[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17193-17194]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               GOVERNMENT FAILED TO ADDRESS 9/11 PROPERLY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, next Monday, 5 days from now, it will be 5 
years since we experienced the attack of September 11, 2001. That was 
one of the most tragic circumstances ever to confront this country. 
More than 3,000 Americans lost their lives.
  But it has developed into an additionally tragic circumstance for our 
Nation as a whole, because the administration and the Congress, the 
entire government of our country, the legislative and executive 
branches, failed to address the issue properly.
  The administration called upon the Congress to give it the authority 
to conduct itself in a way that was entirely inappropriate, and on 
October 16, the majority of the Members of this Congress voted to give 
the President that authority. As a result of that, we have now been 
bogged down as a result of the attack in Iraq and the subsequent 
occupation for more than 3

[[Page 17194]]

years, and the administration and this Congress have no plan for 
relieving ourselves of that obligation and responsibility.
  One of the tragic aspects of that, of course, is the fact that more 
than 2,600 American servicemen and women have now lost their lives. 
That number now is approaching the number of Americans who lost their 
lives as a result of the attack of September 11th by the al Qaeda 
network.
  There are a great many issues that this Congress has failed to 
address. Let me begin by talking just for a minute or two about the 
circumstances that existed prior to that attack of September 11, 2001.
  The intelligence agencies of our country had informed the 
administration beginning with the first meeting of the National 
Security Council of this administration in January of 2001 that the al 
Qaeda network offered the greatest threat to the safety and security of 
America and that it was likely that they were going to advance some 
form of attack against our country.
  Now, we know that they had done other things in the past. They 
organized the initial attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. 
They organized the attack against the two United States embassies in 
East Africa. They organized the attack against the USS Cole. The 
President of the United States was informed from the first day this 
administration came into office and virtually every single day 
thereafter up to September 11, 2001, that there was a great danger from 
the al Qaeda network.
  On August 6, 2001, the President's daily briefing said that al Qaeda 
was determined to attack the United States, and there were other 
instances where the intelligence community told the administration that 
al Qaeda was determined to attack the United States. Yet nothing was 
done about it. No action was taken. The President was on a very 
extended vacation in Crawford, Texas.
  One of the things that this Congress has failed to do is to 
investigate the intelligence that was available prior to the attack of 
September 11th and why that intelligence was not used appropriately by 
this administration to prevent the attack of September 11th.
  Why has this Congress failed to carry out its obligations and 
responsibilities under the Constitution to oversee actions of the 
administration in that regard? The Senate Select Intelligence Committee 
has conducted an investigation, but they have failed to release the 
information with regard to the intelligence that the administration had 
available to it prior to the attack. We need to ask ourselves why that 
is the case.
  And why is it that the House Intelligence Committee has not carried 
out its obligations and responsibilities to conduct an investigation as 
to the quality and caliber of the intelligence information available to 
the administration prior to the attack of September 11th and why that 
information, which seems to have been so clear and so focused, was not 
used appropriately? Let's focus our attention on that.

                          ____________________