Posted on 04/10/2004 2:09:30 PM PDT by Dog
Breaking now.....it will be released in a pdf file.
I'm deeply disgusted that he is going to be on Fox News Sunday -- on Easter, no less. What are they thinking? That slime ball should never see a TV camera again.
No, only 3 have seen it and Gorelick is one for sure, Others have only seen notes, and of course Ben Veniste was going by Jamie's talking points notes, since I'll guess the other two who have seen it are the two co-chairs, Kean and Hamilton. But that is just a guess.
The PDB has been spun this way since 2002, we know that for sure.
I didn't detect a "celebration". Just confirmation that once again the Bush administration represented the document accurately, while at the same time recognizing the spin that has, and as you point out, will be put out.
You lucky dog. Phoebe Cates is HOT!Where has she been lately, by the way?
For a bunch of Clinton Kool-aid drinkers, the DUers have a lot of nerve questioning the validity of Bush's releases. But then again, reality is not their forte.
Just for the fun of it, I haven't put those delicious emails I get every day from BushLet9/11Happen whackos on my spam list--the loony left, in small doses, can really be entertaining sometimes.
Do you think the dems won anything? Hardly!
I love the president's strategery!
President Bush set the whole thing up (whether intentional or not, isn't my call). He hedged on letting her testify until the public demanded it. As the President, he heard their concerns and responded. Dr. Condolezza Rice walked into that room and did her job to the nth degree. She smiled, complimented and hit them between the eyes. She mentioned the briefing because she was confident that the administration she worked for was right on this issue.
She floored Kerrey with a reminder of his speech and he struck back by demanding the release of the briefing.
Once again our President has listened to the people and has released the briefing in question. When the people talk to President Bush, he listens!!!
Now, move on to media spin.....
And, it said, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's desire to strike inside America surfaced as long as four years before Bush took office, according to several people who have seen the memo.
The document has emerged as a key point of interest to the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, airborne attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Some of the most current information in the so-called presidential daily briefing, or PDB, delivered to Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, came from reports U.S. intelligence had received in May 2001 about a possible plot for an explosives attack inside the United States, the sources told The Associated Press this week.
Also in August 2001, U.S. intelligence officials received two uncorroborated reports suggesting that terrorists might use airplanes, including one that suggested al-Qaeda operatives were considering flying a plane into a U.S. embassy, current and former government officials said.
Those reports among thousands of varied and uncorroborated threats received by the government each month weren't deemed credible enough to tell Bush or his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, the officials said.
None of the information in the president's briefing or the August reports involved the eventual Sept. 11 plot.
But former Indiana Rep. Timothy Roemer, a Democratic member of the Sept. 11 commission, has said: "Something was going to happen very soon and be potentially catastrophic. I don't understand, given the big threat, why the big (national security) principals (officials) don't get together."
The sources who read the presidential memo would speak only on condition of anonymity because the White House has yet to declassify the highly sensitive document, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States."
White House officials said they expected to finish declassifying and to release the document late Saturday afternoon or Saturday evening. It would be a historic disclosure of presidential intelligence briefing materials.
The sources said the memo included a series of items that brought Bush through a history of mostly uncorroborated intelligence that cited al-Qaeda's interest in hijacking planes to win the release of Islamic extremists who had been arrested in 1998 and 1999.
It also included the trips of suspected al-Qaeda operatives, including some U.S. citizens, in and out of the United States. It suggested al-Qaeda might have a support system in place on U.S. soil, the sources said.
The document also included FBI analytical judgments that some al-Qaeda activities were consistent with preparation for airline hijackings or other types of attacks, some members of the commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks said this week.
The second-to-last item told Bush there were numerous at least 70 terror-related investigations under way by the FBI in 2001 involving matters or people on U.S. soil, the sources said.
And the final notation, they said, was based on a May 2001 intelligence report indicating al-Qaeda operatives were trying to get inside the United States from Canada to carry out an attack with explosives. There were no specifics about the timing or target of the attack, but the memo said the FBI and other agencies were investigating.
A joint congressional inquiry report into Sept. 11 intelligence failures disclosed the May 2001 threat report last year but did not reveal it was included in Bush's briefing. The congressional inquiry described the intelligence this way:
"In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained information that supporters of Osama bin Laden were reportedly planning to infiltrate the United States via Canada in order to carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives."
In her testimony Thursday to the Sept. 11 commission, Rice described Bush's Aug. 6 daily briefing as including mostly "historical information" and said most threat information in the summer of 2001 involved overseas targets.
Rice also said she did not recall seeing any warnings before Sept. 11 that a plane might be used a terrorist weapon, though it was possible others in the White House did.
Current and former government officials told the AP that in the same month Bush received his briefing, U.S. intelligence received two uncorroborated reports among hundreds suggesting terrorist might use planes but that neither reached the president or Rice.
The officials said one report in August 2001 said there was uncorroborated information that two bin Laden operatives had met in October 2000 to discuss a plot to attack the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi with an airplane.
That report said the operative would either use the plane to bomb the embassy or crash into it, according to information provided congressional investigators and cited in their report released last year.
Separately, the CIA asked the Federal Aviation Administration in August 2001 to advise commercial airlines that six Pakistanis in Latin America, not connected to al-Qaeda, were considering a hijacking, bombing or sabotage of an airliner.
That warning did not have specifics on a time or location but said it could involve Britain, Canada, Mexico, Malaysia or Cuba, among others, according to information made public by the congressional inquiry.
Rice said emphatically Thursday she did not see any such reports about al-Qaeda using a plane as a weapon until after Sept. 11, suggesting the intelligence may have reached someone lower in the White House.
"To the best of my knowledge ... this kind of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us," she told the Sept. 11 commission. "I cannot tell you that there might not have been a report here or a report there that reached somebody in our midst."
Yes, most all of us on FR know that even though the main stream media chose to ignore it.
I posted excerpts from the Rice/Ben-Veniste exchange to Mo1 at #556. Dr Rice makes a point of saying he had access to the PDB and further along he agreed with Dr Rice that there were no specific threats against NYC or DC mentioned in that PDB.
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