A portion of the hearing focused on the supposed failure of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to notify the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD), which is responsible for deploying fighter aircraft within the United States and Canada, in a timely way of the September 11 hijackings. NORAD commander Ralph Eberhart told the commission that if the FAA had given NORAD adequate notice, it could have shot down the planes that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Among other measures, the hearing detailed moves taken since then to set up closer collaboration between the FAA, which regulates civil aviation, and the U.S. military.

Direct communications links have been set up between FAA facilities, police agencies, and NORAD. The FAA has assigned air traffic controllers to NORAD facilities and set up a 24-hour network, called the Domestic Events Net, to link FAA security and air traffic personnel to all air traffic centers, all NORAD Air Defense Sectors, the Secret Service, U.S. Customs, and other federal agencies. The FAA has also integrated its long-range radar into the NORAD system.

NORAD has dramatically increased its activity as well. “Since September 2001, NORAD has flown over 1,500 active air defense missions,” said Eberhart. “By contrast, only 147 sorties were flown in 2000.”

A 9-11 commission statement in April at the 10th hearing focused on the restructuring of the FBI and its closer collaboration with other government and cop agencies. According to the statement, appropriations for the FBI’s National Security Program have nearly doubled since September 11.

The statement applauded the USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress at the end of 2001, for having “removed legal hurdles that were widely believed to have hindered the FBI’s intelligence investigations.” The commission complained, however, that the Patriot Act did not go far enough. “Although there is now less hesitancy in seeking approval for electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA],” it said, “the application process nonetheless continues to be long and slow.”

FISA established a secret court in the Justice Department in 1978 to enable the FBI to get approval for spying without having to apply at a regular court. This secret court has approved more than 10,000 wiretaps and has never turned down a single police request.

The day after the April hearing, the New York Times reported that White House officials are discussing the creation of “a powerful new post of director of national intelligence, which would be given the management of the government’s 15 intelligence agencies, and control of their budgets.” The proposal for such an “intelligence czar” has been a feature of the campaign for president of Democratic candidate John Kerry, who has boasted, “I can fight a far more effective war on terror.”

Pressing along this course has been a recurring theme of the hearings. “We must dramatically accelerate our progress in the area of intelligence collection, analysis, and sharing,” said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a June 17 statement. “Consumers of intelligence must be able to ‘pull’ the information they need to plan, decide, and act…. The ‘need to share’ needs to replace the concept of ‘need to know.’”  
 
 
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