380 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
spoke with CIA officers at a U.S. embassy five weeks before the close call.
But the engineering student’s name was not added to the FBI’s Terrorist
Screening Database or the “no fly” list. Nor was his U.S. visa revoked.
Gorton noted that his wife, in her upper 70s with an artificial hip, is
screened carefully every time they go through airport security “and yet
people like this,” the would-be bomber, “were given just the most super-
ficial examination and waved on through.” It remained for passengers on
Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to subdue him as he attempted to light an
explosive device attached to his underwear.^11
“Intelligence wasn’t shared,” Gorton told reporters. “It’s a crashing dis-
appointment that this happened. I hope this is a significant wake-up
call. This isn’t completely the fault of the Obama Administration. The...
problem predates the 9/11 attacks, as the commission made abundantly
clear. But the president has the definitive bully pulpit to emphasize that
we’re in a very real, ongoing war against determined extremists... and
make it a priority of his administration.”^12
Two years later, Obama showed the colors in a big way. Together with
millions of his countrymen, Gorton listened with satisfaction as the pres-
ident announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by an elite Navy
SEAL team in a helicopter raid on a compound in Pakistan. “It’s eight or
nine years past due,” Gorton said, “but the president deserves high marks
for persistence and willingness to act on intelligence no better than Bill
Clinton had more than a dozen years ago and took a pass on.” It was a
symbolic victory as well, he added, and that’s not to be undervalued, “but
the reality is that we are maybe two decades into a war the end of which
no person living now will see. The struggle will go on until Islam decides
massively that jihad is more harm to itself than it is to the West, a realiza-
tion that is only beginning to permeate through to a few.”
As for our ostensible allies, that bin Laden could hide so successfully for
so long in Pakistan was “a massive illustration of the dilemma we face in a
country only a step or two removed from the status of a failed state—and
one with nukes. The basic problem is that Islam is perfectly consistent with
absolutism and terrorism and from the time of the prophet himself has no
philosophical distinction between church and state.” In short, Gorton said,
anyone tempted to unfurl a “Mission Accomplished” banner is a delusional
fool. More al-Qaida foot soldiers with jihad in their hearts and explosives in
their pants doubtless were figuring out new ways to elude scanners.
inpRis h sA e tiMe, Gorton became a columnist, joining The Washington
Post’s lineup of “On Leadership” contributors. The editors pose questions