elevated the status and visibility of counterterrorism coordination by appoint-
ing as coordinator first L. Paul Bremer and then Robert Oakley, both senior
career ambassadors of high standing in the Foreign Service, the department
continued to be dominated by regional bureaus for which terrorism was not a
first-order concern.
state, Warren Christopher, from merging terrorism into a new bureau that
would have also dealt with narcotics and crime.The coordinator under Secre-
tary Madeleine Albright told the Commission that his job was seen as a minor
one within the department.
against Bin Ladin, the role played by the Department of State in counterter-
rorism was often cautionary before 9/11. This was a reflection of the reality
that counterterrorism priorities nested within broader foreign policy aims of
the U.S. government.
dled visas for travel to the United States. After it was discovered that Abdel
Rahman, the Blind Sheikh, had come and gone almost at will, State initiated
significant reforms to its watchlist and visa-processing policies. In 1993, Con-
gress passed legislation allowing State to retain visa-processing fees for border
security; those fees were then used by the department to fully automate the
terrorist watchlist. By the late 1990s, State had created a worldwide, real-time
electronic database of visa, law enforcement, and watchlist information, the core
of the post-9/11 border screening systems. Still, as will be seen later, the sys-
tem had many holes.
The Department of Defense is the behemoth among federal agencies.With an
annual budget larger than the gross domestic product of Russia, it is an empire.
The Defense Department is part civilian, part military.The civilian secretary of
defense has ultimate control, under the president. Among the uniformed mil-
itary, the top official is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is sup-
ported by a Joint Staff divided into standard military staff compartments--J-2
(intelligence), J-3 (operations), and so on.
and Marine Corps have often fought ferociously over roles and missions in war
fighting and over budgets and posts of leadership. Two developments dimin-
ished this competition.