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Intelligence Flaws Anger Families
By Laurie Kellman
Associated Press
Wednesday, 18 September, 2002
Up went her hand, high over the table separating Kristen Breitweiser from members of Congress as cameras flashed a blinding wall of light.
She was displaying a gold ring, scratched all the way around its edge but otherwise perfectly round. It was virtually the only trace of her husband, Ron, found in the rubble of the World Trade Center after Sept. 11.
Unable to be in the same room with it at first after the attacks, Breitweiser held it up for all to see during Wednesday's joint hearings of the House and Senate intelligence committees.
"I wear it on my right hand, and it will remain there until the day I die," Breitweiser, 31, told committee members at the first public hearings of their inquiry into the attacks.
Lawmakers disclosed that the government had had far more warnings than previously acknowledged that planes might be used to bomb buildings.
That came as no surprise to Breitweiser and other relatives of people killed on Sept. 11.
"If the intelligence community had been doing its job, my wife would be alive today," said Stephen Push, whose wife, Lisa Raines, died in the attack on the Pentagon.
Breitweiser, of Sept. 11th Advocates, and Push, of Families of September 11, Inc., were the only relatives of those killed to speak directly to the committees.
Behind them, a dozen others, many dressed in black, wept as Breitweiser and Push angrily listed the government's failures that may have permitted the attacks.
Later, Breitweiser displayed the ring and the only sign that it had been battered in the collapse of a 110-story building: the tiny scratches along one edge.
"I think it's amazing that it survived intact," she said.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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