GUEST OPINION, April 8
By: Thomas H. Kean
In my capacity as chairman of the Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, I am most honored and humbled to convene the first public hearing of this commission.
Since my colleagues and I were appointed at the turn of the year, many people have inquired about our work. Many offered their help. Others called to wish us well. All wanted answers.
They want to know what led to terrorist attack that took the lives of almost 3,000 Americans and forever changed the lives of millions of others. They want and need to know who were these people and what kind of warped beliefs could lead them in their fanaticism to commit such a terrible act.
They want to know how such an attack could occur and succeed in a nation as strong as ours militarily, economically and technologically.
They want to know what, if anything, went wrong on that specific day.
What evidence did those charged with safeguarding the security of us all have that might have averted the catastrophe that ensued? How did they use it?
What evidence was available? What could have been done to avert this tragedy? What might have resulted if people had acted differently on that day and the days leading up to Sept. 11?
Finally, and most importantly, they want to know what can be done to prevent future terrorist attacks of this scale and to make the rest of us safer.
In conversations I have had with family members of people who perished in attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in a plane crash in a small field in Somerset County, Pa., they told me time and time again that they did not want their loved ones to have died in vain.
It is horrible enough to have seen someone you love struck down in such a brutal way, they told me. It would be even worse for the rest of us to do nothing to prevent other families from having to endure such enduring grief and pain.
As chairman of this commission, I consider this task the most important part of our work. We will not allow those who were injured or badly hurt on the most gruesome day in American history to go down in history as statistics. Each represented a life that was interrupted. All had families, colleagues and friends who cared about them. All who perished had dreams that went unfulfilled.
We will construct memorials and we should to honor their memory, but the greatest service we can pay those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and those who survived the blaze, is to do all we can to assure that no one ever again experiences the unspeakable anguish they endured.
While there is nothing this commission can do to bring back to life those who were taken from us Sept. 11, 2001, we can work to assure that no future families suffer the way so many people with us today have suffered. That is what this commission intends to do.
These comments are excerpted from the opening statement delivered last week by former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the September 11 Commission.