Accountability, There and Here

By Ken Silverstein

There:

India’s highest-ranking security official resigned on Sunday, as the government began to reckon with the fallout from a three-day standoff with militants that raised troubling questions about India’s vulnerability to terrorism.

As an investigation moved forward, there were questions about whether Indian authorities could have anticipated the attack and had better security in place, especially after a 2007 report to Parliament that the country’s shores were inadequately protected from infiltration by sea — which is how the attackers sneaked into Mumbai. Home Minister Shivraj Patil, responsible for public safety and internal security as one of the most senior members of the government, resigned on Sunday to take responsibility for the failure of the country’s intelligence services and military to prevent the attacks in Mumbai.

Here:

The President’s Daily Brief for August 6, 2001 contained a two-page section entitled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” Yet no one was fired and no one resigned and accepted a shred of responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. CIA Director George Tenet stayed on until 2004 and President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom the same year.