Secrets, secrets, secrets. Twenty-eight pages of a joint House-Senate report on the failures of U.S. intelligence before Sept. 11 remain classified. The people of this country deserve answers.

The 900-page document cites a multitude of problems with the way our government went about defending us from terrorist attack. The report provides important, specific information about how a group of 19 hijackers managed to carry out an attack that left more than 3,000 Americans dead. There were plenty of mistakes to go around.

Despite the Bush administration’s refusal to declassify the remaining parts of the report, there are growing bipartisan efforts working toward that end.

Republican Sen. Richard Shelby says that 95 percent of the information in the report could be declassified without damaging ongoing investigations or covert operations.

Allegations are flying that the blacked-out information implicates the Saudi Arabian government in Sept. 11. That’s probably an oversimplification of what’s really in the report. The Saudis have backed extremist religious groups and have played a dangerous game of supporting the United States abroad while allowing elements of the government to rage critically for a domestic audience. The two faces allow the government to maintain relations with the United States while providing the country’s angry and disenfranchised an external target for their hate. Taken together, the Saudi monarchy hopes to craft policy that enables it to have it both ways and survive.

If, as suggested, the 28 pages embarrass the House of Saud and U.S. policymakers who have defended the country, so be it. It’s unlikely the country directly supported the terrorists who attacked us. But it is likely that elements of the government provided tacit, indirect backing, funneling money to dangerous groups and people.

The truth is important to know. Then we can evaluate whether our foreign policy rhetoric matches our actions and relationships.


PAM hits the fan


Some Pentagon planners have fallen over the edge.

Until the plug was pulled Tuesday, some twisted minds in the Department of Defense had devised a scheme to use gambling to predict terrorist activity. That’s right, people would have put their money where their predictions were. Pick the place and plot, take home the price.

Called the Policy Analysis Market, the idea was based on futures markets in which speculators forecast trends. Here’s how the New York Times described the process: “In the proposed futures market, traders bullish on a biological attack on Israel, say, or bearish on the chances of a North Korean missile strike would have had the opportunity to bet on the likelihood of such events on a new Internet site established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

We’re not against innovative ideas to combat mayhem, death and destruction. Some off-the-wall ideas are worthwhile. But establishing government policy based on an Internet gambling site is outlandish.

Our government shouldn’t be running some exaggerated death pool on the world. But it almost was.

The Bush administration had sought $8 million to fund this project. The program was supposed to start signing up traders today. Thank goodness Sens. Byron Dorgan and Ron Wyden called attention to the debacle. The political fallout was fast, furious and bipartisan. So long PAM.
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