Posted on 04/10/2004 12:15:53 PM PDT by cyncooper
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 recently as this week that the document is primarily historical and includes no warning or threat information.
~snip~
Because the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB in dispute has not been released publicly, it is impossible to be precise about its contents or the context in which it was delivered. Yet much of the information in the document has become public over the last two years through testimony, official accounts and news reports.
Newspaper articles in May 2002 noted the briefing document's alarming title and reported that the PDB mentioned al Qaeda members living in the United States and others traveling in and out of the country. A July 2003 report from a House-Senate inquiry into intelligence failures said the PDB found that al Qaeda "apparently maintained a support structure" inside the United States.
~snip~
But Democratic commissioner Jamie S. Gorelick, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, said in an interview yesterday that Rice ignores the importance of more current information that was also included in the August 2001 document.
"She is right in a sense that it does not contain a warning per se," said Gorelick, one of only three commissioners who have seen the CIA-prepared PDB as part of a special deal with the White House. "She is also wrong in that it is not just an analytical piece. . . . It is a summary of what the agency knew that gave them reason to believe bin Laden wanted to attack the United States."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
(See this thread: Aug. Memo Focused On Attacks in U.S. Lack of Fresh Information Frustrated Bush (2002/PDB))
Second, note the spinning comes directly from Gorelick.
Uh, yeah. That's called an "analytical piece."
Gee, I hope that part gets put in the movie!
Duh, ya think? I didn't get a memo, but I knew terrorists wanted to hit the U.S.
"In February 1993, a truck bomb exploded there, killing six people, and displacing business in the complex for six months. Six Islamic militants were convicted in the bombing, and sentenced to life in prison."
You expect people who don't understand "is" and "marriage" to understand "analytical piece"?
'Skyscraper' Suicide-Hijack Warnings Came During Clinton Era
"Well before the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. intelligence officials warned that terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden planned a 'spectacular attack' that involved kamikaze pilots crashing U.S. airliners into targets that included the Pentagon, the Capitol building and significant U.S. 'skyscrapers.'"
That could be the lead sentence from one of today's news reports touting the CIA's August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing as a warning President Bush should have heeded to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks. But in fact, those warnings, which are actually far more specific than anything contained in the Bush PDB, were delivered during the Clinton administration - via intelligence that was so well known it was covered newspaper reports at the time. In a June 1997 report in the Dayton Daily News, for instance, CIA Director George Tenet warned that Islamic terrorists had already succeeded in "expanding their networks, improving their skills and sophistication, and [were] working to stage more spectacular attacks."
Reports published just two months after 9/11 explained that the blueprint for 9/11 attacks was uncovered during 1995 interrogations of Abdul Hakim Murad, partner of convicted 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef.
The Post continued: "There were secondary targets the terrorist cell wanted hit: Congress, the White House, the Pentagon and possibly some skyscrapers. The only problem, Murad complained, was that they needed more trained pilots to carry out the plot."
The above information is far more specific than anything reportedly revealed in the Aug. 6, 2001 briefing given to President Bush - and was available to President Clinton via published reports [if not through the intelligence briefings he routinely avoided] for most of his second term in office.
As the media point fingers at Bush, however, no one seems particularly interested in asking Mr. Clinton why he ignored for years relatively clear warnings that 9/11 was coming.
Best understatement of the year!
And based on this, they can make the assertions they have made? Pure conjecture billed as FACT! AMAZING
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