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Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter. The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 President's Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it...

Leave it to Keith Olbermann to link the topics of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers and the 9/11 attacks. On his Countdown show on Tuesday night, the MSNBC anchor suggested that Miers was the person who handed President Bush a memo in August 2001 that warned of Osama bin Laden's desire to attack the U.S. This was the same memo that some on the left have used to justify their criticisms that the President should have foreseen and prevented the 9/11 attacks based on the memo's general warnings about bin Laden's intentions. Olbermann teased his Tuesday night show with a...

The following is the text of an item from the Presidential Daily Brief received by President William J. Clinton on December 4, 1998. Redacted material is indicated in brackets. SUBJECT: Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks 1. Reporting [—] suggests Bin Ladin and his allies are preparing for attacks in the US, including an aircraft hijacking to obtain the release of Shaykh ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman, Ramzi Yousef, and Muhammad Sadiq ‘Awda. One source quoted a senior member of the Gama’at al-Islamiyya (IG) saying that, as of late October, the IG had completed planning for an operation...

July 23, 2004 -- The 9/11 commission released a previously classified briefing to President Bill Clinton — made in 1998 — about a threat from Osama bin Laden to hijack aircraft in the United States. The bombshell Presidential Daily Brief of Dec. 4, 1998, included information obtained by the CIA from a friendly government. It was headed: "Bin Ladin [sic] Preparing to Hijack U.S. Aircraft and Other Attacks." It cited information indicating bin Laden and his allies were preparing an aircraft hijacking and other attacks in the United States to free three jailed Arabs, including the mastermind of the 1993...

n the summer of 2001 the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, was running around with his hair on fire. When told that Mr. Tenet's hair was on fire, President Bush replied, "I'm tired of swatting flies." The president added that the only thing worse than swatting flies was shaking trees. "You can swat all the flies and shake all the trees you want, but it still won't be a silver bullet," the president said. As August wore on Mr. Tenet's hair blazed out of control. Mr. Bush received a President's Daily Brief, or P.D.B., entitled, "Fire in Tenet's Hair...

Well that was a blow-out, wasn't it? After much media speculation, the famous article from the President's Daily Brief (PDB) of 6 August 2001 was declassified this past Saturday. Many feared (and some hoped) it would show the President had received 'actionable intelligence' about the 9/11 attacks more than a month before they occurred. But just read the PDB. You don't have to be James Bond to see there is no actionable intelligence there at all. Not a shred. This needless declassification of a Top Secret document was the result of a stunt by Richard Ben-Veniste, a member - as...

On Saturday, the New York Times—adhering to the P.T. Barnum school of journalism—screamed on its front page that President Bush was warned “that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes.”To drive home the point that “Bush lied,” the Times informed readers, “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.”The source for this most sensational of charges,...

The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing turned out to be a dud for liberal commentators seeking the elusive bombshell revelation that would demonstrate the Bush Administration's negligence prior to 9/11. Sure, the headline of the memo was tantalizing: "Osama bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." The moment 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste perry-masoned that title out of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, you could just about hear the blood rushing to the collective loins of the New York Times op-ed page. The PDB mentions bin Laden's desire "to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of 'Blind Shaykh'...

Aug. 6, 2001 briefing on al-Qaida only latest in series of warnings about terror threat sent to White House... Developing...

During the summer of the 1996 attacks, I myself learned firsthand that the administration knew that terrorists were plotting to use commercial airliners as weapons. The president received a Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB, every morning. It was a document encased in a smart leather folder, and emblazoned with the presidential seal, that contained the president's daily intelligence update from the NSC. A senior NSC representative normally delivered it to the president. On weekends, at Camp David, and on vacations, the military aide was responsible for delivering and retrieving the brief. One late-summer Saturday morning, the president asked me to...

The low point of Dr. Condoleezza’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission last week was the cross examination by Richard Ben-Veniste. It was not a low point for President Bush’s Security Advisor; she acquitted herself excellently. It was a low point for the Commission as one of its members, sworn to pursue the truth of the matter, revealed himself as rude and obnoxious, but more importantly as dishonest. Commissioner Ben-Veniste used a technique known to debaters and philosophers since ancient times, but a special province of modern trial lawyers. It is to use truth to manufacture a lie. It reared its...

The value of a Sept. 11 commission is that it can bring a better understanding as to what clues were missed and how the president and federal agencies could better protect the nation from future attacks. That would be the cooperative approach; the one that holds the American people pre-eminent. Unfortunately, politics is the supreme consideration right now. And so everything the commission discusses is pounced upon immediately by the president's detractors. Which brings us to the now famous memo to the president dated Aug. 6, 2001. It contains a lot of words and phrases that, in hindsight, strike familiar...

The Media Knew, Too The release of a vague PBD is no smoking gun. The August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing has been released with much media fanfare. Butwhy? Most of the PDB had already been leaked to the press over the course of the last two years. Moreover, far from being specific, the PDB was wrong in several critical respects. The hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. They were not recruited from the ranks of young Muslim Americans. The hijackers did not use explosives. The 9/11 terrorists used cardboard cutters and nail clippers to seize control of...

The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief, as Dr. Rice stated, is extremely vague and actually tells us very little we didn’t already know. Condoleezza Rice’s testimony in front of the September 11 Commission dropped a number of bombshells and provided new insights for the public to see how President Bush intended on tackling the issue of terrorism prior to 9/11. Of these bombshells was the account by Rice that President Bush’s first priority was to eliminate al Qaeda, and the entire decimation of Dick Clarke’s false -- or at least, grossly inaccurate -- accusations that the President was doing...

The August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing has been released with much media fanfare. But why? Most of the PDB had already been leaked to the press over the course of the last two years. Moreover, far from being specific, the PDB was wrong in several critical respects. The hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. They were not recruited from the ranks of young Muslim Americans. The hijackers did not use explosives. The 9/11 terrorists used cardboard cutters and nail clippers to seize control of the aircraft. Consequently, even if the president had issued an order stopping every...

President Bush was asked, during a very brief session with reporters yesterday, about the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo he received on domestic terrorism. He responded with the familiar White House complaint about lack of specificity in the C.I.A.'s warnings — although the memo mentioned a plot, possibly involving hijacked planes and New York City. The most striking thing about the president's comment, however, was his bottom line: that he did everything he could. Over the last few weeks we have heard lawmakers and officials from two administrations talk about their feelings of responsibility, about how they compulsively re-examine the...

DR. RICE: Good afternoon. I'm going to give you a chronology of the events that occurred during the spring and summer of 2001. But I want to start with a little definitional work. When we talk about threats, they come in many varieties. Very often we have uncorroborated information; sometimes we have corroborated but very general information. But I can tell you that it is almost never the case that we have information that is specific as to time, place, or method of attack. In the period starting in December 2000, the intelligence community started reporting increase in traffic concerning...

A handful of Sept. 11 widows are outraged that President Bush didn't act on the August 6, 2001 briefing he got from the CIA. "Everything is in [the briefing memo] but the date 9/11," complained Lori Van Auken whose husband died in the Twin Towers, in comments to the New York Daily News. "You have the who, what, where, why and how. The only thing you don't have is the when." Actually, as far as the "who" goes, none of the hijackers' names appear in the Bush CIA briefing memo. And the "what"? Nowhere does the memo warn that hijackers...

(2004-04-11) -- A presidential briefing, dated August 6, 2001, and released by the White House yesterday, shows that in 1998 George W. Bush did nothing to respond to the threat of terror attacks from Usama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. In fact, when correlated with last week's testimony before the 9/11 Commission by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, it seems clear that the Bush administration had virtually no plan to act on top-secret intelligence gathered during the Clinton administration until after George W. Bush took office in 2001. "The August 6 PDB (President's Daily Brief) clearly shows that the White...

Press Release Source: Newsweek NEWSWEEK: Ashcroft Never Saw August 2001 'PDB' Warning of Al Qaeda AttackSunday April 11, 10:18 am ET Pickard To Testify That He Alerted All 56 FBI Offices About Al Qaeda Activity; Whistleblower Rowley Says She Never Saw Any Warning NEW YORK, April 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Attorney General John Ashcroft never saw the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) warning of an Al Qaeda attack inside the United States because President George W. Bush, with his penchant for secrecy, had restricted the distribution of the PDB to just seven national security officials, Newsweek reports in the...

<p>The CIA's Aug. 6, 2001 memo for President Bush should pose serious new credibility problems for the nation's spy agency, not for Bush.</p> <p>Democrats such as 9/11 commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste have sought to paint the memo as a CIA warning that Bush ignored a month before the terror attacks - but it turns out to be nothing of the sort.</p>

CRAWFORD, Tex., April 10 -- President Bush was warned a month before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the FBI had information that terrorists might be preparing for a hijacking in the United States and might be targeting a building in Lower Manhattan.The information was included in a written Aug. 6, 2001, briefing to Bush that was declassified Saturday night by the White House in response to a request from the independent commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks. The short article, titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," also included information that the FBI had "70 full field investigations"...

My own preference would be to see the actial document. Druge has a page of it up, but I'd like the rest, and not the redactions from the partisan press, which don't give the feel of the piece. Does anyone know where it's posted, maybe a PDF file?

The text of a declassified presidential daily intelligence briefing from Aug. 6, 2001, was made public Saturday by the White House. Portions marked ``x'' were blacked out before release. Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America." After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in...

................ Titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US," the briefing told Bush that the FBI was conducting "approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Laden-related," and that the CIA and FBI were investigating a tip that Osama bin Laden's supporters were planning attacks in the United States. The memo also said the FBI had detected "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." The document, a little more than a page long, summarized a series of indicators that bin Laden, Al Qaeda's leader, was trying...

CRAWFORD, Texas — President Bush was told more than a month before the Sept. 11 attacks that Al Qaeda (search) had reached America's shores, had a support system in place for its operatives and that the FBI had detected suspicious activity that might involve a hijacking plot. Since 1998, the FBI (search) had observed "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks," according to a memo prepared for Bush and declassified Saturday. White House aides and outside experts said they could not recall a sitting president ever publicly releasing the highly...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35744-2002May17?language=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...

President’s Daily Briefing August 6, 1998 Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997' has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and earlier this year (1998) that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America." Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in earlier 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by...

<p>CNN) -- The White House has released part of a key intelligence report on Osama Bin Laden that says the head of al Qaeda had been determined to conduct terror attacks in the United States since 1997. CNN's Carol Lin talked to senior political analyst Bill Schneider about the implications of the memo's contents.</p>

The White House has released a classified intelligence document that warned a month before the September 11 attacks of a possible al-Qaida strike inside the United States.The document titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Inside the United States" was de-classified on Saturday amid an escalating row over whether the Bush administration had received any prior warnings about the attacks and if they had been ignored. National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice insisted in her public testimony to the 9/11 commission last week that the document relating to the 6 August, 2001 presidential briefing contained mostly historical information and did not warn...

Fact Sheet The August 6, 2001 Pdb · the August 6, 2001 Pdb Item Entitled "bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US" was prepared in response to questions asked by the President about the possibility of attacks by al-Qaida inside the United States. The PDB article did not warn of the 9-11 attacks. Although the PDB referred to the possibility of hijackings, it did not discuss the possible use of planes as weapons. The PDB was based largely on background information about past terrorist attacks conducted by al-Qaida and general threats from the late 1990s. The only recent information concerning...

<p>Q: Why was this PDB prepared?</p> <p>DCI Tenet has already described the genesis of this PDB item in a letter to the 9-11 Commission dated March 26, 2004. This PDB item was prepared in response to questions President Bush asked his PDB briefer. The President had seen previous intelligence reports about possible al-Qa'ida threats to U.S. targets outside the United States. The President had asked whether any of the information pointed to a possible attack inside the United States. When this PDB item was presented to the President on August 6, 2001, his PDB briefer told him that it was prepared in response to the President's previous questions.</p>

Breaking now.....it will be released in a pdf file.

The classified briefing delivered to President Bush five weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks featured information about ongoing al Qaeda activities within the United States, including signs of a terror support network, indications of hijacking preparations and plans for domestic attacks using explosives, according to sources who have seen the document and a review of official accounts and media reports over the past two years. The information on current threats in the briefing, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," stands in contrast to repeated assertions by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other Bush administration officials as...

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. Bush had specifically asked for an intelligence analysis of possible al Qaeda attacks within the...

Al-Qaida Allegedly Tried In 2001 To Send Operatives Into U.S. For Explosives Attack WASHINGTON -- The Associated Press has learned that President George W. Bush's August 2001 terrorism memo includes information indicating that three months earlier, al-Qaida was trying to send operatives into the United States for an explosives attack. The so-called presidential daily briefing, or PDB, was delivered to Bush on Aug. 6, 2001 -- a month before 9/11. The AP has talked with sources familiar with the PDB. Several people who have seen the memo say there were various reports Osama bin Laden had wanted to strike inside...

[Editor's note: This article orginally appeared on the cover of the May 27, 2002, issue of HUMAN EVENTS.]Sen. Bob Graham (D.-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told HUMAN EVENTS May 21 that his committee had received all the same terrorism intelligence prior to September 11 as the Bush administration. "Yes, we had seen all the information," said Graham. "But we didn't see it on a single piece of paper, the way the President did." Graham added that threats of hijacking in an August 6 memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the committee had seen...

9/11 widow Ellen Mariani(Derry, N.H.) says George W. Bush is a gangster. We talk to her and her lawyer Philip J. Berg: Ellen Mariani last saw her husband Louis Neil early on the morning of September 11, 2001, at Logan Airport, where they were taking different flights to Los Angeles for a daughter’s wedding. He hadn’t gotten his tickets until the last minute, and couldn’t get on her flight, but there were seats open on Flight 175. Neil Mariani died when that plane crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center, and after rejecting a settlement offer of...

<p>After several months of negotiations, plus a few unseemly public threats, the federal commission investigating the events of 9/11 has reached agreeement with the White House for access to some of the nation's most classified intelligence briefings. This is a dramatic concession by the Bush administration: For the first time, outsiders be will be allowed to read daily briefing material meant for only the president and a tiny handful of top officials.</p>

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 — The federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks stepped up pressure on the Bush administration to cooperate by issuing a subpoena on Friday to the Pentagon. Members said they were still weighing a subpoena to the administration for Oval Office documents President Bush received in the days before Sept. 11, 2001, although the panel chose not to issue one today. The 10-member panel said in a statement that it had encountered "serious delays" in obtaining information from the Defense Department. It voted to subpoena the Pentagon for documents, tapes and transcripts involving the actions of the...