Five Minutes With
Kristen Breitweiser
Stay-at-home mom turned consummate political activist, Kristen Breitweiser has emerged as a leading voice for government oversight and accountability. Her husband’s death on 9/11 galvanized Breitweiser into political advocacy. Ever since then she has crusaded for our nation’s security, lobbying politicians to recognize America’s glaring security flaws and to enact the necessary remedies. Working with other New Jersey 9/11 widows, these “Jersey Moms” were instrumental in the creation of the 9/11 Commission and lobbied for the Commission’s investigative powers and political autonomy. Breitweiser testified to both the 9/11 Commission and Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on the dire need for security reform to prevent future terrorist attacks.
Her unbridled determination to expose the failures leading up to 9/11 soon threw her into the political fray. Ann Coulter, in her most recent work, described Breitweiser and the other “Jersey Girls” as “…reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.” Undeterred, Breitweiser has only heightened her campaign to address America’s security gaps, becoming a contributor for the Huffington Post and telling the story of her own awakened activism in Wake-Up Call: The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow. Breitweiser’s advocacy work earned her the 2005 Ron Ridenhour Truth-Telling Award. Campus Progress spoke with Breitweiser about her new book and her thoughts on the state of America’s homeland security—five years after the attacks of September 11th.
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Can you tell us a little about your book, Wake-Up Call: The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow, and what motivated you to write it?
I wrote the book because after spending four and a half years in Washington, I found it to be a very eye-opening experience. It was not the Washington I expected to find. It was not the Washington from eighth grade social studies.
And so far, do you think the book, and your activism, might be having an impact, or are you a little cynical about it at this point?
It’s basically a call to arms. Basically to tell the American people, don’t assume blindly or ignorantly that your elected officials are representing you. I wanted people to know the reality that it was 12 family members on the Family Steering Committee that fought for the 9/11 Commission. That’s what 12 people could do. What could 24 people do? What could 36 people do? What could 50 people do?
Before September 11th, had you ever been a political activist?
No, not at all. I was a member of the Conservation Foundation of my town and that was the extent of it—recycled and voted. I grew up in a family where our father was mayor of our hometown for over 20 years and I despised politics.
And you were a Republican, right?
Yeah, I was an independent, certainly not a Democrat. My father was a Democrat, and I knew at the age of 18, when you register to vote, that I definitely did not want to be a Democrat.
Is that still the case?
No, definitely not. I think what’s sad is that the Republican Party has sort of lost its way about what it’s supposed to be—having Republican values. I consider myself an independent today.
There are rumors that you may be getting into politics yourself and running for office. Is there any truth to that?
I don’t think there’s any truth to that at all. I have a seven-year-old daughter, and she is my number one priority right now. And I also think there’s a benefit to working outside the system.
Having undergone the transition from apathy to activism because of a personal tragedy, what would you recommend as the ways to combat political apathy and get people engaged?
Start caring. Start engaging. Start involving yourself in these issues before you lose a loved one. Whether it’s from cancer, whether it’s from diabetes, or whether it’s from a drunken driver or somebody who abducts children. Start caring about these things before you become a victim.
The 9/11 Commissioners recently came out with a report card in which they gave a whole bunch of grades to government in Washington on its progress in meeting their recommendations. The grades are mostly pretty bad. But do you see any effect or improvement because of that? And what are the worst things that need to be addressed most urgently?
The problem with the 9/11 Commission was that they chose to hold no one accountable. They essentially said, everyone’s to blame, therefore it’s no one’s fault. And, you know, that’s just setting up a bad system there. They can put out all the report cards they want, but they are not being paid attention to because they are not taken very seriously. They didn’t name the names; they didn’t hold people responsible.
You know, the sad thing for me is that five years after 9/11 there’s too many things for me to list that need to be worked on. The biggest thing for me right now, which is just unbelievable to me, is the FBI computer system. We spent $170 million dollars on getting them a computer system that supposedly would connect the dots, which is one of the things they failed to do prior to 9/11. Yet five years later, their computer system is inoperable.
And then when my privacy rights are being violated in the name of national security, in reality the pay-off for that violation of my privacy rights is minimal. Because we don’t even have computer system that is operable; we don’t have new analysts capable of putting that information together and yielding any fruitful analysis. It’s a joke.
Do you feel the same way about torture?
Yeah. Frankly, torture does not work. The only thing torture does is to harm our reputation around the world and make us less safe from terrorists. You don’t gain any valuable information. When a lot of these people were detained for a number of years on no charges and not treated very well, when they return to their home, their countries become poster-children for why everyone should hate Americans. We are a nation of laws. And I think that the fact we have yet to prosecute one terrorist linked to the 9/11 attacks is unconscionable. Particularly when we have a president who is out there saying that we bring terrorists to justice.
How does it make you feel when the Bush administration or other supporters of the Iraq war conflate it with 9/11?
When you want to talk about Iraq, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Iraq was a deadly judgment call. I don’t know how anyone in their right mind would have had the confidence in a CIA that utterly blundered 9/11, and then turn to them and say, “Oh can you give us an assessment on Iraq?” Iraq has made the entire world less safe from terrorism. And what breaks my heart, is that there does not seem to be, on behalf of either the Democrats or the Republicans, any sort of strategy or concept of how we are going to fix that situation.
I do really hold the Democrats in Congress responsible for Iraq as well because many of the Democratic Congress members voted for the war in Iraq. They read the intelligence reports. They voted for that because they were worried about political repercussions. And when you’re talking about placing men and women on a battlefield it is unconscionable to me that anyone would have voted for that war. As far as I’m concerned, yeah, the president is the ultimate decision-maker, but I would have hoped that more rational, reasonable members of Congress would have voted against the war.
How do you respond to Ann Coulter’s viciously nasty criticism of you? And do you at least think it helped you sell some books?
What I can say about Ann Coulter is that she’s essentially doing what I wish every American had the platform to do, which is voicing her opinion. What I take grievance with her for, is if you happen to disagree with her, she feels you are not entitled to have the right to speak. I think that we need respectful debate and we need lively debate. And I do take umbrage with the fact that a lot of her facts are wrong. She accused us of supporting the 9/11 Commission being a white wash. I mean visit our website; you can see the press releases that we put out. In fact, we were the only vocal group fighting for the Commission to hold hard-hitting hearings, to ask hard-hitting, investigative questions, to put people under oath, to subpoena for documents, to get Condoleezza Rice to testify, to get the president to testify.
What I think is sad is that there are still a lot of questions that remain unanswered. And because of those unanswered questions, this nation is still vulnerable and lives will undoubtedly be senselessly lost on the day of the next attack.
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