9/11 Commission Co-Chair Lee Hamilton '52 Reflects on 10th Anniversary of Terror Attacks

September 11, 2011

September 11, 2011, Greencastle, Ind. — In the ten years since the terrorist attacks on the United States of America, "We’ve made a lot of progress in making the country safer," says Lee Hamilton, the 1952 DePauw University graduate who co-chaired the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as the 9/11 Commission. "We are certainly safer today than we were on 9/11. But I don’t think we’re as safe as we could be."

Hamilton, a Democrat who served 34 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, currently co-chairs the National Security Preparedness Group. Today he offers a wide-ranging interview to Indiana's Columbus Republic to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11. 

"The 9/11 Commission report produced a lot of recommendations," Hamilton notes. "We think about 80 percent of those recommendations have been approved, in part or in full. There are some very important recommendations which are not yet implemented. And so we’re following the implementation of these as yet not enacted recommendations. That’s what the National Security Policy group does. We’re following developments more broadly in homeland security and urging continual improvements."

The veteran statesman adds, "The one thing I would like to see that is across the board is a much greater sense of urgency on homeland security. 9/11 is 10 years ago. A thousand and one things have intervened in the public mind since 9/11. And we’ve had no foreign attack on us. It’s understandable that we’ve become a little complacent and reverted to business as usual in homeland security. And I think that’s the thing that would concern me the most. That has implications across the board, unified command on operability, on detection equipment and on and on, but what I find missing is this sense of urgency that we had at one point right after 9/11 that I think has gradually diminished."

Read the complete piece at the newspaper's website.

Lee H. Hamilton and seven other members of the 9/11 Commission will gather September 15 for a program in Bloomington, Indiana.

Called "Mr. Integrity" by Newsweek, Hamilton is now director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He returned to DePauw on March 15 to address "The U.S. Role in the World After Afghanistan and Iraq" in a Timothy and Sharon Ubben Lecture.  A summary including video clips can be accessed here.

Also available is this recent story.

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