If Innocent Mistakes Led to 9/11, Would the Government Have Promoted the People Who Made the Mistakes?

I have previously argued that - if 9/11 really happened because "no one could have imagined" that terrorists would slam planes into buildings, and that honest "mistakes were made" - then the government would have fixed the problems which led to the security breach -- especially the simple fixes.

Similarly, if 9/11 was caused made by mistakes by government employees, the government would have fired or demoted the people who made the mistakes. At the very least, the wouldn't give the people who made the mistakes even more power, right?

But that's exactly what the White House has done. For example:

• FBI Director Mueller personally awards Marion (Spike) Bowman with a presidential citation and cash bonus of approximately 25 percent of his salary. Bowman, head of the FBI’s National Security Law Unit and the person who refused to seek a special warrant for a search of Zacarias Moussaoui’s belongings before the 9/11 attacks, is among nine recipients of bureau awards for “exceptional performance.” (See this). The award comes shortly after a 9/11 Congressional Inquiry report saying Bowman’s unit gave Minneapolis FBI agents “inexcusably confused and inaccurate information” that was “patently false.” Bowman’s unit also blocked an urgent request by FBI agents to begin searching for Khalid Almihdhar after his name was put on a watch list. In early 2000, the FBI acknowledged serious blunders in surveillance Bowman’s unit conducted during sensitive terrorism and espionage investigations, including agents who illegally videotaped suspects, intercepted e-mails without court permission, and recorded the wrong phone conversations

• David Frasca, head of the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit, is “still at headquarters,” Grassley notes. The Phoenix memo, which was addressed to Frasca, was received by his unit and warned that al-Qaeda terrorists could be using flight schools inside the US (see this and this). Two weeks later Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested while training to fly a 747, but Frasca’s unit was unhelpful when local FBI agents wanted to search his belongings — a step that could have prevented 9/11 (see this and this ). According to CNN: "The Phoenix memo was buried; the Moussaoui warrant request was denied." Even after 9/11, Frasca continued to “[throw] up roadblocks” in the Moussaoui case. (New York Times, 5/27/2002)

• Pasquale D’Amuro, the FBI’s counterterrorism chief in New York City before 9/11, is promoted to the bureau’s top counterterrorism post

• FBI Supervisory special agent Michael Maltbie, who removed information from the Minnesota FBI’s application to get the search warrant for Moussaoui, is promoted to field supervisor and goes on to head the Joint Terrorism Task Force at the FBI’s Cleveland office ( and see this)

• An FBI official who tolerates penetration of the translation department by Turkish spies and encourages slow translations just after 9/11 is promoted (see this and this)

• The CIA promoted two unnamed top leaders of its unit responsible for tracking al-Qaeda in 2000 even though the unit mistakenly failed to put the two suspected terrorists on the watch list. “The leaders were promoted even though some people in the intelligence community and in Congress say the counterterrorism unit they ran bore some responsibility for waiting until August 2001 to put the suspect pair on the interagency watch list.”

• The head of the CIA, who has been roundly criticized for not stopping 9/11, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom because, according to President Bush, he:

  "played [a] pivotal role... in great events, and [his] efforts have made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty."