Dick Cheney got specific in an exit interview with Jim Lehrer (and may have revealed classified information, for whatever that's worth):
MR. LEHRER: And you feel it's actions that you took, the president took, the administration took – resulted in this happening? In other words, prevented these further attacks – there would have been further attacks had you not been there and you'd not taken action.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yes, sir. I can go back – and a lot of the details are still obviously classified – but what we did in effect was, in the aftermath of 9/11, in '02, '03 timeframe, when we first began to capture high-value detainees – senior members of al Qaeda like Khalid Sheikh Muhammad or Abu Zubaydah – we then were able to interrogate them and collect intelligence from them, both about the al Qaeda organization generally: how they functioned, who they were, where they came from, how they were financed. But then also to get specific intelligence on perspective attacks and allow us to go out and wrap up, capture and arrest others. And that list is very impressive.
MR. LEHRER: And if that had not happened, you think there would have been further attacks?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: There's no doubt in mind there would have been.
MR. LEHRER: Serious attacks of the level like 9/11?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Serious attacks, well, plans, for example, to fly an airliner into the tallest building on the West Coast, plans to develop a so-called dirty device to be detonated someplace in the United States, plans to highjack aircraft that were all headed for Heathrow and then to capture them, blow them up over Heathrow. And plans to launch aircraft that they'd captured in Europe and destroy them as they came into the United States.
I mean, it was a robust set of programs. There were others; other regions of the world that were involved as well as the United States. We got a wealth of information from those programs that are the source of some controversy, obviously, but we did not have a lot of information on al Qaeda on 9/11; it was very important that we develop it in the aftermath of 9/11 and we did.
I wonder how true all this is. The whole question of why there wasn't another 9-11 has been oft-debated over the years. I wouldn't doubt that the administration may have foiled some plans. If something like 9-11 happens on your watch -- and you know you could have and should have done more to try to prevent it, as Bush officials undoubtedly do know deep down, despite their public insistence to the contrary -- you make damn sure that something like that doesn't happen again.
However, I feel pretty certain that there are other reasons why there haven't been more attacks. First, even though 9-11 may have looked easy from the outside, involving only 19 people and some box cutters, it's likely the case that such an action is very difficult to plan and execute; indeed, we read after the attack that it was a few years in the making. Al-Qaida did not, and now does not, have the capability to do something like that on a regular basis.
Second, al-Qaida is, odd as this sounds, a rational geopolitical actor. It's not out to kill people merely for the sadistic pleasure of killing people. It had and has specific geopolitical goals -- weakening the Great Satan, rallying the world's Muslim peoples against the GS, and so on. From this perspective, 9-11 "worked," if I may put it that way, pretty spectacularly. The United States overreacted by attacking Iraq, a war that was often called al-Qaida's best recruiting tool. Rather than showing our strength, the war showed our military weaknesses and limitations.
Third, I have to think that, if it really wanted to, al-Qaida or any terrorist outfit could undertake some sort of low-intensity attacks against the US, but that other factors (besides excellent preventive US police and intelligence work) have ruled them out.
For example, why have there never been any suicide bombers in the US, blowing themselves up in nightclubs or subway stations? It seems to me it'd be virtually impossible to prevent that. But terrorists have decided not to do it. Why?
Well, it may well be that they've seen that the retaliation would be so immense that it's not worth it to them. If that's their perception, then, to be fair, one must paradoxically credit the Bush administration for its overreaction, because it may have told terrorists that the US will try to blow them to smithereens if they carry out more attacks. But I think the administration's line -- there've been no attacks because of our great intelligence work, including our torture of detainees -- is overly simplistic.
