April 10, 2004
MISINFORMATION:
Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says (ERIC LICHTBLAU and DAVID E. SANGER, 4/09/04, NY Times)
President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford.
The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders.
Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks have asked the White House to make the Aug. 6 briefing memorandum public. The A.P. account of it was attributed to "several people who have seen the memo." The White House has said that nothing in it pointed specifically to the kind of attacks that actually took place a month later.
The Congressional report last year, citing efforts by Al Qaeda operatives beginning in 1997 to attack American soil, said that operatives appeared to have a support structure in the United States and that intelligence officials had "uncorroborated information" that Mr. bin Laden "wanted to hijack airplanes" to gain the release of imprisoned extremists. It also said that intelligence officials received information in May 2001, three months earlier, that indicated "a group of bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives."
It hardly seems necessary to note that this points precisely away from a 9-11 style attack. The warning of impending hijackings for the purposes of freeing hostages suggests the classic scenario for which we'd been prepared since the 70s and which had not been carried out successfully from our soil in years. It contrasts with, rather than conforms to, the idea of an attack with explosives. Extortionists generally threaten to take lives rather than murdering as many people as they can, no? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 10, 2004 12:08 PM
Okay, a bunch of deranged murderers wanted to use explosives (no terrorist group has ever done that before !) and hijack airplanes (no Arab terrorist group has ever done that before !!). If that's the kind of intel the US gets out of its awfully expensive intelligence services, something is very wrong indeed.
Next thing we know, the CIA will inform the president that there are armed men running around in Iraq and that they don't appear to be US soldiers, although further investigation is still required.
Posted by: Peter at April 10, 2004 2:27 PMRichard Ben-Veniste was unable to gain any traction against Codi Rice when he tried to press this "bombshell" theory during Thursday's Sept. 11 hearings. So it's pretty obvious here that Ben-Veniste's planned line of attack was then given out as talking points to various reporters following the hearing, which permits his allegations could be put in front of the public without having Rice there to immediately contradict them.
The fact that he, and the reporters filing the stories, don't bother to mention the difference between pre-9/11 air terrorsim threats (bombs in luggage or using passengers as hostage negotiation tools) and post-9/11 threats is disingenuious. You can't expect anything better from Ben-Veniste, who has three decades of weaseliness behind him, but you would hope the press would be able to recall the views about hijacker's goals were quite different 31 months ago, or at least go into their archives and look it up.
Posted by: John at April 10, 2004 2:34 PMJohn --
Frankly, I do not think members of the press can read. Somehow they have been taught to write but they never learned how to read.
I noticed this kind of thing years ago. College graduates with 'computer science' degrees arrive at their jobs, getting paid big bucks, and you soon discover that they can write code very fast but they cannot read code. It's a real bummer.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at April 10, 2004 8:19 PMNoone expected that they would attempt to hijack the planes using nothing more deadly than box cutters, and the explosives that they intended to use were the airplanes themselves.
The Democrats want to criticize Bush for not acting on sketchy intelligence in relation to the 9/11 attacks, and for acting in Iraq without absolute certainty on the existence of WMDs.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at April 11, 2004 7:58 AMEight years vs. seven and one half months.
Posted by: Genecis at April 11, 2004 11:46 AM