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I’m a retired FBI special agent who last week watched the History Channel program, “The Road to 9-11.”  In fact, I watched the series twice. It prompted me to write this op-ed piece on behalf of the families of the victims, and the FBI agents and CIA agents who were on the front lines of that unforgettable day. 

It deserves to be emphasized in no uncertain terms that those agents, many of whom I know, could have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks. As the History Channel series pointed out over and over again, an Al Qaeda attack was imminent. Specifically, in advance of the attacks, there was an emergency face-to-face meeting between high ranking CIA officials and Condoleezza Rice to warn the administration, and to recommend that the country should immediately “Go on a war footing.”  Obviously, this warning fell on deaf ears and nothing was done. 

More troubling was that twenty months before the Sept. 11 attacks, 50 CIA officials knew that two Al Qaeda hijackers were living in San Diego, California. None of the 50 informed Counter-terrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke or the FBI of this fact, as required by law. 

Each year since the attacks on Sept. 11, I see the families mourn the death of their loved ones, and those who worked tirelessly to stop Al Qaeda suffer without full disclosure. What our Sept. 11 families and those agents still want to know is why so little action was taken by the Clinton and Bush administrations.  

The enduring silence of those officials and the subsequent ill-conceived invasion of Iraq have helped to fuel the continuing distrust in government today.