For possibly the first time in its 17 months of existence, the Bush administration finds itself running for cover. The accusation that it did have information of terrorists possibly hijacking US passenger planes before 9/11 happened and did not respond adequately to it must rankle an US president who has long traded on his image as an aggressive patriot. But the issue that could bother him even more in the days ahead is the fact that his administration chose to withhold, from the public, the information on what it knew about possible strikes. While most Americans would forgive their president for not having taken preemptive action — given the generalised nature of the information the government had — it would certainly be harder for them to overlook the deliberate attempt to conceal the issue for a full eight months. While the first could be excused as an oversight, the second smacks of dishonesty. As one angry letter-writer to the Washington Post asked, ‘‘Why weren’t we told the president had a clue eight months ago? Why has it taken so long for it to be ‘leaked’ to the public?’’The issue, despite the stout defence put up by Washington heavies like Vice-President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, could, therefore, snowball given the impact 9/11 has had on the psyche of the nation. Thus far, Bush’s political opponents have had to go easy on the grilling and cooperate with the president in his ‘war against terror’. They have largely desisted from criticising his policies too aggressively. The Bush administration’s attempt now is to paint the current criticism as an unpatriotic, unworthy and anti-national thing to do, especially ‘‘in times of war’’, as Cheney put it. Such a counter is typical of political dispensations when driven into a corner but it still does not address the central issue of whether Bush should have done more with the admittedly vague information he had as early as the first week of August.In many ways this controversy brings to mind the stormy post-Kargil days in this country, when the nation demanded to know of the Vajpayee government whether the Kargil intrusions represented an intelligence failure. This had even led to an official inquiry being instituted into the reasons for and consequences of that military encounter. As security experts have pointed out, the problem invariably is that people and governments generally overlook, or discount, the occurrence of developments that they have not yet experienced. While this may, indeed, be the case, the fragility of modern existence makes the earlier complacency dangerous. Events that could never have been imagined before — whether it is aircraft crashing into twin towers in New York, or terrorists storming Parliament in New Delhi — only underline the requirement for unceasing vigilance and the need for governments to be alert to every hint of trouble, long before it actually visits the lives of its citizens.
