A report is secretly delivered to Congress by the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General, regarding the inaccuracy of statements made by Defense Department officials on the military’s response to the September 11 hijackings. The 9/11 Commission made a formal request in summer 2004 for the inspector general to investigate the matter, because military officials had given testimony that was later proved to have been false (see Shortly before July 22, 2004). For example, they claimed that NORAD had been tracking Flight 93 on 9/11 and was ready to shoot it down if it threatened Washington (see Shortly Before 9:36 a.m. September 11, 2001 and (9:36 a.m.-10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001). Yet audiotapes obtained under subpoena showed NORAD was unaware of this flight until after it crashed. In its report, the inspector general’s office states that it found “the inaccuracies, in part, resulted because of inadequate forensic capabilities.” It says that commanders found it difficult to create an accurate timeline of the events of 9/11 due to the lack of a well-coordinated system in logging information about air defense operations. At the time, air defense watch centers had used handwritten logs, and these could be unreliable. Following the attacks, the report claims, commanders failed to press hard enough for an accurate timeline to be produced for the benefit of investigations, like the 9/11 Commission. Yet, as some of the Commission’s staff will later point out, the military had already reviewed the NORAD audiotapes chronicling the events of 9/11 prior to its officials giving their incorrect testimonies. In response to a freedom of information request by the New York Times, the inspector general’s report will be publicly released in August 2006, but the equivalent of several pages will be blacked out on national security grounds. [Vanity Fair, 8/1/2006; Washington Post, 8/2/2006; New York Times, 8/5/2006; Reuters, 8/5/2006; US Department of Defense, 9/12/2006 
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9/11 Staff Member Criticizes Report – In his 2009 book The Ground Truth, John Farmer, who served as senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, will criticize the inspector general’s report. Farmer says the report mischaracterizes the 9/11 Commission’s referral by saying the Commission had alleged officials knowingly made false statements, when instead it had simply “documented the facts concerning what occurred on 9/11, the disparity between those facts and what the government had been telling the public with total assurance since 9/11, and the relative ease with which anyone looking could have uncovered those facts.” He faults the inspector general for interpreting the issue narrowly, by focusing on statements made to the 9/11 Commission; ignoring the larger context in which the events of 9/11 were extremely significant and so it should have been extremely important for the military to understand the truth of what happened, in order to correct any problems, as well as to be able to present an accurate account to the White House and to the public; and failing to address the question of whether the false accounts had served anyone’s interests. The inspector general’s report affirms the claims of top NORAD commanders that, in Farmer’s words, they had been “simply too busy fixing the system and fighting the war on terror to concern themselves with piecing together the facts of 9/11.” Farmer will ask, “[H]ow… could the Department of Defense identify and correct operational weaknesses without knowing precisely what had occurred that morning?” He will question the report’s determination that the Defense Department lacked the forensic capabilities for maintaining logs, video and audio recordings, and storing radar information, and had not coordinated with the FAA on reconstructing the events of 9/11, as the Commission had documented evidence that the two agencies had indeed coordinated while developing their reconstructions of events. Farmer will write that “it is impossible to conclude honestly, from the two inspector general reports, that the official version of the events of 9/11 was the result of mere administrative incompetence; too many questions remain unanswered.” He will add, “History should record that whether through unprecedented administrative incompetence or orchestrated mendacity, the American people were misled about the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks.” [Farmer, 2009, pp. 283-289]
September 18, 2006: Pentagon Inspector General Dismisses Able Danger Claims
The Defense Department’s office of the inspector general issues a report saying allegations made by members of the Able Danger program are unfounded. According to the inspector general, Able Danger did not identify any of the 9/11 hijackers before the attacks, the program’s members were not prevented from sharing this information with the FBI, and there was no retaliation against one person involved in the program, Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Schaffer, after he highlighted the issue in the media. The basis for the main claim that the hijackers were not identified before 9/11 is that the recollections of the people who claim lead hijacker Mohamed Atta was identified “varied significantly.” In addition, the names of Atta and the other 9/11 hijackers said to have been identified by the program were not present in any surviving documentation, although the vast majority of the data gathered by the Able Danger program was destroyed several years ago (see May-June 2000). Concerning the blocking of passage of information to the FBI, the inspector general identified only one occasion when this may have happened, but found that such blocking “would not have been inappropriate under the circumstances.” [Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General, 9/18/2006 ]
May 19, 2009: Investigation Finds Weapons Supplied by the US and NATO to Afghan Security Forces Likely Falling into Taliban Hands
A New York Times investigation finds that some munitions procured by the Pentagon for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) are leaking to the Taliban and other insurgents for use against American troops. Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents are found to be identical to ammunition the United States and other allies have provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings and interviews with American officers and arms dealers conducted by the New York Times. Military officials, arms analysts, and dealers say that poor American and Afghan controls on the vast inventory of weapons and ammunition sent to Afghanistan—as well as outright corruption among Afghan forces—may have helped insurgents stay supplied. Furthermore, military officers say that American forces do not examine all captured weapons to trace how insurgents obtain them, nor do they seek to determine whether the Afghan government, directly or indirectly, is a significant Taliban supplier. An American unit from the 26th Infantry allows the New York Times to examine the weapons it had retrieved from a raid on Taliban fighters. Examination of the Taliban’s cartridges finds telling signs of diversion in which the ammunition bears markings from an American company which sells cartridges to Afghan soldiers and police officers through middlemen. Ammo from a Czech company which has donated surplus ammo to the Afghan government is also identified.
Afghan Government and Security Forces Blamed for Weapon Diversions – The New York Times cautions that given the large number of potential weapons sources, “the probability that the Taliban and the Pentagon were sharing identical supply sources [is] small.” James Bevan, a researcher specializing in ammunition for the Geneva-based research group, Small Arms Survey, says that the munitions have most likely slipped from Afghan state custody. Mr. Bevan, who has documented ammunition diversion in Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan, surmises that interpreters, soldiers, or police officers sell ammunition for profit or pass it along for other reasons, including support for the insurgency. The American military does not dispute the possibility that theft or corruption could be steering ammunition to insurgents, but it backs Mr. Bevan’s statement that illicit diversion of arms is the fault of Afghan security forces, particularly corruption within the police. Capt. James C. Howell, commander of the unit that captured the ammunition, says the findings are unsurprising but explains that this form of corruption is not the norm, citing poor discipline and oversight in the Afghan national security forces rather than deliberate diversion. Another officer, Brig. Gen. Anthony R. Ierardi, the deputy commander of the transition command, cautions that insurgent use of American-procured munitions is not widespread, noting that the captured ammunition sampling was small and that munitions might have leaked to the Taliban through less nefarious means.
United States Military Also to Blame – The United States military was recently criticized by the Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon’s Inspector General, which blamed the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan for failing to account for hundreds of thousands of weapons issued to the ANSF, warning that unaccounted for weapons were at great risk of being diverted to insurgents (see February 12, 2009) and (see October 24, 2008). [New York Times, 5/19/2009]
