Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
host, I took time to read those links and in regards to the Bin Laden thing, I do recall the Clinton cruise missle strikes and felt that he wasn't doing enough to stop the threat. I understand his "balancing" of using technology instead of putting human beings in harms way, but like ace, I don't give him that much credit for it. Credit for effort, but end result was that mission wasn't accomplished.
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Thank you, Cynthetiq. In fairness, the reporting about the July 10, 2001, CIA briefing of Condi Rice was not yet released, when you posted your opinion.
I recently posted, at the following link, lists/links of news reports about Bin Laden, by the NY Times, in 1998, and in late 2000, into 2001. You can see for yourself, what was reported about the efforts to counter Bin Laden, by Clinton, and later, by Bush:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...7&postcount=43
The following begins with citations about the circumstances of the failure to capture Bin Laden at Tora Bora, in late 2001. It is followed by the october 2006 reporting, with the dates boldly highlighted to make the citations easy to pick out.
Then, I documented the statements of Bush and Rice, about what they knew, before 9/11, concerning the threat that Bin Laden posed, vs. determinations by the 9/11 Commission, news reports, and the statements of Richard Clarke.
It is obvious to me that Bush and Rice have been less than honest to the American people. The question is, why did they make such repeated dishonest statements. <b>If you have information that counters the reporting about Bush and Rice that I've posted, please share it. If you have anything that shows that Clinton misled us about his efforts to "get Bin Laden", or misused the points that the US intelligence agencies had not "certified" that Bin Laden had committed the African Embassy bombings, as Clinton has claimed, or that it was confirmed that the bombing of the Navy's Cole was attributed to Bin Laden, earlier than just before Clinton left office, please point me to it.</b>
If you can't or won't, I'll be left with my impression that, compared to the deceit and inaction of Bush and his administration, and the failure at Tora Bora, and since; in the prosecution of the GWOT, there is nothing that Clinton did or didn't do, that is consequential enough, compared to the Bush "record", to even seem mildly irritating!
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...¬Found=true
U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight
Failure to Send Troops in Pursuit Termed Major Error
By Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 17, 2002; Page A01
The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge...
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...061901211.html
The Shadow War, In a Surprising New Light
By Barton Gellman,
a Washington Post staff writer who reports on intelligence and national security
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Page C01
THE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE
Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
....Tenet and his loyalists also settle a few scores with the White House here. The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."
Three months later, with bin Laden holed up in the Afghan mountain redoubt of Tora Bora, the CIA official managing the Afghanistan campaign, <b>Henry A. Crumpton (now the State Department's counterterrorism chief), brought a detailed map to Bush and Cheney. White House accounts have long insisted that Bush had every reason to believe that Pakistan's army and pro-U.S. Afghan militias had bin Laden cornered and that there was no reason to commit large numbers of U.S. troops to get him. But Crumpton's message in the Oval Office, as told through Suskind, was blunt: The surrogate forces were "definitely not" up to the job, and "we're going to lose our prey if we're not careful."</b>
Quote:
<b>...Using a map, Crumpton shows</b> “the area on the Pakistani side of the line [is] a lawless, tribal region that [Pakistan has] little control over. In any event, satellite images showed that [Pakistan’s] promised troops hadn’t arrived, and seemed unlikely to appear soon.” Crumpton adds that the Afghan forces in the region allied to the US are "tired and cold and, many of them are far from home." They were battered from fighting in the south against Taliban forces, and "they’re just not invested in getting bin Laden." <b>He tells Bush that "we’re going to lose our prey if we’re not careful" and strongly recommends the US marines being sent to Kandahar <a href="http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&startpos=1700#a112601marineskandahar">(see November 26, 2001)</a> get to Tora Bora immediately instead. Cheney says nothing. Bush presses Crumpton for more information. "How bad off are these Afghani forces, really? Are they up to the job?" Crumpton replies, "Definitely not, Mr. President. Definitely not.</b>" However, the Pentagon is not voicing the same concerns to Bush. <b>The marines are not redirected to seal off the passes.</b> [Suskind, 2006, pp. 58-59 Sources: Ron Suskind]
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...091101062.html
Players: Henry Crumpton
In From the Cold and Able to Take the Heat
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 12, 2005; Page A17
Last month, Henry "Hank" Crumpton, a revered master of CIA covert operations, formally came in from the cold.
Crumpton gained almost mythical fame after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- always anonymously. He is the mysterious "Henry" in the Sept. 11 commission report, which notes he persistently pressed the CIA to do more in Afghanistan before Osama bin Laden's terrorist spectaculars. Two key proposals to track al Qaeda were turned down...
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Quote:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...21/ltm.05.html
AMERICAN MORNING
20 Killed by Sniper Fire During Shiite Holiday; Spike Lee Discusses His Film on Hurricane Katrina
Aired August 21, 2006 - 08:30:00 ET
....CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, SR. INT'L. CORRESPONDENT (voice over): December, 2001. ....The battle of Tora Bora had begun. Osama bin Laden, the Jackal of 9/11, and hundreds of al Qaeda fighters had finally been cornered, or so it seemed.
GARY BERNTSEN, FMR. CIA OFFICER: We brought in Specter gunships, which can put a bullet on every inch of a football field.
<b>AMANPOUR: Gary Berntsen was the leader of a secret CIA paramilitary unit that had pursued bin Laden since he had fled Kabul. And now, the CIA was sure it knew where he was, thanks in large part to a radio taken off a dead al Qaeda fighter.</b>
BERNTSEN: We listened to bin Laden for several days using that radio. Listening to his communications among him and his men. We listened to him apologizing them for having lead them into this trap and for having lead them into a location where they would be having air strikes called on them just relentlessly.
AMANPOUR (on camera): The plan was for Afghan and Pakistani soldiers to block any escape routes, but Osama bin Laden managed to slip away through the mountains. And the mission to capture or kill the al Qaeda leader failed.
<b>By most accounts, the main problem was not enough American soldiers on the ground.
BERNTSEN: In the first two or three days of December, I would write a message back to Washington recommending the insertion of U.S. forces on the ground. I was looking for 600 to 800 Rangers, roughly, battalion. They never came.</b>
AMANPOUR: Osama bin Laden, looking frail and much older than his 44 years, after the massive onslaught of Tora Bora, had escaped again.
(END VIDEOTAPE) ..
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Quote:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwash...n/15662785.htm
<h3>Posted on Mon, Oct. 02, 2006</h3>
Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY, WARREN P. STROBEL and JOHN WALCOTT
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning...
....One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as <b>a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10″ that “connected the dots”</b> in earlier intelligence reports to present <b>a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again…</b>
“The briefing was intended to `connect the dots’ contained in other intelligence reports and paint a very clear picture of the threat posed by bin Laden,” said the official, who <b>described the tone of the report as “scary.”...</b>
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100200187.html
Tenet Recalled Warning Rice
Former CIA Chief Told 9/11 Commission of Disputed Meeting
By Dan Eggen and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
<h3>Tuesday, October 3, 2006; Page A03</h3>
Former CIA director George Tenet told the 9/11 Commission that he had warned of an imminent threat from al-Qaeda in a July 2001 meeting with Condoleezza Rice, adding that he believed Rice took the warning seriously, according to a transcript of the interview and the recollection of a commissioner who was there.
Tenet's statements to the commission in January 2004 confirm the outlines of an event in a new book by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward that has been disputed by some Bush administration officials. But the testimony also is at odds with Woodward's depiction of Tenet and former CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black as being frustrated that "they were not getting through to Rice" after the July 10, 2001, meeting.
Rice angrily rejected those assertions yesterday, saying that it was "incomprehensible" that she would have ignored such explicit intelligence from senior CIA officials and that she received no warning at the meeting of an attack within the United States.
Rice acknowledged that the White House was receiving a "steady stream of quite alarmist reports of potential attacks" during that period, but said the targets were assumed to be in the Middle East...
...."What I am quite certain of, however, is that I would remember if I was told -- as this account apparently says -- that there was about to be an attack in the United States," Rice said. "The idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible."
The meeting has become the focus of a fierce and often confusing round of finger-pointing involving Rice, the White House and the 9/11 Commission, all of whom dispatched staffers to the National Archives and other locations yesterday in attempts to sort out what had occurred.
Members of the commission -- an independent, bipartisan panel created by Congress to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks -- have said for days that they were not told about the July 10 meeting and were angry at being left out. As recently as yesterday afternoon, both commission chairman Thomas H. Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said they believed the panel had not been told about the July 10 meeting.
<b>But it turns out that the panel was, in fact, told about the meeting, according to the interview transcript and Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste,</b> who sat in on the interview with Tenet. The meeting was not identified by the July 10 date in the commission's best-selling report.
Rice added to the confusion yesterday by strongly suggesting that the meeting may never have occurred at all -- even though administration officials had conceded for several days that it had. ...
..."The briefing was a summary of the threat reporting from the previous weeks," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters traveling with Rice in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. "There was nothing new."
Despite this, McCormack said, Rice asked that Tenet provide the same briefing to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. The two men received it by July 17, he said. McCormack was unable to explain why Rice felt the briefing should be repeated if it did not include new material.
Ashcroft said in an interview yesterday that he was never briefed by Tenet or Black about an imminent domestic threat.
"I didn't get called on by Black or Tenet if they were going around doing such briefings," Ashcroft said. "If in fact they were making visits to emphasize the severity of the domestic threat, I'm a little disappointed they didn't bring that information to my attention."
Neither Black nor Tenet has made any public comments about the assertions in Woodward's book. Woodward declined yesterday to comment in detail, saying only that he stood by his reporting.
Tenet gave testimony about the July 2001 meeting with Rice at his Langley headquarters office on Jan. 28, 2004, occasionally referring to charts and slides. Philip Zelikow, who at the time was the commission's executive director and now works for Rice, was present along with other commission staff members, according to Ben-Veniste and to a portion of the transcript, which was read to The Washington Post by an official with access to it.
At one point in the lengthy session, Tenet recalled a briefing he was given on July 10 by Black and his staff, according to the transcript.<b> He said the information was so important that he quickly called for a car and telephoned Rice to arrange for a White House meeting to share</b> what he had just learned, according to the transcript and Ben-Veniste.
According to the transcript, Tenet told Rice there were signs that there could be an al-Qaeda attack in weeks or perhaps months, that there would be multiple, simultaneous attacks causing major human casualties, and that the focus would be U.S. targets, facilities or interests. But the intelligence reporting focused almost entirely on the attacks occurring overseas, Tenet told the commission.
It was at this session that Tenet said <b>"the system was blinking red,"</b> which became a chapter title in the commission report, according to the official who saw the transcript.
According to three people present at the session, including Ben-Veniste, Tenet believed that Rice responded seriously to what she had been told. "We particularly questioned him about whether he had the sense that Dr. Rice and the others on the White House side understood the gravity of what he was telling them," said Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor. "He said that they believed that they did. . . . We asked him further whether Dr. Rice just shrugged this off, and he said he did not have such an impression."
<b>Ben-Veniste's comments seem to contradict his own remarks over the weekend to the New York Times, in which he said that "the meeting was never mentioned to us.</b>" Ben-Veniste said yesterday that there was confusion between two different meetings and that the meeting described by Tenet is different in character from the one portrayed by Woodward.
Zelikow, who now works as one of Rice's closest aides as a State Department counselor, did not respond to a request for comment yesterday. He told the New York Times that none of the commission's witnesses had drawn attention to a July 10 meeting or had outlined the type of confrontation with Rice described by Woodward.
In comments to reporters, Rice also denied that she had endorsed ousting Rumsfeld at the end of Bush's first term, although she said she did tell President Bush that he might want to consider changing his entire foreign policy team.
"I did tell the president at one point that I thought maybe all of us should go, because we had fought two wars and had the largest terrorist attack in American history," Rice said. "When he asked me to be secretary of state, I said I think maybe you need new people. I don't know if that was somehow interpreted, but what I was actually talking about was me."
Wright reported from Shannon, Ireland, and Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
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Quote:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...9rM&refer=home
State Department Confirms Rice Met With Tenet on Terror Threat
By Judy Mathewson
<h3>Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) </h3>-- The State Department confirmed that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet about the threat posed by al-Qaeda two months before the Sept. 11 attacks.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack disputed the characterization of the meeting in the book ``State of Denial'' by journalist Bob Woodward, saying the information Rice got ``was not new'' and didn't amount to an urgent warning.
``Rather, it was a good summary from the threat-reporting from the previous several weeks,'' McCormack said in a statement from Saudi Arabia where Rice is traveling.
Rice, who was President George W. Bush's national security adviser at the time, asked that the information be forwarded to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to McCormack.
In a briefing with reporters on her way to Saudi Arabia Rice said that she didn't recall the specific meeting and that it was ``incomprehensible'' that she would have ignored warnings about an imminent threat. After her aides researched the matter, McCormack said they found that ``a meeting took place on or around July 10.''....
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Quote:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/...2-04.html.html
April 12, 2004, 2:45pm EDT
REPORT WARNED OF POSSIBLE AL-QAIDA ATTACKS IN UNITED STATES
An intelligence document submitted to President Bush on Aug. 6, 2001 warned that al-Qaida terrorists already living in the United States could be planning airplane hijackings or the targeting of buildings with explosives, possibly in New York and Washington....
...The document ends with two paragraphs about intelligence on al-Qaida gleaned after 1998.
"FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York," the document, which was released Saturday, reads.
The document further stated that the FBI had "70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related," and that the "CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the [United Arab Emirates] in May saying that a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives."....
...During Rice's testimony Commissioner Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, asked <b>"What is a warning, if August 6th isn't?"
"Well, August 6th is most certainly an historical document that says, 'Here's how you might think about al-Qaida,'" Rice responded...</b>
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Quote:
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report...Ch8.pdf#page=9
(From Page 7 near bottom):
....<b>The President told us the August 6 report was historical in nature.</b> President
Bush said the article told him that al Qaeda was dangerous, which he said he
had known since he had become President. The President said Bin Ladin had
long been talking about his desire to attack America. He recalled some operational
data on the FBI, and remembered thinking it was heartening that 70
investigations were under way.As best he could recollect, Rice had mentioned
that the Yemenis’ surveillance of a federal building in New York had been
looked into in May and June, but there was no actionable intelligence.
<b>He did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General
or whether Rice had done so.</b> He said that if his advisers had told him there
was a cell in the United States, they would have moved to take care of it. That
never happened.36
Although the following day’s SEIB repeated the title of this PDB, it did not
contain the reference to hijackings, the alert in New York, the alleged casing
<b>“THE SYSTEM WAS BLINKING RED”</b>
(From Page 9, continued from Page 7)
of buildings in New York, the threat phoned in to the embassy, or <b>the fact that
the FBI had approximately 70 ongoing bin Ladin–related investigations.</b>38 No
CSG or other NSC meeting was held to discuss the possible threat of a strike
in the United States as a result of this report.
Late in the month, a foreign service reported that Abu Zubaydah was considering
mounting terrorist attacks in the United States, after postponing possible
operations in Europe. No targets, timing, or method of attack were
provided.39
<b>We have found no indication of any further discussion before September
11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an
al Qaeda attack in the United States.</b> DCI Tenet visited President Bush in
Crawford,Texas, on August 17 and participated in PDB briefings of the President
between August 31 (after the President had returned to Washington) and
September 10. But <b>Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of
the domestic threat during this period.</b>40
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...040413-20.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 13, 2004
President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference
Press Conference of the President
The East Room
....THE PRESIDENT:......... Elisabeth.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. To move to the 9/11 Commission. You, yourself, have acknowledged that Osama bin Laden was not a central focus of the administration in the months before September 11th. <b>"I was not on point," you told the journalist, Bob Woodward, "I didn't feel that sense of urgency." </b>Two-and-a-half years later, do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?
THE PRESIDENT: Let me put that quote to Woodward in context. He had asked me if I was -- something about killing bin Laden. That's what the question was. And I said, compared to how I felt at the time, after the attack, I didn't have that -- I also went on to say, my blood wasn't boiling, I think is what the quote said. I didn't see -- I mean, I didn't have that great sense of outrage that I felt on September the 11th. I was -- on that day I was angry and sad: angry that al Qaeda had -- well, at the time, thought al Qaeda, found out shortly thereafter it was al Qaeda -- had unleashed this attack; sad for those who lost their life.
<h3>host asks, The Cole wasn't enough?</h3>
Your question -- do I feel --
Q Do you feel a sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?
THE PRESIDENT: I feel incredibly grieved when I meet with family members, and I do quite frequently. I grieve for the incredible loss of life that they feel, the emptiness they feel.
There are some things I wish we'd have done when I look back. I mean, hindsight is easy.....
.....And the other thing I look back on and realize is that we weren't on a war footing. The country was not on a war footing, and yet the enemy was at war with us. And it's -- it didn't take me long to put us on a war footing. And we've been on war ever since. The lessons of 9/11 that I -- one lesson was, we must deal with gathering threats. And that's part of the reason I dealt with Iraq the way I did.
The other lesson is, is that this country must go on the offense and stay on the offense. In order to secure the country, we must do everything in our power to find these killers and bring them to justice, before they hurt us again. I'm afraid they want to hurt us again. They're still there.
They can be right one time; we've got to be right a hundred percent of the time in order to protect the country.....But we've still got a lot of work to do.
Dave.
Q Mr. President, I'd like to follow up on a couple of these questions that have been asked. <b>One of the biggest criticisms of you is that whether it's WMD in Iraq, postwar planning in Iraq, or even the question of whether this administration did enough to ward off 9/11, you never admit a mistake. Is that a fair criticism? And do you believe there were any errors in judgment that you made related to any of those topics I brought up?</b>
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think, as I mentioned, it's -- the country wasn't on war footing, and yet we're at war. And that's just a reality, Dave. I mean, that's -- that was the situation that existed prior to 9/11, because <b>the truth of the matter is, most in the country never felt that we'd be vulnerable to an attack such as the one that Osama bin Laden unleashed on us. We knew he had designs on us, we knew he hated us. But there was a -- nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale.</b>
The people know where I stand. I mean, in terms of Iraq.... the world is better off without Saddam Hussein........And it's very important for the loved ones of our troops to understand that the mission is an important, vital mission for the security of America and for the ability to change the world for the better.
Let's see -- Ed.
Q Mr. President, good evening. You've talked on the -- I'd like to ask you about the August 6th PDB.
THE PRESIDENT: Sure.
Q You mentioned it at Fort Hood on Sunday. You said -- <b>you pointed out that it did not warn of a hijacking of airplanes to crash into buildings, but that it warned of hijacking to, obviously, take hostages and to secure the release of extremists being held by the U.S. Did that trigger some specific actions on your part and the administration, since it dealt with potentially hundreds of lives and a blackmail attempt on the United States government?</b>
THE PRESIDENT: Ed, I asked for the briefing. And the reason I did is because there had been a lot of threat intelligence from overseas. <h3>And so -- part of it had to do with Genoa, the G8 conference that I was going to attend.</h3> And I asked, at that point in time, let's make sure we are paying attention here at home, as well. And that's what triggered the report.
Quote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1444922.stm
<b>Wednesday, 18 July, 2001</b>, 14:03 GMT 15:03 UK
Genoa set for summit onslaught
...The huge force of officers and equipment which has been assembled to deal with unrest has been <b>spurred on by a warning that supporters of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden might attempt an air attack on some of the world leaders present.</b>
Anti-aircraft missiles have been deployed at the airport, and naval vessels are patrolling the seas. ...
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Quote:
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/eu...violence.0548/
G8 summit braces for more violence
July 21, 2001 Posted: 5:49 AM EDT (0949 GMT)
<b>Brief outline of Genoa G8 security:
Surface-to-air missiles are in place, while fighter jets, naval ships and minesweepers are also being used.</b>
#
A Red Zone around the city centre is closed to everyone apart from delegates and residents. Twelve foot barriers have been erected.
#
Rail, road and airport links have been shut, the port cleared and border controls patrolled.
#
Yellow Zone is acting as buffer zone around the red zone.
<b>#
U.S. President George W. Bush is not staying with other world leaders because of fear of terrorist attack.</b>
#
Metal detectors, sniffer dogs and agents are standing guard <b>at the luxury cruiser housing the leaders.....</b>
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The report, itself, I've characterized as mainly history, and I think when you look at it you'll see that it was talking about '97 and '98 and '99. It was also an indication, as you mentioned, <b>that bin Laden might want to hijack an airplane, but as you said, not to fly into a building, but perhaps to release a person in jail. In other words, serve it as a blackmail.</b>
And of course, that concerns me. All those reports concern me. As a matter of fact, I was dealing with terrorism a lot as the President when George Tenet came in to brief me. I mean, that's where I got my information. I changed the way that -- the relationship between the President and the CIA Director. And I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time. And we had briefings about terrorist threats. This was a summary.
Now, in what's called the PDB, there was a warning about bin Laden's desires on America, but, frankly, I didn't think that was anything new. ...
....The way my administration worked, Ed, is that I met with Tenet all the time, obviously met with my principals a lot. We talked about threats that had emerged. <b>We had a counterterrorism group meeting on a regular basis to analyze the threats that came in.</b> Had there been a threat that required action by anybody in the government, I would have dealt with it. In other words, had they come up and said, this is where we see something happening, you can rest assured that the people of this government would have responded, and responded in a forceful way.
<b>I mean, one of the things about Elisabeth's question was</b>, I step back and I've asked myself a lot, is there anything we could have done to stop the attacks. Of course, I've asked that question -- as have many people of my government. Nobody wants this to happen to America. <b>And the answer is that had I had any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings, we would have moved heaven and earth to save the country</b> -- just like we're working hard to prevent a further attack.
Let's see -- Jim......
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Most of the intelligence community recognized in the summer of 2001 that
the number and severity of threat reports were unprecedented. Many officials
told us that they knew something terrible was planned, and they were desperate
to stop it. Despite their large number, the threats received contained few
(Continues from page 9, through page 12):
specifics regarding time, place, method, or target. Most suggested that attacks
were planned against targets overseas; others indicated threats against unspecified
“U.S. interests.”We cannot say for certain whether these reports, as dramatic
as they were, related to the 9/11 attacks.
<b>Government Response to the Threats</b>
National Security Advisor Rice told us that the CSG was the “nerve center”
for running the crisis, although other senior officials were involved over the
course of the summer. In addition to his daily meetings with President Bush,
and weekly meetings to go over other issues with Rice,Tenet was speaking regularly
with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld. The foreign policy principals routinely talked on the telephone
every day on a variety of topics.41
<b>Hadley told us that before 9/11, he and Rice did not feel they had the job
of coordinating domestic agencies.They felt that Clarke and the CSG (part of
the NSC) were the NSC’s bridge between foreign and domestic threats.</b>42
There was a clear disparity in the levels of response to foreign versus domestic
threats. Numerous actions were taken overseas to disrupt possible attacks—
enlisting foreign partners to upset terrorist plans, closing embassies, moving
military assets out of the way of possible harm.Far less was done domestically—
in part, surely, because to the extent that specifics did exist, they pertained to
threats overseas.As noted earlier, a threat against the embassy in Yemen quickly
resulted in its closing.Possible domestic threats were more vague.When reports
did not specify where the attacks were to take place, officials presumed that they
would again be overseas, though they did not rule out a target in the United
States. Each of the FBI threat advisories made this point.43
<b>Clarke mentioned to National Security Advisor Rice at least twice that al
Qaeda sleeper cells were likely in the United States. In January 2001, Clarke
forwarded a strategy paper to Rice warning that al Qaeda had a presence in
the United States.</b> He noted that two key al Qaeda members in the Jordanian
cell involved in the millennium plot were naturalized U.S. citizens and that one
jihadist suspected in the East Africa bombings had “informed the FBI that an
extensive network of al Qida ‘sleeper agents’ currently exists in the US.” He
added that Ressam’s abortive December 1999 attack revealed al Qaeda supporters
in the United States.44 His analysis, however, was based not on new
threat reporting but on past experience.
<b>The September 11 attacks fell into the void between the foreign and domestic
threats.The foreign intelligence agencies were watching overseas, alert to
foreign threats to U.S. interests there.</b>The domestic agencies were waiting for
evidence of a domestic threat from sleeper cells within the United States. No
one was looking for a foreign threat to domestic targets.The threat that was
coming was not from sleeper cells. It was foreign—but from foreigners who
had infiltrated into the United States.
A second cause of this disparity in response is that domestic agencies did
not know what to do, and no one gave them direction.Cressey told us that the
CSG did not tell the agencies how to respond to the threats. He noted that the
agencies that were operating overseas did not need direction on how to
respond; they had experience with such threats and had a “playbook.” <b>In contrast,
the domestic agencies did not have a game plan.Neither the NSC (including
the CSG) nor anyone else instructed them to create one.</b>45
This lack of direction was evident in the July 5 meeting with representatives
from the domestic agencies.The briefing focused on overseas threats.The
domestic agencies were not questioned about how they planned to address the
threat and were not told what was expected of them. Indeed, as noted earlier,
they were specifically told they could not issue advisories based on the briefing.
46 The domestic agencies’ limited response indicates that they did not perceive
a call to action.
Clarke reflected a different perspective in <b>an email to Rice on September
15, 2001.</b> He summarized the steps taken by the CSG to alert domestic agencies
to the possibility of an attack in the United States. <b>Clarke concluded that
domestic agencies, including the FAA, knew that the CSG believed a major al
Qaeda attack was coming and could be in the United States.
Although the FAA had authority to issue security directives mandating new
security procedures, none of the few that were released during the summer of
2001 increased security at checkpoints or on board aircraft.</b>The information
circulars mostly urged air carriers to “exercise prudence” and be alert. Prior to
9/11, the FAA did present a CD-ROM to air carriers and airport authorities
describing the increased threat to civil aviation.The presentation mentioned
the possibility of suicide hijackings but said that “fortunately,we have no indication
that any group is currently thinking in that direction.”47 The FAA conducted
27 special security briefings for specific air carriers between May 1,
2001, and September 11, 2001.Two of these briefings discussed the hijacking
threat overseas. None discussed the possibility of suicide hijackings or the use
of aircraft as weapons. No new security measures were instituted.48....
.....264 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
Acting FBI Director Pickard told us that in addition to his July 19 conference
call, he mentioned the heightened terrorist threat in individual calls with
the special agents in charge of field offices during their annual performance
review discussions. In speaking with agents around the country, we found little
evidence that any such concerns had reached FBI personnel beyond the
New York Field Office.50
The head of counterterrorism at the FBI, Dale Watson, said he had many
discussions about possible attacks with Cofer Black at the CIA. They had
expected an attack on July 4.Watson said he felt deeply that something was
going to happen. But he told us the threat information was “nebulous.” He
wished he had known more. He wished he had had “500 analysts looking at
Usama Bin Ladin threat information instead of two.”51
Attorney General Ashcroft was briefed by the CIA in May and by Pickard
in early July about the danger. Pickard said he met with Ashcroft once a week
in late June, through July, and twice in August. There is a dispute regarding
Ashcroft’s interest in Pickard’s briefings about the terrorist threat situation.
<b>Pickard told us that after two such briefings Ashcroft told him that he did not
want to hear about the threats anymore. Ashcroft denies Pickard’s charge.</b>
Pickard says he continued to present terrorism information during further
briefings that summer, but nothing further on the “chatter” the U.S. government
was receiving.52
“THE SYSTEM WAS BLINKING RED” 265....
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
Aug. Memo Focused On Attacks in U.S.
Lack of Fresh Information Frustrated Bush
By Bob Woodward and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 19, 2002; Page A01
The top-secret briefing memo presented to President Bush on Aug. 6 carried the headline, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," and was primarily focused on recounting al Qaeda's past efforts to attack and infiltrate the United States, senior administration officials said.
The document, known as the President's Daily Briefing, underscored that Osama bin Laden and his followers hoped to "bring the fight to America," in part as retaliation for U.S. missile strikes on al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1998, according to knowledgeable sources.....
...New accounts yesterday of the controversial Aug. 6 memo provided a shift in portrayals of the document, which has set off a political firestorm because it suggested that bin Laden's followers might be planning to hijack U.S. airliners.
In earlier comments this week, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials stressed that intelligence officials were focused primarily on threats to U.S. interests overseas. But sources made clear yesterday that the briefing presented to Bush focused on attacks within the United States, indicating that he and his aides were concerned about the risks.
The new reports came amid continued demands for an independent investigation on Capitol Hill, along with more revelations about possible intelligence missteps before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Intelligence sources said last night that at least two names listed in a July 2001 FBI memo about an Arizona flight school have been identified by the CIA as having links to al Qaeda. The FBI memo was never acted upon or distributed to outside agencies prior to Sept. 11 and was not provided to the CIA until last week, sources said.
The memo, sent to FBI headquarters by a Phoenix FBI agent, warned that bin Laden could have been using U.S. flight schools to train terrorists and suggested a nationwide canvass for Middle Eastern aviation students. The CIA's discovery of an al Qaeda link was first reported by ABC News.
Sources cautioned that CIA officials are not sure that they could have linked the two names to al Qaeda had they been given the memo last summer.
Three of the Sept. 11 hijackers received flight training in the United States, although all had ended their classes by the time the memo was written. The document was never shared in August with FBI investigators in Minnesota, who were scrambling to ascertain whether French national Zacarias Moussaoui was part of an al Qaeda plot. He since has been charged as a Sept. 11 conspirator.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said yesterday that criticism of the administration's intelligence actions before Sept. 11 is unfair.........
...... <b>"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people . . . would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Rice said Thursday.
But a 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters.</b>
The report recounts well-known case studies of similar plots, including a 1995 plan by al Qaeda operatives to hijack and crash a dozen U.S. airliners in the South Pacific and pilot a light aircraft into Langley.
"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.
In other developments yesterday, CIA officials said Cofer Black, head of the agency's Counterterrorism Center for the past three years, has been assigned to another position. They described the move as part of normal turnover at the agency. .......
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More supporting info: (<b>host: Consider the entire following article as a rebuttal to the white house "talking points" about Richard Clarke, linked in the excerpt below.</b>)
Quote:
http://www.slate.com/id/2097685/
Dick Clarke Is Telling the TruthWhy he's right about Bush's negligence on terrorism.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 6:22 PM ET
...The White House <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A14760-2004Mar22¬Found=true">talking-points paper</a> is filled with these sorts of distortions. For instance, it notes that Bush didn't need to meet with Clarke because, unlike Clinton, he met every day with CIA Director George Tenet, who talked frequently about al-Qaida.
But here's how Clarke describes those meetings:
[Tenet] and I regularly commiserated that al Qaeda was not being addressed more seriously by the new administration. ... We agreed that Tenet would ensure that the president's daily briefings would continue to be replete with threat information on al Qaeda.
The problem is: Nothing happened. (It is significant, by the way, that Tenet has not been recruited—not successfully, anyway—to rebut Clarke's charges. Clarke told Charlie Rose that he was "very close" to Tenet. The two come off as frustrated allies in Clarke's book.)
The White House document insists Bush did take the threat seriously, telling Rice at one point "that he was 'tired of swatting flies' and wanted to go on the offense against al-Qaeda."
Here's how Clarke describes that exchange:
President Bush, reading the intelligence every day and noticing that there was a lot about al Qaeda, asked Condi Rice why it was that we couldn't stop "swatting flies" and eliminate al Qaeda. Rice told me about the conversation and asked how the plan to get al Qaeda was coming in the Deputies' Committee. "It can be presented to the Principals in two days, whenever we can get a meeting," I pressed. Rice promised to get to it soon. Time passed.
The Principals meeting, which Clarke urgently requested during Bush's first week in office, did not take place until one week before 9/11. In his 60 Minutes interview, Clarke spelled out the significance of this delay. <B>He contrasted July 2001 with December 1999, when the Clinton White House got word of an impending al-Qaida attack on Los Angeles International Airport and Principals meetings were called instantly and repeatedly:
In December '99, every day or every other day, the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA, the Attorney General had to go to the White House and sit in a meeting and report on all the things that they personally had done to stop the al Qaeda attack, so they were going back every night to their departments and shaking the trees personally and finding out all the information. If that had happened in July of 2001, we might have found out in the White House, the Attorney General might have found out that there were al Qaeda operatives in the United States.</B> FBI, at lower levels, knew [but] never told me, never told the highest levels in the FBI. ... We could have caught those guys and then we might have been able to pull that thread and get more of the conspiracy. I'm not saying we could have stopped 9/11, but we could have at least had a chance.
That's what Clarke says is the tragedy of Bush's inaction, and nobody in the White House has dealt with the charge at all...
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....other indications of the veracity of Condi Rice and George Bush:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0010916-2.html
"For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
<b>September 16, 2001
Remarks by the President</b> Upon Arrival
The South Lawn
....<b>No one could have conceivably imagined suicide bombers burrowing into our society and then emerging all in the same day to fly their aircraft - fly U.S. aircraft into buildings full of innocent people</b> - and show no remorse. This is a new kind of -- a new kind of evil...
...Q Mr. President, would you confirm what the Vice President said this morning, that at one point during this crisis you gave an order to shoot down any civilian airliner that approached the Capitol? Was that a difficult decision to make?
THE PRESIDENT: I gave our military the orders necessary to protect Americans, do whatever it would take to protect Americans. And of course that's difficult. <b>Never did anybody's thought process about how to protect America did we ever think that the evil-doers would fly not one, but four commercial aircraft into precious U.S. targets - never.</b> And so, obviously, when I was told what was taking place, when I was informed that an unidentified aircraft was headed to the heart of the capital, I was concerned. I wasn't concerned about my decision; I was more concerned about the lives of innocent Americans. I had realized there on the ground in Florida we were under attack. <b>But never did I dream we would have been under attack this way."</b>
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...¬Found=true
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A16
While planning a high-level training exercise months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. military officials considered a
scenario in which a hijacked foreign commercial airliner flew into the Pentagon, defense officials said yesterday.
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Quote:
http://web.archive.org/web/200212050..._Planning.html
Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates
scenarios in preparing for emergencies
Story and Photos by Dennis Ryan
MDW News Service
Exercise SimulationsWashington, D.C., Nov. 3, 2000 -- The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard.
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Quote:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in509471.shtml
'99 Report Warned Of Suicide Hijacking
WASHINGTON, May 17, 2002
Former CIA Deputy Director John Gannon, who was chairman of the National Intelligence Council when the report was written, said U.S. intelligence long has known a suicide hijacker was a possible threat.
(AP) Exactly two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal report warned the executive branch that Osama bin Laden'sterrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government building......
.."I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World TradeCenter, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijackedairplane as a missile," <b>national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.</b>..
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Quote:
http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu...11-CBS-19.html
<b>CBS Evening News for Thursday, Oct 11, 1984</b>
Headline: Cyprus / Terrorism
Abstract: (Studio) State Department reported confirming Cypriot government concerns over <b>plot to crash terrorist plane into United States embassy</b> in Nicosia; details given. Similar threats mentioned receive against other United States embassies in Mideast.
REPORTER: Dan Rather
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