Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

The entire 9/11 Commission spectacle is a sham. The purported goal is to determine if anything could have been done to prevent the tragedy. That goal is unattainable.

The Air Force had an organization called the Foreign Technology Division. I assume it still exists in some form. Their job was to take equipment obtained through various means, and reverse-engineer it. That phrase, “reverse engineering,” does not mean take an existing part and try to build copies. It entails considerable effort, and a lot of serendipity.

Normally, in engineering, you determine a form, fit, or function of a component and design something to meet those requirements within the materials and manufacturing capability at your disposal. Conceptually, a lot of data points are considered which drive your design to a conclusion. In reverse engineering, the process is, well, reversed. You already have the final product. Your job is to derive from that the materials and manufacturing capabilities, as well as the design concepts that drove the design to be what you hold in your hand. The task is to start at a single point, and try to retrace the steps back to the beginning. You can never really be sure.

That is the world of intelligence. Analysts must take many bits and pieces of information and try to trace them to some starting point. Only then can they be relatively certain that their conclusions regarding future events might be valid. And it also requires that serendipitous thought or event to bring it all together. Most of us, given enough knowledge of a situation, could draw some conclusions regarding what might happen next. But how confident would you be? Let’s say you are driving behind someone talking on a cell phone. You approach an intersection. Will that person stop for the old lady about to step into the crosswalk? Can you be sure?

That is what this Commission is trying to determine. Could anyone in the intelligence agencies have concluded that hijackers, on September 11, 2001, would take over four airliners and smash them into buildings? Should they have known the hijackers would use box cutters as weapons? Could they have been certain enough to put armed sky marshals on every flight that particular day to thwart an attempted hijacking? How many days could they have done that? Should they have figured out that the hijackers wouldn’t do what every one had done before and not hold the passengers hostage? This isn’t The Hunt for Red October, where Jack Ryan can risk the lives of millions on a hunch. And get it right.

Many pundits want to see someone held accountable. How can you do that? Intelligence didn’t give bad information. They didn’t have all the information. Did someone say, “Ah, don’t worry about it. Nobody hijacks planes any more.”? Did they do something wrong to be held accountable, or are people simply embarrassed? If you aren’t getting good analysis, find people who can do that better. But if the analysis draws wrong conclusions because the information is limited, how will you ever get anyone to commit to “I know for sure” rather than “I think” if you chop off legs for wrong “I thinks”?

No valid conclusions will be drawn from these hearings. And nobody, even in retrospect, will be able to see where previous conclusions were wrong. They will find, at best, where information wasn’t accurate, or where something considered inconsequential before might have been of value if placed in context with something else considered consequential. But how does that help in the future? There will always be culling of information. If all information is considered, conclusions scatter all over chart. There has to be some thread which drive the design to a final product.

If the Clinton Administration had killed bin Laden, the events of 9/11 would still have occurred. If we had picked up a hijacker from each flight, and each of them talked, perhaps we might have avoided the attack. But if we missed a single flight, that flight would have completed its mission.

So, all the politicians will get their feel-good moment. Some will blame Clinton, some will blame Bush. Still others will blame the CIA and FBI. Media personalities will be able to display their grasp of the entire process, and put it into words we commoners can understand. Nothing will happen except to make those who must piece the whole thing together every day using suspect information more cautious in their analysis.

Isn’t that what this process should be trying to eliminate?