikow said.
"We found no action taken by any agency as a result of this call to arms," he added.
Zelikow compared the intelligence operations of the national government to a patient admitted to a hospital. Different nurses and physicians all worked energetically and tested the patient for different illnesses, but there was no "attending physician" to put it all together, see the larger picture and make a proper diagnosis.
"The policies that were likely to be effective were not even seriously considered," Zelikow told audience members at the Miller Center, many of whom watched the speech on closed circuit TV from adjacent rooms and hallways. "It is hardest to launch a major effort while the probability of attack still seems minor."
On the day of the attacks, there was little the nation could do to prevent disaster. Zelikow called it "a story of bad information, bad communication and bad management."
As evidence from the flight recorder revealed, passengers of United Flight 93 intervened to prevent the al-Qaida hijackers from reaching their intended target -- the U.S. Capitol or the White House.
Zelikow said there was "reliable evidence that the passengers took a vote on how to proceed" and then repeatedly assaulted the cabin. The passengers prevented the hijackers from reaching their intended destination, as the Air Force could not be mobilized in time, he said.
Zelikow, who spent the past year and a half directing the 9/11 Commission, said partisanship threatened to undermine the Commission's efforts.
"At the point that the commission was perceived as a vehicle for one or the other political party, its credibility in the eyes of the American people could be very badly damaged, and we were approaching that threshold during the spring, I believe," Zelikow said. "The chairman [Tom Kean] and vice chairman [Lee Hamilton] acted decisively to arrest that trend."
More than 1.5 million people worldwide have purchased the 9/11 Commission Report in paperback, which was made thorough and readable in large part because of Zelikow's efforts, Miller Center Program Director George H. Gilliam said.
"He put at risk friendships and career opportunities that I know were dear to him, but he has produced a hell of a report," Gilliam said.
Zelikow is scheduled to speak twice this semester on Grounds, and 9/11 Commission members Jamie Gorelick and Slade Gordon are expected to speak at the Miller Center in October.
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