Defense plan coming soon, Gorton says

Congress isn’t likely to agree before Election Day on ways to change the nation’s defense against terrorism, but will likely reach a consensus in a lame-duck session afterward, former Sen. Slade Gorton, a member of the Sept. 11 commission, predicted Tuesday in Spokane.

Although the House and Senate have proposals that started far apart on such things as the authority of a national intelligence director, negotiators for the two chambers have been moving closer together in the last week and seem to be competing to show “who can respond most promptly,” Gorton said.

There’s probably a good political reason for that, he added: “Every candidate is at risk if they delay and another terrorist attack takes place.”

One other thing will have to wait until after the election, Gorton told a breakfast crowd for the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce. That’s any comment by Gorton or other members of the commission about whether the war in Iraq is boosting terrorism in the world.

“Ask me in a week,” said Washington state’s former senior senator when the question came from the breakfast crowd at the Ridpath hotel.

Commission members don’t agree on the answer to that question, but they did unanimously agree not to discuss it until after the presidential election is over, he said.

The commission did agree, however, that there was no joint planning between al Qaeda and Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, he added.

Islamic terrorism is primarily fueled by a strict fundamentalist sect that is fighting centuries of decline in the Middle East against the West, Gorton said. The commission reviewed an interview Osama bin Laden gave before the 9/11 attacks, when he said the only thing that would lead him to call off his war against the United States was for America to get out of the Middle East, convert to Islam and “end the most corrupt and immoral civilization in the history of mankind.”

That doesn’t leave much to negotiate, Gorton said.

Although the commission was formed by partisan appointments – Gorton was recruited by former Sen. Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi – the members wound up unanimous in their recommendations of what to do about fighting terrorism, and how best to do it.

The three most important recommendations are to go after extremists where they are, wage a war for the hearts and minds of Islamic societies, and defend America’s borders better, Gorton said.

How to do it is the subject of the negotiations in Congress, he said. The committee’s recommendations include having a national counter-terrorism center headed by a presidential appointee, getting better coordination between agencies like the FBI and CIA, and giving the head of national intelligence the authority and budget needed.

Gorton, an 18-year veteran of the Senate, is now a lawyer with Preston Gates Ellis, splitting his time between Seattle and Washington, D.C. During the height of the commission investigation, it was about 90 percent in the other Washington, and he spends hours on the phone tracking the recommendations even when he’s on the road.

He’s betting Congress will act in the coming weeks to make at least some of those changes.

“Consolidation is urgently needed,” he said. “This is an opportunity that comes along once in a generation to make profound changes in the way we operate our national security.”

The nation has taken “appropriate” steps so far to improve its national security, but still has much to do, he added.

“We haven’t ended terrorism. We’ve simply displaced it,” he said.