General says U.S. failed to see threat

NEW YORK -- Politicians, media and the military all failed to pay enough attention to the terrorist threat before Sept. 11, retired U.S. Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey said Monday.

The nation had been warned specifically about threats, but "we heard the report and walked away from it," said McCaffrey, former White House drug policy director.

"I think we all failed the country in many ways," he said. "There was an air of unreality to it. It was an out-of-body experience."

McCaffrey was among political and journalism leaders speaking Monday night at a panel on the media's response to Sept. 11 sponsored by the Museum of Television and Radio. A second seminar, about the war abroad, was scheduled for today.

The panel had U.S. Homeland Security director Tom Ridge and Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, who both praised the media's post-Sept. 11 performances.

Ridge credited the media with pushing government hard to get answers during the anthrax scare -- which affected ABC, CBS and NBC because of contamination at each network headquarters.

Clarke, recalling a makeshift briefing area at a gas station near the Pentagon, said "it was extraordinary what the media did in those early days."

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