The Preventable... Pre-emptive...
9/11 Chair: Attack Was PreventableFor the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.
'This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right,' said Thomas Kean.
'As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done,' he said. 'This was not something that had to happen.'
Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.
I wonder how this statement will sit with the
countless confused.
Each person you spoke to, and they were from all over the country, were pleased that the new trade center would be the world's tallest building. Also, they were supremely happy because Saddam Hussein had had something to do with blowing up the Twin Towers.
Here was a woman in the cold, Linda Jacobs, standing with her husband, Ken, from Newport News, Va., and saying, "He probably did. Who knows. But he probably did."
Her husband said, "Oh. yeah. He was in on it."
A couple from Knoxville, Tenn., Elaine and Will, agreed. "I believe he was in on it on some level," she said. "He was around there someplace," the husband said. Betty Hipp, San Antonio. "Of course Saddam was responsible."
I was out there for some time, taking notes and hometowns, and it was all the same. Saddam is bin Laden.
To thaw out, I went into the Burger King on the corner of Liberty and Church, where Mary Garcia, 53, was behind the counter and looking out the big window and right at the trade center and the people there to look at it.
"For me Hussein did it, the other guy, too. These people both is together in Iraq and in the trade center," Garcia said. "If Saddam don't do nothing, why he go into a hole? Because he is afraid we catch him for the World Trade Center that he did with bin Laden? The both of them together."
She said she has a son in Iraq, Sgt. Peter Garcia.
"He was from Italy, they send him to Iraq. He's married already in Italy. His wife doesn't stay at the base in Italy. She goes home to Puerto Rico with the baby.
"Yesterday I get up in the morning and I hear they caught this Saddam. I go, oh, thank you God. Oh, how happy could you make me? Now maybe my son comes home."
It is a rule of mine not to use man on the street interviews, but this was so unanimous and forceful that I had to listen. And as I did, I could hear George Bush and his people all saying: "We went and got Saddam because it is better to fight terrorists in Iraq than in Manhattan."
* Ray, 12/18/2003 01:18:28 PM
