Five years after the attacks of 9/11, is the United States any safer? To find out, FP spoke with Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, about whether the U.S. government is prepared for the next attack.
FOREIGN POLICY: How well do you think the U.S. government has responded to the recommendations made in the 9/11 Commission Report?
Lee Hamilton: I think the government has responded reasonably well. [The commission] had two mandates. First, to tell the story of 9/11, and I think we did that in an acceptable—even compelling—way. And second, to make recommendations to make the American people even more secure. We made 41 recommendations; roughly half have been put into effect. Both the president and congress have looked at them seriously, and they are still considering a few others, [having] rejected one or two. We’re pleased with the reception that the government, both the legislative and executive branches, has given.
FP: What’s the single biggest response that can be adopted to make America safer?
LH: The single biggest thing that can be done to make America safer is to adopt a posture of urgency. Our concern is that there’s just too much of a business-as-usual attitude toward homeland security, that it’s placed alongside many other priorities of the nation. Our view is that the number one responsibility of government is the safety and security of its people. So these [commission] recommendations that have not yet been enacted should have priority.
FP: One of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report is for the United States to attempt to improve its image in the Islamic world. Do you think we’ve done that?
LH: I think we’ve got a long way to go in our relationships with the Islamic world. There are 1.3 billion Muslims from London to Jakarta. We know that they hold the United States in very low esteem. We often have favorable ratings in the single digits in [Islamic] countries. Osama bin Laden is thought more highly of than American leaders. So we have a lot to do. It’s the work of a generation to do it.
We want the Islamic community to know that we’re on their side in the effort to improve the quality of their lives. Having said that, we have to recognize that there is a certain hard-core extremist element that will not adopt our ways. They will simply have to be removed.
FP: Information sharing across U.S. government agencies was noted as a major weakness by the 9/11 report. Has that improved?
LH: I think information sharing has improved, but it’s got a long way to go. We had almost no information sharing prior to 9/11. The structures are in place now, I think, to improve the flow of information. But it’s a work in progress. We’ve got a lot of work to do.
FP: As information gathering by government agencies has increased, there’s also been a lot of debate about privacy concerning programs like the [National Security Agency] wiretaps and databases being kept by the FBI. How important is large-scale domestic surveillance to American security?
LH: In a world of terrorism, you’re going to have to do some things you ordinarily would not do. As you fight the war on terror, one thing is very clear: Government usually expands. It expands in terms of budget, it expands in terms of people, and it expands in terms of intrusiveness into people’s lives. I think some of the techniques that have to be used in the war on terror are valid, but I do not want those techniques to be employed by a single person. Power has to be checked. So if you’re going to use these surveillance methods, the institutions of government must be involved and must check the power of the president.
There also needs to be a very active, robust civil liberties and privacy board. We have such a board; it was not staffed and did not have a budget for a long time. It now has both but it has yet to prove itself in terms of the protection of the civil liberties and privacy of the American people.
FP: Do you think America faces or will face the kinds of problems Britain is now dealing with in terms of homegrown terrorism?
LH: [The British] face a different kind of a problem than we do. They have a Muslim population that’s not as well assimilated as it is here, for a variety of reasons. But it is not a problem we can say we have solved.
FP: Are Americans safer today than they were five years ago?
LH: Yes. I think Americans are safer today than they were five years ago. I also think it’s a more dangerous world than it was five years ago. Both things are true. The conventional statement we made in the report is that we are safer but not safe. We still have a lot to do to make ourselves safer.
Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. For 34 years, he served as a Democratic representative from Indiana in the U.S. Congress, where he chaired the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He currently sits on the President’s Homeland Security Advisory Council.
