Politics & Government

Ten Years Later, 9/11 Report Card Shows U.S. Security Has Barely Improved

A newly released report reveals the country is still struggling to tighten security.

A recent report by the Bipartisan Policy Center finds that, since the 9/11 tragedy, America still has a long way to go toward improving security against terrorist attacks.

According to an ABC News report, the policy center's report card, entitled, Tenth Anniversary Report Card: The Status of the 9/11 Commission Recommendations gives U.S. security very few A's, lots of C's and incompletes, and at least two significant F's.

"We really have not gotten it right yet," said Gov. Tom Kean, the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission which was organized to recommend ways to prevent another terror attack. "Some of these recommendations, no question you get an F."

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For example, despite billions of dollars spent on aviation security, the report found the U.S. is still highly vulnerable to aviation security threats and still cannot reliably detect explosives that could bring down a plane.

Also cited in the commission report card is the failure to remedy the communications breakdown that occurred on September 11, when emergency police and fire units in New York were on different radio frequencies and could not talk to each other.

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"People died because of that," said Kean, who now co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Security Preparedness Group. Kean blamed Congress for that shortcoming, in its failure, after ten years, to allocate new broadcast frequencies for common use by all first responders.

"That should have been done yesterday," said Kean. "And every day it's not done, the American people are less safe."


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