9/11 Twenty Years Later

On that Tuesday morning in September 2001, I was in my office in Hyannis, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, engaged in a conference call with perhaps twenty other people from around the world. Suddenly, one of the callers, a woman in London, interrupted and said, “A plane just flew into the World Trade Center in New York. It’s on the telly.” I asked only one question: “Can you tell what the weather’s like in New York?” Her response, “Oh, yes, I can see blue sky, so it must be good weather.” I simply said, “Then it also must be a terrorist attack. Planes don’t fly into Manhattan skyscrapers when the weather is good.” 

With that I stopped the call, rescheduling it for another day, and went to our corporate dining room where I knew there was a large screen TV. Of course, when the second plane crashed into the south tower, everyone knew we’d suffered a terrorist attack. This began our 20-year journey to the present day and its confusions.

This Sunday morning our local newspaper devoted its entire first section to the vicious terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 and it’s aftermath. This is a good thing, and I look forward to making my way through the series of articles as I try to relax this Sunday afternoon. But our newspaper’s primary, front-page headline made me cringe. The paper? The Villages Daily Sun, and the headline read:

After the towers fell, we were frightened and angry. We ached for security, and we’re willing to trade some civil liberties to get it. 

Now, unlike the so-called journalist who penned this headline, I can speak only for myself. So what’s wrong with the headline? Well, I certainly agree with part of his first sentence. I was angry. No doubt about that. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever been angrier. But of one thing I can be sure, I was not frightened. Only a coward, a fool, or  one of little faith would be frightened in the wake of a terrorist attack like 9/11. Sadly, we have many of each in our nation. I pray for them, that they will open their hearts to God’s gift of faith to obliterate their fears.

I also turned immediately to prayer, not through fear, but because I knew we must, as a people, turn to God. We must beg for His help and direction, for His grace in dealing with this horrendous attack on our nation, this act of war. And because of its source, this attack was actually an attack on Judeo-Christian society, on Western Civilization, or what’s left of it. 

As for the second sentence of today’s headline, I completely disagree. Back on that first September 11th, I did not, in any way, “ache for security.” No, as an old Navy pilot, as a retired Navy Captain, I wished I were about 20 years younger so I could have joined the fight-to-be. If I ached for anything, that was it. 

And so, after prayer, the first thought that ran through my angry mind was one of concern, for I knew that governments love to accumulate power and once they have it, they never relinquish it. What will our government do to enhance our security? At first, I dismissed those concerns and naively believed government agencies responsible for our security would take proper and wise steps to protect our nation from future attacks. Again, unlike the headline writer, I definitely was not willing to trade my constitutional rights, my civil liberties, for a bit more security. In fact, drastic security measures were about the last thing on my mind. I had hoped we would learn from the one democratic nation that had been the most successful in preventing terrorist hijackings, the nation of Israel. Israel’s approach was personal; that is, it focused on the person more than the stuff. They didn’t ignore the contents of baggage and personal belongings, but they turned their attention primarily to the person. They had discovered that terrorists often had obvious, predictable traits, that potential terrorists could be identified before they boarded an aircraft. But instead, President Bush created another pair of unwieldy bureaucracies, the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA, and along with his successor and an agreeable Congress, resorted to extreme but not always the most effective means to increase security. In this effort we often use blatantly unconstitutional, and often quite foolish, approaches to security. Today the elites who burden the nation’s citizens with authoritarian rules avoid them by flying in government or private aircraft. I, too, avoid commercial air travel whenever possible, but since I lack the means, I must drive. I simply refuse to subject myself and Dear Diane to the folly of present day aviation security…like the time a TSA employee revealed that I was singled out for more intensive search because I wore a cross on my lapel.

And today, we look to Afghanistan, where all this began twenty years ago, and for reasons we can blame only on ourselves, nothing has changed.

Pray for our nation. 

 

Hilary and Classified Material

Back in my Navy days I held several positions that demanded daily, indeed almost constant, access and use of highly classified material. Most of it was classified either "Secret" or "Top Secret" and some, because it related to special circumstances that I still cannot discuss, was given a special classification. That said, I have no doubt that if I, or any of my colleagues in similar circumstances, had done what Hilary Clinton did, I would have spent many years in Leavenworth or another similar federal facility. At best, if my superiors and others were especially kind, my naval career would have come to a rather abrupt end without future access to classified material. This, in fact, is what happened to an acquaintance who neglected to lock both his office door and a safe containing Top Secret material before he left for lunch. Unfortunately for him, his Executive Officer happened to stop by his empty office and noticed the unlocked safe. To make matters worse, several civilian workers were in the area doing electrical work. Borrowing the words of FBI Director James Comey, this officer was "extremely careless in...handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." and paid a dear price for it.

FBI Director James Comey, looking concerned

When it comes to the handling of such material, carelessness, therefore, is never an excuse (at least it hasn't been until now). In other words, it shouldn't matter that the individual (whether he or she is a naval officer or a Secretary of State) didn't intend to share classified material with the bad guys. What matters is that carelessness (i.e., incompetence) created a situation in which those same bad guys could gain access to the material.

In my day, before the internet and email and web sites, security concerns were primarily physical; i.e., locked doors and safes, encrypted radio transmissions, basic computer security, etc. The internet changed everything. Back in the mid-seventies, when I taught a course in computer security at the U. S. Naval Academy, I would show my students how easy it was to gain access to a variety of computer systems via a network called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the foundational network from which today's worldwide internet evolved. In my 1975 classroom, using a regular commercial phone line, portable terminal, and acoustic coupler, I could easily enter this network and peek into many different computer systems. These included systems at military sites, DOD corporate contractors, and educational and research institutions. My point was that we needed more than mere physical security to keep the bad guys out.

Today, virtually every computer, including every smart phone and tablet, is connected to the internet. Of course the federal government maintains a few closed systems, but just about every other machine is vulnerable to cyber attack by either independent hackers or agencies of foreign governments. For this reason the federal government takes serious steps to safeguard the information stored on its systems and to ensure the safe transmission of classified material. For a Secretary of State to bypass these safeguards and completely ignore the real dangers of using a private server for her emails is almost beyond comprehension.

Director Comey, during today's televised monologue, seemed to realize all this as he laid out an almost perfect case for prosecuting Secretary Clinton for gross negligence in her handling of classified material. And then he tossed his case into the waste basket and recommended, well, nothing at all.

Bill and Hilary

I find it incredible that a Secretary of State would be this careless in her handling of highly classified material. But I find it even more incredible that there will be no legal consequences. Does this mean that other government employees can be equally lax in such matters and not worry about prosecution? Or perhaps Secretary Clinton is a "special case."

It's also evident, based on the FBI's investigation, that Secretary Clinton was less than honest when addressing such issues as the classification of her emails. A family trait, perhaps? Her husband, after all, to avoid a perjury conviction accepted a plea agreement, paid a $90,000 fine, and gave up his law license for five years. Today his wife was far more fortunate.

Connected Thoughts

We certainly live in interesting times. They're so interesting it's hard not to get lost in the details of current events, all the while neglecting what it means for our civilization. Troubled by this, I've given it some thought. Actually, what I've been left with are a collection of mildly connected thoughts...

Throughout most of my life, I've lived in a reasonably civil society, a society grounded in Judeo-Christian religious values and guided by its imperfect understanding of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. The vast majority of Americans understood and accepted this. One could even state this belief publicly without much fear of contradiction or ridicule. This is no longer true. Indeed, our civil society has given way to a most uncivil society guided only by an unholy alliance of pragmatism and narcissism. The rule of relativism has created a society in which anything, or almost anything, goes. In the prophetic words of the great G. K. Chesterton, "When men choose not to believe in God, they do not therefore believe in nothing, they become capable of believing in anything."

The fragility of our civilization has become apparent. The world's barbarians are at the gate and we, unlike those who came before us, seem oblivious to the fact. While we sacrifice the lives of many of the best among us in a "war on terror" -- or as the current administration prefers to call it: a war on "man-caused disasters" -- we ignore the cultural disintegration taking place all around us. We experience a national trauma when 20 young children are savagely murdered in their classroom, but we celebrate as freedom the far greater but equally savage slaughter of 50 million innocent children in the womb...and we apparently do not see the connection between the two. Today I read of three young men, all in their teens, who shot and killed a young jogger. After their arrest one of them told the police that they were bored and decided to kill someone. Yes, once they believe in nothing, they will believe in anything.

As a nation our response to all the chaos is to attack the symptoms. We "stop and frisk." We build up our swat teams and turn our police forces into small (and some not so small) armies. We take real-time video of everything and everybody. We send drones into our skies to watch ourselves living our lives below. We allow strangers at airports to treat us with disdain, to violate our persons, and to do virtually anything they want...all because of our cowardice.

We worry so much about our security and safety that we willingly allow a government on steroids to trample on our freedoms. As one of our parishioners said to me the other day, "I don't really care what the government does so long as it keeps the terrorists away." I hope he does not awaken one morning and discover there is little difference between the two.

Ben Stein, a man I have long admired even though I do not always agree with him, addressed the NSA's invasions of privacy in his latest online diary entry by writing:

My wife said it well tonight. “I have nothing to hide,” she said. “I’m not afraid of the NSA.”

I actually am nowhere near the person Big Wifey is, but I am not afraid of the NSA either. I am very afraid of the terrorists. It’s that simple.

Yes, Mr. Stein, it is that simple: we have become a nation of cowards. At least you are honest about your cowardice. Most are not. As a nation we have shown ourselves to be far more concerned with our personal safety than with the loss of our liberty. I wore the uniform of this nation for almost 30 years and willingly placed myself in harm's way. My brother, father and grandfather did the same. And I believe I can honestly say that each of us would have given his life for this nation, for the Constitution we were sworn to defend, and for the freedoms it guarantees for all of us. Now I'm the only one left, but believe me, I have never considered my life as important as those freedoms.

This is why I am so disturbed to hear Americans, when asked about the NSA's intrusive spying, say, "If you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about." Hanging on the wall in front of me is a framed but dirty and slightly tattered armband. It contains a roughly sewn Star of David with "Sachsenhausen" stenciled beneath it. A Jewish friend gave it to me because it caused him too much pain. It had belonged to his great uncle who had survived several camps and managed to stay alive until he was liberated. I keep it on my wall to remind me of what humanity is capable of, to remind me of the existence of original sin. The people forced to wear such armbands in such horrible places as Sachsenhausen also believed they had nothing to hide, nothing to worry about.They were wrong.

The solution to the problem we face is not to be found in the symptoms. It's buried deep within the cause. We are a nation that has rejected its Judeo-Christian roots. We have ceased to live our faith, to preach it openly, to pray in the public square. Too many today have turned their backs on God not realizing that the only road to salvation for this nation is to turn back to God.