Bill Moyers on the 9/11 Commission report

Asleep at the Wheel

By Bill Moyers, NOW with Bill Moyers. Posted September 10, 2004.

Much of the truth about 9/11 is now public, thanks to the Commission's report: Key government officials failed the system, and they failed the American people.

It has taken three years for the details of the terrorist plot of 9/11 to emerge. The fateful turns that led to the attacks have finally entered the public discourse. Their lessons, however, have yet to be learned.

The first lesson is that the highest officials in government did not want us to know the truth.

They already had the story they wanted Americans to believe: Nearly 3,000 people had died, we were assured, because the terrorists turned our liberties against us, had brazenly exploited our open society. According to this official view, the atrocities were inevitable, the plot so diabolical and its execution so precise that only a superhero could have prevented it.

It sounded right. For the American people, the terror seemed to have fallen out of that near-perfect September sky, out of the clear blue.

We now know otherwise. The report of the 9/11 Commission lays the story bare in exhaustive, forensic detail...

Read more at http://www.alternet.org/election04/19839/