Frontline Analysis of Terrorist Attacks of September 11 - Essay Example

The first controversy that is detailed within this program is the lack of communication between US organizations such as the FBI and CIA. Former FBI agent, Ali Soufan is interviewed in this program and he describes how the CIA withheld information from the FBI which could have stopped the terrorist attacks on September 11th. According to Soufan, he requested information from the CIA on several occasions before the attacks because he was working on another terrorist attack that had occurred on the USS Cole in Yemen and was struggling to figure out specific connections between terrorist groups(“The Interrogator,” 2011).

However, the CIA ignored all of his requests, but after September 11th, 2001, they suddenly began to provide him with documents and photographs which, if he had been given access to these sources earlier, he believes that the FBI would have been able to track down the people involved with 9/11 and ultimately been able to stop it. Ali Soufan did not really understand why he was ignored earlier, but most people seem to think that it had to do with miscommunication in that the CIA might have thought that the FBI and other agencies already had access to this information(“The Interrogator,” 2011).

There is a lot of “what ifs” in this particular controversy as people imagine what the United States and the world might look like today if these two major agencies had been better at communicating with each other. There were other problems with communication as well when it came to interrogation techniques. Ali Soufan was one of the FBI’s foremost interrogators because of his ability to speak Arabic. He had spent a great deal of time questioning terrorist subjects; however, after September 11th, 2001, the United States decided to begin using enhanced interrogation techniques which included water boarding, nudity, sleep deprivation, and no toilets.

Ali Soufan did not agree with these techniques because he believed them to be ineffective in comparison to his own method of questioning. Ultimately, Soufan and others like him were replaced by experts in enhanced interrogation techniques. Soufan attempted to communicate his concerns about this, but no one really listened. He even spoke before the government with his identity concealed that there were plenty of examples which illustrated that techniques like water-boarding did more harm than good as terrorists simply give out false information in order to stop what some consider to be torture(“The Interrogator,” 2011).

The controversy here stems from the fact that Soufan believes that no significant information has been gleaned from imprisoned terrorists using these severe interrogation techniques. However, those on the other side of the argument such as Dick Cheney, continue to defend these methods and say that they have been able to thwart many potential terrorist attacks because of it. The average American will never know the truth because this controversey appears to be more of a difference of opinion than anything else with each side saying that the other is wrong.

The average American is also unlikely to be aware of the controversey that surrounds how much money has been spent on counter-terrorism efforts and the ultimate impact that these efforts have had on stopping