Cheney's Fingerprints

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com

Monday, June 30, 2008; 12:43 PM

Seymour Hersh's latest New Yorker article describes an expansion of covert operations inside Iran and provides more evidence of Vice President Cheney's zeal to address the Iranian nuclear threat -- possibly by force -- before he and President Bush leave office.

Hersh writes: "Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program.

"Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of 'high-value targets' in the President's war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded. . . .

"'The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,' a person familiar with its contents said, and involved 'working with opposition groups and passing money.'"

What's behind such a confrontational move? On CNN yesterday, Hersh said: "I do have some access into some of the thinking, particularly in the vice president's office. They do not want -- Bush and Cheney do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program, with, they believe, a nuclear weapons program. They simply don't believe the National Intelligence Estimate that came out late last year that said they haven't done anything in nuclear weapons since '03. They just don't believe it.

"So they believe that their mission is to make sure that, before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program."

Yet Hersh describes considerable pushback from the Pentagon. He writes in the New Yorker: "Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House's concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. . . .

"A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preemptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, 'We'll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.' Gates's comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates's answer, the senator told me, was 'Let's just say that I'm here speaking for myself.'"

With preemption evidently off the table, some have speculated that Cheney is trying to come up with alternate ways the U.S. can be drawn into a conflict with Iran. See, for instance, my Aug. 10, 2007, column, Cheney's Secret Escalation Plan?

Hersh writes: "The potential for escalation became clear in early January, when five Iranian patrol boats, believed to be under the command of the Revolutionary Guard, made a series of aggressive moves toward three Navy warships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. . . .

"The crisis was quickly defused by Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the region. . . .

"Cosgriff's demeanor angered Cheney, according to the former senior intelligence official. But a lesson was learned in the incident: The public had supported the idea of retaliation, and was even asking why the U.S. didn't do more. The former official said that, a few weeks later, a meeting took place in the Vice-President's office. 'The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,' he said."

And Hersh describes what sounds like micromanagement of the covert operations from Cheney's office.

"'Everybody's arguing about the high-value-target list,' the former senior intelligence official said. 'The Special Ops guys are pissed off because Cheney's office set up priorities for categories of targets, and now he's getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.'"

The Reaction

Joby Warrick writes in The Washington Post: "The article drew a sharp reaction from administration officials, who denied that U.S. forces were engaged in operations inside Iran.

"'I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else,' U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker said yesterday during an interview on CNN's ' Late Edition.'"

But appearing after Crocker on the same show, Hersh suggested that Crocker's denial was both narrow and potentially uninformed: "[W]hen you run secret operations. . . . you may not tell the ambassador everything. Sometimes it's better not to have the ambassador know."

Hersh summed up the dangers presented by Bush's actions this way: "We have the special operations people, and they're great people. They're very loyal soldiers. They do what they're told, going around, killing people around the world without ambassadors knowing it, without the CIA station chiefs knowing it, without Congress knowing.

"If that doesn't sound like -- you know, with this president, if that doesn't make people nervous, I don't know what else would, I can just tell you."

In October, Hersh reported that Cheney was pushing limited strikes against Iran, ostensibly in defense of American troops in Iraq. The White House responded by challenging Hersh's credibility-- while failing to refute any of his allegations.

Borzou Daragahi, blogging for the Los Angeles Times, points out that in an " interview with the Times last week, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini said there was 'plentiful' evidence that the U.S. was waging a secret war against Iran, which included funding dissident groups, planting bombs and supporting militants such as the ethnic Baluchi group Jundollah, cited in the Hersh article as a potential recipient of U.S. aid."

Najmeh Bozorgmehr writes in the Financial Times: "The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned at the weekend that Iranian retaliation for a strike on its nuclear facilities could include blocking oil routes and striking Israel with long-range missiles.

"'Any confrontation between Iran and non-regional countries would surely be extended to oil which would definitely lead to a huge increase in prices,' Mohammad-Ali Jafari told the state-owned Jam-e Jam newspaper."

Michael T. Klare writes in a Toronto Star op-ed that "the Bush administration's greatest contribution to rising oil prices is its steady stream of threats to attack Iran, if it does not back down on the nuclear issue. The Iranians have made it plain that they would retaliate by attempting to block the flow of Gulf oil and otherwise cause turmoil in the energy market. Most analysts assume, therefore, that an encounter will produce a global oil shortage and prices well over $200 per barrel. It is not surprising, then, that every threat by Bush/Cheney (or their counterparts in Israel) has triggered a sharp rise in prices. This is where speculators enter the picture. Believing that a U.S.-Iranian clash is at least 50 per cent likely, some investors are buying futures in oil at $140, $150 or more per barrel, thinking they'll make a killing if there's an attack and prices zoom past $200. . . .

"[I]f this administration truly wanted to spare Americans further pain at the pump, there is one thing it could do that would have an immediate effect: declare that military force is not an acceptable option in the struggle with Iran. Such a declaration would take the wind out of the sails of speculators and set the course for a drop in prices."

Oversight (Non) Watch

David Bromwich blogs for Huffingtonpost.com: "The complete failure of congressional oversight, to which the article points, is a larger subject that will be with us until the election and beyond. For if the vice president and his neoconservative advisers have their way -- and they remain, in spite of setbacks, the most active, energetic, and ambitious faction within the Bush administration -- the U.S. will be at war with Iran or on the way to war by January 2009. And if that is so, it will matter less than we think who is elected in November. The momentum will be there; the country will be committed. . . .

"Vice President Cheney learned long ago that he can outplay the Democrats in the game of power, because he is willing to use power. The Democrats, by contrast, don't even want to be responsible for the power that they have."

Craig Crawford blogs for CQ: "If Democratic congressional leaders are signing on to George W. Bush's covert war against Iran, as Seymour Hersh reports in The New Yorker, does it really matter which party wins the White House in November? On this front at least, it seems that Bush gets a third term no matter which party wins."

Afghanistan Watch

In the New York Times is an expose of Bush's failed campaign against al Qaeda.

Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde write: "After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a 'war on terrorism' and made the destruction of [Osama] bin Laden's network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan's tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world. . . .

"The story of how Al Qaeda, whose name is Arabic for 'the base,' has gained a new haven is in part a story of American accommodation to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose advisers played down the terrorist threat. It is also a story of how the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq. . . .

"Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.

"Some former officials say Mr. Bush should have done more to confront Mr. Musharraf, by aggressively demanding that he acknowledge the scale of the militant threat. . . .

"Even critics of the White House agree that there was no foolproof solution to gaining control of the tribal areas. But by most accounts the administration failed to develop a comprehensive plan to address the militant problem there, and never resolved the disagreements between warring agencies that undermined efforts to fashion any coherent strategy."

Mazzetti and Rohde write that after Bush's overhaul of his national security team left no senior officials with close personal relationships with Musharraf, the president decided to talk to Musharraf himself. Apparently he was less than forceful.

"The conversations backfired. Two former United States government officials say they were surprised and frustrated when instead of demanding action from Mr. Musharraf, Mr. Bush repeatedly thanked him for his contributions to the war on terrorism. 'He never pounded his fist on the table and said, "Pervez you have to do this,' ' said a former senior intelligence official who saw transcripts of the phone conversations. But another senior administration official defended the president, saying Mr. Bush had not gone easy on the Pakistani leader."

Finally, in 2007, Cheney went to Islamabad in March 2007, along with Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy C.I.A. director, "to register American concern."

Mazzetti and Rohde write that "while Mr. Bush vowed early on that Mr. bin Laden would be captured 'dead or alive,' the moment in late 2001 when Mr. bin Laden and his followers escaped at Tora Bora was almost certainly the last time the Qaeda leader was in American sights, current and former intelligence officials say. Leading terrorism experts have warned that it is only a matter of time before a major terrorist attack planned in the mountains of Pakistan is carried out on American soil."

Iraq's Oil

Andrew E. Kramer writes in the New York Times: "A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.

"The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts' announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq's oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.

"In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said....

"The deals have been criticized by opponents of the Iraq war, who accuse the Bush administration of working behind the scenes to ensure Western access to Iraqi oil fields even as most other oil-exporting countries have been sharply limiting the roles of international oil companies in development."

Today's report would appear to contradict Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said on Fox News this month: "The United States government has stayed out of the matter of awarding the Iraq oil contracts. It's a private sector matter."

Similarly, as Anne Flaherty reported for the Associated Press last week, the White House insisted there was no U.S. involvement: "'Iraq is a sovereign country, and it can make decisions based on how it feels that it wants to move forward in its development of its oil resources,' said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

"'And if that means that our companies here in the United States can compete and win business, then that's for them and the Iraqis to decide,' Perino added. 'But I don't think the federal government of the United States needs to get involved.'"

Peter S. Goodman writes in the New York Times: "From the first days that American-led forces took control of Iraq, the conquering army took pains to broadcast that it was there to liberate the country, not occupy it, and certainly not to cart off its riches. Nowhere were such words more carefully dispensed than on the subject of Iraq's oil. . . .

"Many critics of the invasion derided that characterization. In Arab countries and among some people in America, there was suspicion that the war was a naked grab for oil that would open Iraq to multinational energy giants. President Bush had roots in the Texas oil industry. Vice President Cheney had overseen Halliburton, the oil services company. Whatever else happened, such critics said, energy players with links to the White House would surely wind up with a nice piece of the spoils."

Iraqi Agreement Watch

Alissa J. Rubin writes in the New York Times: "Iraqi government officials on Sunday criticized the American military for two recent attacks in which soldiers killed people who the government said were civilians. . . .

"An Iraqi government statement demanded that the soldiers be held accountable in Iraq. The issue is particularly delicate now because the two countries are negotiating a long-term security agreement and among the chief points of disagreement are whether the American military will be free to conduct operations and detain suspects and whether, if its soldiers kill civilians, they will have immunity from Iraqi law."

One of those attacks took place in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's home town, and killed a relative. Qassim Zein and Hannah Allam write for McClatchy Newspapers that "residents said the prime minister's office privately has reassured them that Maliki is furious with his American allies but that he wanted to keep the ensuing diplomatic crisis out of the media spotlight."

Cheney and North Korea

Philip Sherwell writes in the Telegraph: "Vice President Dick Cheney fought furiously to block efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to strike a controversial US compromise deal with North Korea over the communist state's nuclear programme, the Telegraph has learned.

"'The exchanges between Cheney's office and Rice's people at State got very testy. But ultimately Condi had the President's ear and persuaded him that his legacy would be stronger if they reached a deal with Pyongyang,' said a Pentagon adviser who was briefed on the battle.

"Mr Cheney's office is believed to have played a key role in the release two months ago of documents and photographs linking North Korea to a suspected nuclear site in Syria that was bombed by Israeli jets last year."

Cheney acolyte and former United Nations ambassador John R. Bolton writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: "The only good news is that there is little opportunity for the Bush administration to make any further concessions in its waning days in office. But for many erstwhile administration supporters, this is a moment of genuine political poignancy. Nothing can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse."

Subpoena Watch

Laurie Kellman writes for the Associated Press: "A House panel on Friday subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey for transcripts of interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney during the federal probe into the leak of a CIA agent's identity.

"Signed by Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., the subpoena requests all documents from the office of former Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald relating to interviews of Bush, Cheney and their aides that were conducted outside the presence of the grand jury investigating the leak.

"The subpoena requests similar accounts of interviews with former presidential adviser Karl Rove; I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff; former White House spokesman Scott McClellan; former presidential counselor Dan Bartlett; and former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card."

I first wrote in December about Waxman's attempts to get the Justice Department to turn over evidence from Fitzgerald's investigation that isn't covered by grand jury secrecy rules.

In a letter he sent Fitzgerald on Friday, Waxman noted that Fitzgerald reportedly did not object to the release of the FBI reports on Bush and Cheney's testimony. But Waxman wrote that the Justice Department has now officially refused to comply with his subpoena.

In order to "assist the Committee in evaluating the Department's position," Waxman asked Fitzgerald to provide information on "the date and terms of all agreements, conditions, and understandings" between Fitzgerald's investigators and Bush or Cheney.

EPA Watch

Ian Talley and Siobhan Hughes write in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "The White House is trying to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from publishing a document that could become the legal roadmap for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S., said people close to the matter.

"The fight over the document is the latest development in a long-running conflict between the EPA and the White House over climate-change policy. It will likely intensify ongoing Congressional investigations into the Bush administration's involvement in the agency's policymaking.

"The draft document, which has been viewed by The Wall Street Journal, outlines how the government, under the Clean Air Act, could regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from mobile sources such as cars, trucks, trains, planes and boats, and from stationary sources such as power stations, chemical plants and refineries. The document is based on a multimillion-dollar study conducted over two years.

"The White House's Office of Management and Budget has asked the EPA to delete sections of the document that say such emissions endanger public welfare, say how those gases could be regulated, and show an analysis of the cost of regulating greenhouse gases in the U.S. and other countries.

"The OMB instead wants the document to show that the Clean Air Act is flawed and that greenhouse-gas regulations should be developed under new legislation, several people close to the matter said. The EPA needs to clear a final draft with the White House in order to release the document."

Torture Watch

Johanna Neuman blogged on Friday for the Los Angeles Times: "Democrats in Congress are still reeling over the lip they got [Thursday] from the Bush administration's key experts on torture. Vice President Dick Cheney chief of staff David Addington was so disdainful that some are wondering if he can be prosecuted for lying to Congress.

"'Of all the hearings I've attended since I started serving on the Judiciary Committee four years ago, I have never felt more strongly that a witness was lying,' Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in an interview. 'At the end of the day I'm not sure how much we can do -- we can't prove what he says he doesn't recollect.'"

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial board writes that Thursday's hearing "makes us wonder if anyone in this administration will ever be held accountable for anything at all."

Del Quentin Wilber writes in The Washington Post that lawyers representing detainees in the U.S. military prison at Bagram air base have cases that could turn "into the next legal battleground over the rights of terrorism suspects apprehended on foreign soil. More lawsuits are expected on behalf of Bagram detainees in coming months, the lawyers said."

W, the Movie

John Horn of the Los Angeles Times reports on location with Oliver Stone, director of "W.," his "forthcoming -- and potentially divisive -- drama about the personal, political and psychological evolution of the current president."

Horn writes that it's "possible to see that 'W.' could be, in a complicated way, sympathetic." But he wonders "if Stone is, in some way, muzzling himself to craft a mass-appeal movie, has he cast aside one of his best selling points?"

Cartoon Watch

Monte Wolverton on Bush's Iraqi mission accomplished; Heng Kim Song on how North Korea is playing Bush.

FBI Cracks "Malicious" Mortgage Fraud
More Than 400 Charged Nationwide

June 19, 2008

Click HERE for the story and background

America the Resilient

Defying Terrorism and Mitigating Natural Disasters

By Stephen E. Flynn

From Foreign Affairs , March/April 2008

Summary: A climate of fear and a sense of powerlessness caused by the threats of terrorism and natural disasters are undermining American ideals and fueling political demagoguery. Rebuilding the resilience of American society is the way to reverse this and respond to today's challenges.

STEPHEN E. FLYNN is Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (Random House, 2007), from which this essay is drawn.

WHEN IT COMES TO MANAGING the hazards of the twenty-first century, it is reckless to relegate the American public to the sidelines. During the Cold War, the threat of nuclear weapons placed the fate of millions in the hands of a few. But responding to today's challenges, the threats of terrorism and natural disasters, requires the broad engagement of civil society. The terrorists' chosen battlegrounds are likely to be occupied by civilians, not soldiers. And more than the loss of innocent lives is at stake: a climate of fear and a sense of powerlessness in the face of adversity are undermining faith in American ideals and fueling political demagoguery. Sustaining the United States' global leadership and economic competitiveness ultimately depends on bolstering the resilience of its society. Periodically, things will go badly wrong. The United States must be prepared to minimize the consequences of those eventualities and bounce back quickly.

Resilience has historically been one of the United States' great national strengths. It was the quality that helped tame a raw continent and then allowed the country to cope with the extraordinary challenges that occasionally placed the American experiment in peril. From the early settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts to the westward expansion, Americans willingly ventured into the wild to build better lives. During the epic struggles of the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and the two world wars; occasional economic downturns and the Great Depression; and the periodic scourges of earthquakes, epidemics, floods, and hurricanes, Americans have drawn strength from adversity. Each generation bequeathed to the next a sense of confidence and optimism about the future.

But this reservoir of self-sufficiency is being depleted. The United States is becoming a brittle nation. An increasingly urbanized and suburbanized population has embraced just-in-time lifestyles tethered to ATM machines and 24-hour stores that provide instant access to cash, food, and gas. When the power goes out and these modern conveniences fail, Americans are incapacitated. Meanwhile, two decades of taxpayer rebellion have stripped away the means necessary for government workers to provide help during emergencies. Most city and state public health and emergency-management departments are not funded adequately enough for them to carry out even their routine work. A flu pandemic or other major disaster would completely overwhelm them. A report on disaster preparedness released in June 2006 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security found that only 25 percent of state emergency operations plans and 10 percent of municipal plans were sufficient to cope with a natural disaster or a terrorist attack; the majority of the plans were deemed "not fully adequate, feasible, or acceptable to manage catastrophic events." And even as community and individual preparedness is in decline, nine out of ten Americans now live in locations that place them at a moderate to high risk of experiencing damaging high wind, earthquakes, flooding, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, or wildfires. Climate change will increase the frequency of such calamities.

The United States' aging infrastructure compounds the risk of destruction and disruption. One of the rationales for building the interstate highway system was to support the evacuation of major cities if the Cold War turned hot; in 2006, the year the system turned 50, Americans spent a total of 3.5 billion hours stuck in traffic. Public works departments construct "temporary" patches for dams, leaving Americans who live downstream one major storm away from having water pouring into their living rooms. Bridges are outfitted with the civil engineering equivalent of diapers. Like the occupants of a grand old mansion who elect not to do any upkeep, Americans have been neglecting the infrastructure that supports a modern society. In 2005, after a review of hundreds of studies and reports and a survey of more than 2,000 engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued a scathing report card on 15 categories of infrastructure: the national power grid, dams, canal locks, and seven other infrastructure sectors received Ds; the best grade, a C+, went to bridges, and even in that case, 160,570 bridges, out of a total of 590,750, were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

These downward trends in preparedness and infrastructural integrity could be reversed by stepped-up investment and more effective leadership. Unfortunately, Washington has been leading the nation in the opposite direction. Since September 11, 2001, the White House has failed to draw on the legacy of American grit, volunteerism, and ingenuity in the face of adversity. Instead, it has sent a mixed message, touting terrorism as a clear and present danger while telling Americans to just go about their daily lives. Unlike during World War II, when the entire U.S. population was mobilized, much of official Washington today treats citizens as helpless targets or potential victims.

This discounting of the public can be traced to the culture of secrecy and paternalism that now pervades the national defense and federal law enforcement communities. After decades of combating Soviet espionage during the Cold War, the federal security establishment instinctively resists disclosing information for fear that it might end up in the wrong hands. Straight talk about the country's vulnerabilities and how to cope in emergencies is presumed to be too frightening for public consumption.

This is madness. The overwhelming majority of Americans live in places where the occurrence of a natural disaster is a matter of not if, but when. And terrorist groups' targets of choice are noncombatants and infrastructure. These are hazards that can be managed only by an informed, inspired, and mobilized public. Both the first preventers and the first responders are likely to be civilians.

LESSON UNLEARNED

In retrospect, it is remarkable that the events of September 11 have been used to elevate the role of professional warriors, spies, and cops at the expense of enlisting citizens to assist in securing the nation. Unfortunately, the prevailing interpretation of that day focuses almost entirely on the three airliners that struck the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. President George W. Bush has concluded from those attacks that the U.S. government needs to do whatever it takes to hunt down its enemies before they kill innocent civilians again.

But it is the story of United Airlines flight 93, the thwarted fourth plane, which crashed in a Pennsylvania field, that ought to be the dominant 9/11 narrative. That plane's passengers foiled al Qaeda without any help from -- and in spite of the inaction of -- the U.S. government. There were no federal air marshals aboard the aircraft. The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, could not intercept it; it did not even know that the plane had been hijacked. Yet United 93 was stopped 140 miles from its likely destination -- the U.S. Capitol or the White House -- because of the actions of the passengers who stormed the cockpit. Of all the passengers on the four 9/11 planes, only those aboard United 93 knew their hijackers' intention. Theirs was the last plane off the ground. Once the terrorists took control of it, they did not prevent passengers from making urgent calls to family and friends, who told them what their counterparts on the three earlier flights discovered only during their final seconds. Americans should celebrate -- and ponder -- the reality that the legislative and executive centers of the U.S. federal government, whose constitutional duty is to "provide for the common defense," were themselves defended that day by one thing alone: an alert and heroic citizenry.

The story of United 93 also raises a serious question that the 9/11 Commission failed to examine: might the passengers on the other three planes have reacted, too, if they had known the hijackers' plans? The 9/11 Commission documents that in the years leading up to the attacks on New York and Washington, a number of people inside the U.S. government had collected intelligence suggesting that terrorists were interested in using passenger airliners as weapons. But because that information was viewed as sensitive, the government never shared it with the public. What if it had been widely publicized? How would the passengers aboard the first three jets have behaved?

The next president needs to embrace the United 93 story -- and consider these questions -- in order to reawaken the spirit of community and volunteerism witnessed throughout the nation in the months immediately following 9/11. If U.S. history is a guide, people will respond to the call to service. They only need to be asked.

THE BEST DEFENSE

The rallying point should be a call for greater resilience. Building the resilience of American society would increase the nation's security by depriving al Qaeda and other terrorists of the fear dividend they hope to reap by threatening to carrying out catastrophic attacks. In military terms, the United States is too large, and al Qaeda's capacity to attack the U.S. homeland too limited, for terrorists like them to inflict nationwide destruction. All they can hope for is to spawn enough fear to spur Washington into overreacting in costly and self-destructive ways.

Fear arises both from being aware of a threat and from feeling powerless to deal with it. And although it is impossible to eliminate every threat that causes such fear, Americans do have the power to manage their fear and their reactions to it. For more then six years, however, Washington has been sounding the alarm about apocalyptic terrorist groups while providing the American people with no meaningful guidance on how to deal with the threats they pose or the consequences of a successful attack. This toxic mix of fear and helplessness jeopardizes U.S. security by increasing the risk that the U.S. government will overreact to another terrorist attack.

What Washington should do instead is arm Americans with greater confidence in their ability to prepare for and recover from terrorist strikes and disasters of all types. Confidence in their resilience would cap their fear and in turn undermine much of the incentives terrorists have for incurring the costs and risks of targeting the U.S. homeland.

The United States needs the kind of resilience that the British displayed during World War II when V-1 bombs were raining down on London. Volunteers put the fires out, rescued the wounded from the rubble, and then went on with their lives until the air-raid warnings were sounded again. More than a half century later, the United Kingdom showed its resilience once more after suicide bombers attacked the London Underground with the intent of crippling the city's public transportation system. That objective was foiled when resolute commuters showed up to board the trains the next morning.

Such resilience results from a sustained commitment to four factors. First, there is robustness, the ability to keep operating or to stay standing in the face of disaster. In some cases, it translates into designing structures or systems (such as buildings and bridges) strong enough to take a foreseeable punch. In others (such as developing transportation, energy, and communications networks), robustness requires devising substitutable or redundant systems that can be brought to bear should something important break or stop working. Robustness also entails investing in and maintaining elements of critical infrastructure, such as dams and levees, so that they can withstand low-probability but high-consequence events.

Second is resourcefulness, which involves skillfully managing a disaster once it unfolds. It includes identifying options, prioritizing what should be done both to control damage and to begin mitigating it, and communicating decisions to the people who will implement them. Resourcefulness depends primarily on people, not technology. Ensuring that U.S. society is resourceful means providing adequate resources to the National Guard, the American Red Cross, public health officials, firefighters, emergency-room staffs, and other emergency planners and responders.

The third element of resilience is rapid recovery, which is the capacity to get things back to normal as quickly as possible after a disaster. Carefully drafted contingency plans, competent emergency operations, and the means to get the right people and resources to the right places are crucial. Some small communities, such as Eden Prairie, Minnesota, are organizing themselves so that everyone can pitch in right away in the case of an emergency. Citizens are being trained to be auxiliary first responders, and local companies are committing themselves to providing resources and lending expertise in order to dramatically reduce the economic aftershocks of any disaster. Among the larger cities, Seattle has put together a business emergency network, a communications system linking the city government and businesses. It is designed to aid the local business community in predisaster preparation and to help disseminate information quickly and accurately when disaster strikes.

Finally, resilience means having the means to absorb the new lessons that can be drawn from a catastrophe. It is foolish for a society to go right back to business as usual as soon as the dust clears, by, say, rebuilding homes on floodplains or failing to resolve interoperable communications issues that confound coordination and information sharing among first responders. People must be willing to make pragmatic changes, such as relocating when their homes are repeatedly destroyed or reaching deeper into their pockets to pay for the communications and other tools communities need to improve their robustness, resourcefulness, and recovery capabilities before the next crisis.

Working to strengthen the four features of resilience is a far more open and inclusive process than a national effort centered on security, because it requires drawing on the United States' greatest strengths: civil society and the private sector. Furthermore, whereas boosting the security apparatus is usually very expensive, advancing resilience almost always provides a positive return on a relatively smaller investment. As a June 2007 report by the Council on Competitiveness, a Washington-based group "committed to ensuring the future prosperity of all Americans," concluded, "The ability to manage emerging risks, anticipate the interactions between different types of risk, and bounce back from disruption will be a competitive differentiator for companies and countries alike in the 21st century."

BRAVE NEW AMERICA

Increasing the resilience of the American people will require presidential leadership. For years, the fear of terrorism has been stoked and the federal government's ability to defeat radical jihadists has been exaggerated. This has created a passive citizenry that oscillates between fretfulness and cynicism. In his or her inaugural address, the next president will need to call on Americans to recapture their spirit of endurance and optimism. During the new administration's first hundred days, it must work with Congress to put in place programs that help Americans build robustness, achieve resourcefulness, enhance their ability to recover swiftly, and revise designs and protocols based on lessons learned from crises. Given the American tradition of self-reliance and volunteerism, the effort will strike a strong bipartisan chord.

The new secretary of homeland security should be charged with transforming the department's law enforcement culture, which so far has held citizens and the private sector at arms length. He or she must also reach out to the private sector and task it with taking the lead in advancing resilience at the company and community levels. CEOs should not require much prodding. As globalization, interdependence, and geopolitics become more volatile forces, people and companies will gravitate to those firms and places that are dependable. Those enterprises that do poorly at managing crises because they fail to foresee and prepare for them will lose shareholder value and market share. Companies adept at managing operational risk can also help communities rebound when disasters strike. In 2005, for example, Wal-Mart was able to bring 66 percent of its stores in the Gulf States back into operation within 48 hours of Hurricane Katrina's coming ashore, providing many of the critical supplies that everyday citizens, small businesses, and government agencies needed to get back on their feet.

Two tricky but potentially influential allies in the effort could be the mass media and Hollywood. To a large extent, the stories Americans see on their small and big screens have been part of the problem. A more inspirational and less dramatic reality is rarely portrayed. As the mass evacuation of Manhattan on September 11 made clear, in real crises Americans largely keep their wits about them and assist one another. During World War II, Hollywood played a helpful public-service role by supporting war-bond drives and producing training films, while providing much-needed entertainment. Media executives today could do the same by committing themselves to relating stories and communicating messages that inform and inspire individual and societal resilience.

In the end, everyday Americans will have to step up to the plate in their homes, schools, and workplaces. An August 2006 study sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security found that nine out of ten Americans believed that being prepared for emergencies was important. Yet a poll commissioned in the same month by Time magazine found that only 16 percent of Americans thought they were "very well prepared" for an emergency.

The good news is that most of the things people can do at the individual level to prepare themselves, their families, and their employees are relatively easy. These measures include purchasing a three-day emergency kit, developing a family emergency contact plan, and visiting Web sites maintained by the Red Cross and other organizations that provide instructive what-to-do lists. Such efforts can provide real peace of mind and save lives when disaster strikes. They would also represent tangible expressions of American support for the U.S. soldiers who put their lives on the line beyond U.S. shores to protect a nation that today remains recklessly exposed to the consequences of a successful terrorist attack.

Rebuilding the resilience of U.S. society is an agenda that could reverse the debilitating politics and mounting cynicism now bedeviling the U.S. electorate. Whereas increasing security measures is an inevitable answer to a society's fears, resilience rests on a foundation of confidence and optimism. It involves taking stock of what is truly precious and ensuring its durability in a way that would allow Americans to remain true to their ideals no matter what tempest the future may bring.