The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States has an important opportunity. Those in positions of responsibility in government are of necessity focused on dozens of issues. The 9-11 Commission, however, can focus on one important topic, get it right, and provide insights that can be of great value to us.

The Commission been asked to try to connect the dots after the fact, to examine events leading up to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and to consider what lessons, if any, might be taken from that experience enable us to prevent future dangers.

It isn't an easy assignment. Yet, the challenge facing our country before September 11, and still today, is even more difficult. Our task is to connect the dots, not after the fact, but before the fact -- to try to stop attacks before they happen. That must be done without the benefit of hindsight, hearings, briefings, or testimony.

Another attack on our people will be attempted. We can't know where, or when, or by what technique. That reality drives those of us in government to ask the tough questions: When and how might that attack be attempted and what will we need to have done, today and every day before the attack, to prepare for it and, if possible, to prevent it?

On September 11, our world changed. It may be tempting to think that, once the crisis is passed, things will go back to the way they were. Not so.

The world of September 10 is passed. We've entered a new security environment, arguably the most dangerous the world has known. And if we are to continue to live as free people, we cannot go back to thinking the way the world thought on September 10. For if we do, if we deal with the problems of the 21st. century through a 20th. century prism, we will most certainly come to the wrong conclusions and fail the American people.

I saw the destruction terrorists wreaked on September 11. At the impact site, moments after the American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, one could see the flames, smell the burning fuel, see the twisted steel and the agony of victims.

And once the crisis passed, I asked the question posed to this Commission: What, if anything, might have been done to prevent it?

First, I must say, I knew of no intelligence during the six-plus months leading up to September 11 that indicated terrorists would hijack commercial airliners, use them as missiles to fly into the Pentagon or the World Trade Center towers.

The President immediately set out to form what is today a 90-nation coalition to wage the global war on terrorist networks. He promptly sent U.S. and coalition forces -- air, sea and ground -- to attack Afghanistan, to overthrow the Taliban regime, and destroy that Al-Qa'ida stronghold.

In short order, the Taliban regime was driven from power. Al-Qa'ida's sanctuary in Afghanistan was removed. Nearly two-thirds of its known leaders have been captured or killed. A transitional government is in power, and a clear message was sent: Terrorists who harbor terrorists will pay a price.

Those were bold steps. And today, in light of September 11, no one questions those actions. Today I suspect most would support a preemptive action to deal with such a threat.

Interestingly, the remarkable military successes in Afghanistan is taken largely for granted, as is the achievement of bringing together a 90-nation coalition.

But imagine that we were back before September 11 and that a U.S. president had looked at the information then available, gone before the Congress and the world and said we need to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban and destroy the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network, basing this call to arms on what little was known was known before September 11.

How many countries would have joined? Many? Any? Not likely.

We would have heard objections to preemption similar to those voiced before the coalition launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. We would have been asked, "How could you attack Afghanistan when it was Al-Qa'ida that attacked us, not the Taliban? How can you go to war when countries in the region don't support you? Won't launching such an invasion actually provoke terrorist attacks against the United States?"

I agree with those who argue that, unfortunately, history shows it takes a tragedy like September 11 to waken the world to new threats and to the need for action. We can't go back in time to stop the attack, but we all owe it to the families and the loved ones who died on September 11 to assure that their loss will, in fact, be the call that helps to ensure that thousands of other families do not suffer the pain they've endured.

President Bush came to office with a determination to prepare for the new threats of the 21st. century. The bombing of the USS Cole on October 12, 2000, was seen both as evidence of the Al-Qa'ida threat and the need to adjust U.S. policy.

The more one studies terrorism, the more one becomes convinced that the approach to fighting it that had evolved over several decades really wasn't working. Treating terrorism as a matter of security, combating it through national and international law enforcement techniques, and taking defensive measures against terrorists simply weren't enough.

After the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, the first World Trade Center attack, the embassy bombings in East Africa and the attack on the USS Cole, reasonable people concluded that the value of that approach had diminished.

A more comprehensive approach required a review, not only of U.S. counterterrorism policy, but also U.S. policies with regard to other countries, some of which have not previously been at the center of U.S. relations.

Dr. Condoleeza Rice, President Bush's National Security Advisor, has stated that, in her first week in office, she asked the National Security Council Staff for a new presidential initiative on Al-Qa'ida. In early March, 2001, the Staff was directed to craft a more aggressive strategy aimed at eliminating the Al-Qa'ida threat. The first draft of that approach, in the form of a presidential directive, was circulated by the NSC Staff in June of 2001 and a number of meetings were held that Summer at the Deputy Secretary level to address the policy questions involved, such as relating an aggressive strategy against Taliban to U.S.-Pakistani relations.

By the first week of September, the process had arrived at the point where a proposed strategy was presented to Principals -- a proposal which later became NSPD-9, the President's first major substantive national security decision directive. It was presented for a decision by Principals on September 4, 2001, seven days before September 11, In October, the directive was signed by the President, with minor changes and a preamble to reflect the events of September 11.

While this review of counterterrorism policy was under way, the Department of Defense was developing a review of U.S. defense strategy.

On February 2, 2001, less than two weeks after taking office as Secretary of Defense, I traveled to Germany for a conference on security policy. Already we were focused on the problem of unconventional, or asymmetric, threats. On the flight, I was asked about the principles that would drive our defense review. I answered that the 1991 Persian Gulf War had taught the world that taking on Western armies, navies, and air forces directly was not a good idea.

It was, therefore, likely that potential adversaries would look for socalled asymmetrical responses, everything from terrorism to cyberattacks to information warfare, cruise missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles to longer-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

During the last decade, the challenges facing the intelligence community have grown more complex.

We were concerned about the risk of surprise. In June of 2001, I attended the first NATO defense ministers meeting in the 21st century. I told my colleagues about Vice President Cheney's appearance before the Senate for his confirmation hearings as Secretary of Defense in March of 1989. During his hearings, a wide range of security issues were discussed, but not one person uttered the word "Iraq." And yet within a year, Iraq had invaded Kuwait, and that word was in every headline.

I wondered what word or words might come to dominate my term in office that wasn't raised by members of the Senate committee during my hearings. Three months later we learned the answer: Afghanistan and Al-Qa'ida.

These were the kinds of threats that we were preparing to meet and deal with in the months before September 11, and, during those early months, we made progress in the effort to transform policy and strategy to allow for the error of surprise and unconventional threats.

Our actions included a congressionally required quadrennial defense review, completed just days before the 9-11 attacks, where we laid out the transformation objectives of the Department of Defense, and identified as our first priority the defense of U.S. territory against a broad range of asymmetric threats, in short, homeland defense.

We developed a concept for new defense planning guidance and new contingency planning guidance.

We found that many, if not most, of the war plans that existed were in need of updating and that the process for developing contingency plans was too lengthy.

In May of 2001, we began the process of streamlining the way the Department of Defense prepares war plans, reducing the time to develop plans and increasing the frequency at which the assumptions would be updated.

I should add that, for much of that period, most of the senior officials selected by the President had not been cleared or confirmed by the Senate. Nonetheless, the few new civilians, the many civilian officials who stayed on to help, and the military leaders did a great deal of work.

Indeed, because we were doing these things in the Department as well as in the National Security Council policy review, we were better prepared to respond when the 9-11 attack came.

On the morning of September 11, I was hosting a meeting for some members of Congress. And I remember stressing how important it was for our country to be prepared for the unexpected. Shortly thereafter, someone handed me a note saying a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. Shortly thereafter, I was in my office with a CIA briefer, and I was told that a second plane had hit the other tower. Shortly thereafter, at 9:38, the Pentagon shook with an explosion of then unknown origin.

I went outside to determine what had happened. I was not there long. Shortly before or after 10:00 a.m., I was back in the Pentagon with a crisis action team.

On my return from the crash site, and before going to the executive support center, I had one or more calls in my office, one of which was from the President.

I went to the National Military Command Center, where General Richard Myers, who was the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that time, had just returned from Capitol Hill. We discussed, and I recommended, raising the defense condition level from five to three and the force protection level.

I joined the air threat telephone conference call that was already in progress. And one of the first exchanges was with the Vice President. He informed me of the President's authorization to shoot down hostile aircraft coming to Washington D.C.

My thoughts went to the pilots of the military aircraft who might be called upon to execute such an order. It was clear that they needed rules of engagement telling them what they could and could not do. They needed clarity.

There were standing rules of engagement, but not rules of engagement that were appropriate for this first-time situation where civilian aircraft were seized and being used as missiles to attack inside the United States. It may well be the first time in history that U.S. armed forces in peacetime have been given the authority to fire on fellow Americans going about their lawful business.

We went to work to refine the standing rules of engagement. I spent the remainder of the morning and the afternoon participating in the air threat conference, talking to the president, the vice president, General Myers and others and thinking about the way forward.

During the course of the day, the President indicated he expected us to provide him with robust options for military responses to that attack.

In my first weeks in office, I had prepared a list of guidelines to be weighed before committing U.S. forces to combat, and I shared them with the President back in January or February of 2001.

The guidelines included a number of points, including one which held that, if the proposed action is truly necessary, if lives are going to be put at risk, there must be a darn good reason, that all instruments of national power should be engaged before, during, and after any use of military force, and that it's important not to dumb down what's needed by promising not to do things, for example, by saying we won't use ground forces.

A few days after September 11, I wrote down some thoughts on terrorism and the new kind of war that had been visited upon us. I noted it will take a sustained effort to root the terrorists out, that the campaign is a marathon, not a sprint, that no terrorists are terrorist networks such as Al-Qa'ida are going to be conclusively dealt with by cruise missiles or bombers.

The coalitions that are being fashioned will not be fixed; rather, they'll change and evolve. And it should not be surprising that some countries will be supportive of some activities in which the U.S. is engaged, while other countries may not. And we can live with that.

And this is not a war against Islam. The Al-Qa'ida terrorists are extremists whose views are antithetical to those of most Muslims. "There are millions of Muslims around the world who we expect to become allies in this struggle."

In the following days, we prepared options to deal with the Taliban and Afghanistan. And the President issued an ultimatum to the Taliban. When they failed to comply, he initiated the global war on terror and directed the Department of Defense to carry out Operation Enduring Freedom against Al-Qa'ida and their affiliates and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that harbored and supported them.

This, of course, was a Department of Defense where the Armed Forces of the United States had historically been organized, trained, and equipped to fight armies, navies and air forces, not to chase down individual terrorists.

In the aftermath of September 11, the Department of Defense has pursued two tracks. We've prosecuted the global war on terror in concert with our agencies of the government and our coalition partners. In addition, we've continued -- we've had to continue -- and, indeed, accelerate the work to transform the Department so that it has the ability to meet and defeat the threats of the 21st. century -- threats different from those we faced throughout the greater part of the 20th. century.

There has been success on both fronts. The coalition has been successful in overthrowing two terrorist regimes, hunted down hundreds of terrorists and regime remnants, disrupted terrorist financing, disrupted terrorist cells on several continents.

We've also established the Northern Command, a new command dedicated to defending the homeland.

We have expanded the Special Operations Command in significant ways and given them additional authorities, authorities they need today and will certainly need in the future.

We've established a new Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and an Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

The coalition's actions have sent a message to the world's terrorist states -- the message that harboring terrorists and the pursuit of weapons of mass murder carry with it unpleasant costs.

By contrast, countries like Libya that abandon the support of terrorism and the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction can find an open path to better relations with the world's free nations.

In the period since September 11, the Bush administration, several committees of Congress, and now the 9-11Commission, have been examining what happened on that day.

A number of questions have been raised. Some have asked: When the Bush administration came into office, was there consideration of how to deal with the attack on the USS Cole?

It's a fair question. One concern was that launching another cruise missile strike, months after the fact, might have sent a signal of weakness.

Instead, we implemented the recommendations of the Cole Commission and began developing a more comprehensive approach to deal with Al-Qa'ida, resulting in NSPD-9.

Some have asked: Why wasn't Osama bin Laden taken out? And if he had been hit, could it have prevented September 11?

I know of no actionable intelligence since January 20 that would have allowed the U.S.A. to capture or kill bin Laden.

It took 10 months to capture Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and coalition forces had passed by the hole he was hiding in many, many times during those months. They were able to find him only after someone with specific knowledge told us precisely where he was.

What that suggests, it seems to me, is that it's exceedingly difficult to find a single individual who is determined not be found.

Second, even if bin Laden had been captured or killed in the weeks before September 11, no one I know believes that it would necessarily have prevented September 11.

Killing bin Laden would not have removed Al-Qa'ida's sanctuary in Afghanistan. Moreover, the sleeper cells that flew the aircraft into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon were already in the United States months before the attack.

Indeed, if actionable intelligence had appeared -- which it did not -- 9-11 would likely still have happened. And, ironically, much of the world would likely have called the September 11 attack an Al-Qa'ida retaliation for the U.S. provocation of capturing or killing bin Laden.

Some have asked whether there were plans to go after Al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan before 9-11, and if so, why weren't they successfully implemented.

I recently reviewed a briefing that I'm told was presented to me in early February.

The briefing I saw was not something that I would characterize as a comprehensive plan to deal with the problem Al Qaida and the sanctuary it enjoyed in Afghanistan. It was a series of concepts, or approaches.

I'm told that I asked the briefer many questions and that the team went back to work on refining it, and that the work they did in the ensuing months helped to prepare the Department of Defense for the successful invasion of Afghanistan soon after September 11.

The NSC was at work during the Spring and Summer of 2001 developing the new counterterrorism policy needed to inform new war plans. And we are at the same time in the process of overhauling U.S. contingency plans.

Some have asked: Could the developed of the armed Predator have been accelerated?

First, let me say that any suggestion that the Predator was delayed by policy discussions or debates would be inaccurate. I'm told that when the development plans were presented, it was estimated that it would take several years. They were presented, I believe, to General John Jumper in one of his previous posts.

In fact, it was done in less than a year. And the armed Predator was deployed and played a role in the success of Operation Enduring Freedom, even before it had been officially certified as ready for development.

I've been asked to make a few comments about the future.

Today we face adversaries who take advantage of our open borders and our open societies to attack people. They hide in plain sight. They have used institutions of everyday life -- planes, trains, cars, letters, e-mails -- as weapons to kill innocent civilians. And they can attack with handsful of people at a cost of a few hundred thousands of dollars, while it requires many tens of thousands of people and billions of dollars to defend against such attacks.

Rooting out and dealing with terrorist enemies is tough. It will require that we think very differently than we did in the last century.

The recommendations that the 9-11 Commission may make could help. For example, you might consider some of the following thoughts.

How can we strengthen the intelligence community and get better arranged for the 21st century challenges?

I've heard arguments in the wake of 9-11 that we need to consolidate all the intelligence agencies and put them under a single intelligence czar. In my view, that would be doing the country a great disservice.

There's some activities, like intelligence and research and development, where it's a serious mistake to think that you were advantaged by relying on a single, centralized source. In fact, fostering multiple centers of information has proven to be better at promoting creativity and challenging conventional thinking.

There may be ways we can strengthen intelligence, but centralization is most certainly not one of them.

A possibility might be to consider reducing stovepipes. It's true that the more people who know something, the morel likely that that information will be compromised. We are well aware of this problem. It's a dilemma. There's a tension there.

We need to weigh that risk of expanding access and thereby risking compromise against the danger of keeping information so tightly stovepiped that people who need to integrate it with other information are kept in the dark.

I should add that it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between information that contributes to socalled national intelligence as opposed to information that is necessary for military intelligence and focuses on the battlefield.

I would say that, just as it would be unwise to concentrate everything under a single intelligence czar in an effort to improve national intelligence, it would be equally undesirable to concentrate everything under the Department of Defense so that one could improve military intelligence. It seems to me that either would be an unfortunate approach.

How can we wage war, not just on terrorist networks, but also on the ideology of hate that they spread?

The global war on terror will, in fact, be long. And I am convinced that victory in the war on terror will require a positive effort as well as an aggressive battle.

We need to find creative ways to stop the next generation of terrorist from being recruited, trained, and deployed to kill innocent people. For every terrorist that coalition forces capture or kill, still others are being recruited and trained.

To win the war on terror, we have to win the war of ideas -- the battle for the minds of those who are being recruited and financed by terrorist networks across the globe.

Can we transform the nomination and confirmation process so there are not long gaps with key positions unfilled every time there is a new administration? As I have indicated, for most of the seven months leading up to September 11, the Defense Department's work was done without many of the senior officials responsible for critical issues.

We ought to consider whether, in the 21st, century, we can afford the luxury of taking so long to put in place the senior officials for national security. Shouldn't we try to fashion the necessary reforms for the clearance, nomination, and confirmation process.

Another thought: Could our nation benefit from a Goldwater-Nichols-like law for the executive branch of the U.S. government. If you think about it, the Goldwater-Nichols Act in the 1980s helped move Department of Defense towards a more effective joint approach to fighting wars. It was a good thing.

To develop and follow this more effective joint approach to waging war, each of the military services had to give up some of their turf, some of their authority. Today, one could argue that the interagency process is such that the executive branch is stovepiped much like the four services were 20 years ago. Ask the question: Could we usefully apply the concept of the Goldwater-Nichols law to the government as a whole?

Let me conclude by saying that, despite the work of the coalition, terrorist attacks continue, most recently in Madrid. It's almost certain that, in the period ahead, somewhere more terrorist attacks will be attempted.

What can be done?

Not long ago, we marked the 20th. anniversary of a terrorist attack in Beirut, Lebanon, when the suicide bomb truck attacked the Marine barracks. And that blast killed more than 240 Americans.

Soon after that attack, President Ronald W. Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz asked me to serve as the Middle East envoy for a period. That experience taught me lessons about the nature of terrorism that are relevant today as we prosecute the global war on terror.

After the attack, one seemingly logical response was to put a cement barricade around the buildings to prevent more truck bombings -- a very logical thing to do . And it had the effect of preventing more truck bombings.

But the terrorists very quickly figured out how to get around those barricades, and they began lobbing rocket-propelled grenades over the cement barricades. And the reaction then was to hunker down even more, and they started seeing buildings along the Cornish that runs along the sea in Beirut draped with metal wire mesh coming down from several stories high so that when rocket-propelled grenades hit the mesh, they would bounce off, doing little damage.

It worked, again, but only briefly. And the terrorists again adapted. They watched the comings and goings of U.S. Embassy personnel and began hitting soft targets. They killed people on their way to and from work.

So for every defense, first barricades then wire mesh, the terrorists moved to another avenue of attack.

One has to note that the terrorists had learned important lessons: that terrorism is a great equalizer, it's a force multiplier, it's cheap, it's deniable, it yields substantial results, it's low risk and it's often without penalty.

They had learned that a single attack, by influencing public opinion and morale, can alter the behavior of great nations.

Moreover, free people had learned lessons as well: that terrorism is a form of warfare which must be treated as such. Simply standing in a defensive position, absorbing blows, is not enough. Terrorism has to be attacked, and it has to be deterred.

That was 20 years ago.

When our nation was attacked on September 11, 2001, the President recognized what had happened as an act of war that it must be treated as such -- not a law enforcement matter.

He knew that weakness would only invite aggression, and that the only way to defeat terrorists was to take the war to them and to make clear to states that sponsor and harbor them that such actions would have consequences.

That's why we have forces risking their lives fighting terrorists today.

And to live as free people in the 21st century, we cannot think that we can hide behind concrete barriers or wire mesh. We cannot think that acquiescence to or appeasement of terrorists is a viable strategy. We cannot think that trying to make a separate peace with terrorists, seeking to get them to leave us alone, while going after our friends and allies, is an approach that will work.

Free people cannot live in fear and remain free.

The foregoing statement by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was presented, on March 23, 2004, as testimony at the hearings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (9-11 Commission).

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