Failure of imagination
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Failure of imagination is a general term use describe circumstances where something which was possible to predict or foresee was not in fact predicted or foreseen.
The term has been used to describe part of why intelligence agencies such as the CIA failed to foresee and prevent the events of September 11, 2001. More generally, the term also refers to the known failures to outsmart terrorists by the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and within the various agencies of government such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Central Intelligence Agency.
During the summer of 2003, after the now de-classified report about the September 11th attack, many government officials such as Senator Bob Graham began to make criticisms that the September 11th attack might have easily been predicted, if not outright prevented in part or altogether.[1] Following these criticisms, President Bush declassified the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing which indicated that "Bin Laden Determined to Attack United States", and which indicated that hijackings might be one possible mode of attack[2].
After the attacks, representatives of the Bush administration claimed in early 2004 that "nobody could have imagined that ... hijackers would intentionally crash .... hijackers usually want to live."[3] To the contrary, author Tom Clancy envisioned just such an event in his 1994 novel Debt of Honor, where a disgruntled Japan Airlines pilot flies a Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol Building[4]. The apparently intentional crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 by its co-pilot on December 31, 1999[5], and a similar intentional crash of PSA Flight 1771 by a disgruntled former airline employee on December 7, 1987[6], offered precedents in real life.[who?] Prior to the 9/11 attacks, a number of foreign nationals were taking pilot training in the U.S. and raised suspicion by being uninterested in learning how to land safely[7]. This failure to "connect the dots" and imagine what was being planned constitutes a lapse in duty by the National Security Advisor.[citation needed]
The phrase failure of imagination has been used to describe the cause of the Apollo 1 fire in 1967. The term was attributed to astronaunt Frank Borman, speaking at the Apollo 1 investigation hearings (dramatized in the HBO mini-series From The Earth To The Moon in 1998.)
