Raw Data: Text of Released PDB
Saturday, April 10, 2004
The following is a redacted text of the presidential daily briefing from August 6, 2001:
Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladensince 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bringthe fighting to America."
After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladentold followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [deleted text] service.
An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told [deleted text] serviceat the same time that Bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative'saccess to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.
The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that BinLaden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate theoperation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning hisown U.S. attack.
Ressam says Bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation.
Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he preparesoperations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.
AI Qaeda members — including same who are U.S. citizens — have resided in and traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains asupport structure that could aid attacks.
Two Al Qaeda members found guiltyin the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.
A clandestine sourcesaid in 1998 that a Bin Laden cell in New Yorkwas recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.
We havenot been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted text] service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns ofsuspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations forhijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance offederal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May sayingthat a group or Bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.
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1 posted on
04/10/2004 3:50:16 PM PDT by
RobFromGa
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To: RobFromGa
B&B
To: RobFromGa
Well. That pretty much made fools of the Demonrats on the commission didn't it...
To: RobFromGa
As I expected, a big deal over nothing.
4 posted on
04/10/2004 3:53:53 PM PDT by
Pox
To: RobFromGa
The Democrats were just rope-a-doped again.
5 posted on
04/10/2004 3:56:12 PM PDT by
Pukin Dog
(Sans Reproache, but not quite worthy of Condi Rice.)
To: RobFromGa
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns ofsuspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations forhijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance offederal buildings in New York.This will be a Dem talking point. But NOTICE the bold text.
This PDB does not indicate there will be hijackings that will be targeted at federal buildings in NY, it indicates that there may be hjjackings, OR, OTHER types of attacks, meaning, STILL: The concept of planes as missles had not been entertained.
Dems loose again.
To: RobFromGa
This actually reinforces my belief that the Clinton bunch has a lot to answer for!
This whole investigation is to try to find someway to lay the problem on the Bush administration. The RATS are traitors and are giving aid and comfort to the terrorists by playing politics with this.
8 posted on
04/10/2004 3:57:59 PM PDT by
LADY J
To: RobFromGa
It's quite obvious, this PDB was a background memo and not a "threat warning" or even a "threat analysis". Nothing to it. However, this will probably send the librats into spin overdrive and give them endless talking points for the Sunday talk shows.
10 posted on
04/10/2004 3:59:30 PM PDT by
Reagan Man
(The choice is clear. Reelect BUSH-CHENEY !)
To: RobFromGa
Some creative headlines resulted when searching for articles using Google......
 |
Claim Bush warned on terror plan
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 7 hours ago
PRESIDENT George W. Bush was warned more than a month before the September 11, 2001 attacks that Osama bin Laden's supporters planned to hijack aircraft to ...
|
US memo warned of Al Qaeda plan
ABC Online, Australia - 8 hours ago
President George W Bush was made aware that Al Qaeda was planning specific attacks within the US more than a month before the September 11, 2001 attacks ...
|
Bush knew about Al Qaeda plan'
Rediff, India - 9 hours ago
The warning came in a secret briefing that Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Texas on August 6, 2001, an unnamed government official was quoted as saying ...
|
 |
US memo 'warned' of al-Qaeda plot
BBC News, UK - 9 hours ago
A secret briefing given to President Bush in August 2001 warned that al-Qaeda was planning a bomb attack in the US, US media report. ...
|
To: RobFromGa
The DNC is trying its best to divert attention from the abysmal failures of the Clinton "do-nothing" years.
20 posted on
04/10/2004 4:03:23 PM PDT by
tkathy
(nihilism: absolute destructiveness toward the world at large and oneself)
To: RobFromGa
THIS is the 8/6/2001 PDB that all the furor was over???!??!?!???!!!
It has so little substance that it's virtually irrelevant. I'm amazed that GWB did not want to release it; I guess he was more interested in the constitutional principle of separation of powers than he was in the politics.
This PDB does not indicate anything that a casual observer of the Middle East did not already know. After all, bin Laden had already publicly declared war on America and Americans everywhere! The first WTC bombing and the Millennium attempt were well-known history. Of course "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
To: RobFromGa
Liberals see things where they aren't. Abortion being a right to privacy issue, one example. In the PDB, one can find "Hijacking", "World Trade Center", "bin-Laden", "Federal buildings", "Washington", "terrorist strike in the US" and "New York". Picking out words, and with the benefit of hindsight, treasonous Liberals find a bat with which to beat upon Bush and thus consummate their orgasmic hatred with evil glee. There is, of course, 'no smoking gun' here. And, the Left has failed again to subvert American resolve in regards to the struggle to defeat terror.
27 posted on
04/10/2004 4:06:29 PM PDT by
Thumper1960
(Total victory with total subjugation.)
To: RobFromGa
The DUers are absolutely crying about the PDB, the portions that were redacted, how can you trust Bush guys, etc. To paraphrase: No Smoking Gun and nothing of substance to latch on to.
33 posted on
04/10/2004 4:11:11 PM PDT by
billb
To: MeekOneGOP
Transcript is here, Meek.
38 posted on
04/10/2004 4:14:36 PM PDT by
EllaMinnow
("Pessimism never won any battle." - Dwight D. Eisenhower)
To: RobFromGa
Washington Post, NY Times, CNN, are headlining it as if it said,
"Airplanes will be hijacked from Logan airport on Sept. 11th by Saudi nationals using box cutters as weapons. They will use the planes as missles and fly them into both of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House."
39 posted on
04/10/2004 4:14:57 PM PDT by
motife
To: RobFromGa
Exactly what Condi Rice said it was.
43 posted on
04/10/2004 4:19:24 PM PDT by
claudiustg
(Go Sharon! Go Bush!)
To: RobFromGa
Fascinating.
44 posted on
04/10/2004 4:20:42 PM PDT by
lilylangtree
(Veni, Vidi, Vici)
To: RobFromGa
First they squal for it to be released ASAP. When it is.......The RATS begin squaling that Dubya released this on Holy Saturday..whine when no one will be around tomorrow on Easter to watch them spin it on the Presitutes talk shows.
It still all boils down to slick willie and the church commission.
45 posted on
04/10/2004 4:22:05 PM PDT by
GailA
(Kerry I'm for the death penalty for terrorist, but I'll declare a moratorium on the death penalty)
To: RobFromGa
What about this one:
After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [deleted text] service.
So 9/11 was bin Laden's answer to a Bill Clinton Fly Swat. The Clinton Administration should have know that they would provoke a response and they should have been preparing us to defend ourselves against that response. The ball was dropped well before the Bush Administration took over.
To: All
Let's put things in perspective, shall we?
Paraphrased sections are indented.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion
of the widespread hypocrisy and blatant bias of the leftist mainstream media.
Los Angeles Times
December 5, 2001 Wednesday
Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize;
Sudan offered up the terrorist and data on his network. The then-president and his advisors didn't respond.
MANSOOR IJAZ
President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year.
I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.
From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief.
President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.
The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening.
[Paraphrased section:]
Ijaz said that he's an American Muslim & a political supporter of bill clinton but he feels that clinton's and Berger's counter-terrorism policies helped Bin Laden rise from an ordinary man to a "Hydra-like monster."
February 1996: Ijaz said that Sudan's Bashir, realizing how Bin Laden was a cancerous problem that was growing, sent important/key intelligence officials to the US. Bashir told the US that he would arrest Bin Laden and then extradite him to Saudi Arabia, if possible. Another alternative would be to "baby-sit him" and -monitor all his activities and terrorist associates. But officials in Saudi officials didn't want Bin Laden back because they were afraid he would concoct a plot to overthrow them.
In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.
Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with him Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for Al Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.
[Paraphrased section:]
Some of these terrorists we could have had in our custody (or received intelligence data on) are now on the FBI's 22 most-wanted list of terrorists.
Mohamed Atta & Marwan Al-Shehhi - two of the men who flew the planes into the WTC -- prayed in the same Hamburg mosque as did Salim and Mamoun Darkazanli. The Sudanese had compiled intelligence data of both Atta and Al-Shehhi.
Timeline of US authorities refusing Sudan's intelligence data:
-
First in February 1996 (mentioned in previous paraphrased section)
-
Again in August 1996 when Ijaz suggested that Sudan's religious ideologue, Hassan Turabi, write directly to Clinton, which he did.
-
Again in April 1997, when Ijaz persuaded Bashir to invite the FBI to come to Sudan and view the data
-
Again in February 1998, when Sudan's intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi, wrote directly to the FBI.
Gutbi had shown me some of Sudan's data during a three-hour meeting in Khartoum in October 1996. When I returned to Washington, I told Berger and his specialist for East Africa, Susan Rice, about the data available. They said they'd get back to me. They never did. Neither did they respond when Bashir made the offer directly. I believe they never had any intention to engage Muslim countries--ally or not. Radical Islam, for the administration, was a convenient national security threat.
And that was not the end of it.
[Paraphrased section:]
July 2000 (3 months before the USS Cole attack) -- Ijaz brought another offer to deal with Bin Laden, who was by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from a close Arab ally [country unnamed] approached Ijaz with a proposal to hand over Bin Laden. This official told Ijaz that he was "fed up with antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials." [I would be $100 he was referring to the arrogant Dick Clarke!]
The unnamed Arab country was offering to bring Bin Laden to their own country, then extradite him to the U.S. provided that Clinton would make a state visit to their country to personally request Bin Laden's extradition.
But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family--Clintonian diplomacy at its best. ["senior Clinton official" who sabotaged the offer = Dick Clarke again?]
Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.
------
Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is chairman of a New York-based investment company.
To: RobFromGa
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