The Media Knew, Too - The release of a vague PBD is no smoking gun.

National Review ^ | April 12, 2004, 10:09 a.m. | Mark R. Levin

[wcdukenfield]

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 young Muslim American from boarding an airplane until they and their luggage were searched for explosives, 9/11 still would likely not have been prevented.

Furthermore, the PDB states the information, which was wrong, was uncorroborated but, nonetheless, there were 70 FBI field investigations occurring across the nation looking into bin Laden connections.

The declassification and release of the August 6 PDB proves one thing: The president and his people have been telling the truth all along about both the substance and nature of the intelligence information they received. 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben Veniste and co. have, at best, been misleading the American people with their dire inferences about the PDB.

And despite all the false hype surrounding the release of the PDB, there's nothing new in it. In fact, by May 17, 2002, much of the PDB had already been leaked to CBS News. It reported, in part:

President Bush was told in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack U.S. passenger planes — information which prompted the administration to issue an alert to federal agencies — but not the American public.

CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin says the warning was in a document called the President's Daily Briefing, which is considered to be the single most important document that the U.S. intelligence community turns out. The document did not, however, mention the possibility of planes being flown into buildings.

In truth, back in 1995, the government knew more about what al Qaeda might be planning against the U.S. than the president learned on his August 6, 2001 intelligence briefing. At that time the FBI was warned that terrorists were planning to hijack U.S. commercial aircraft and crash them into U.S. buildings. On September 18, 2001, just one-week after 9/11, CNN reported, in part:

The FBI was warned six years ago of a terrorist plot to hijack commercial planes and slam them into the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters and other buildings, Philippine investigators told CNN. Philippine authorities learned of the plot after a small fire in a Manila apartment, which turned out to be the hideout of Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Yousef escaped at the time, but agents caught his right-hand man, Abdul Hakim Murad, who told them a chilling tale.

"Murad narrated to us about a plan by the Ramzi cell in the continental U.S. to hijack a commercial plane and ram it into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and also the Pentagon," said Rodolfo Mendoza, a Philippine intelligence investigator.

Philippine investigators also found evidence targeting commercial towers in San Francisco, Chicago and New York City.

They said they passed that information on to the FBI in 1995, but it's not clear what was done with it.

This is a far more accurate and specific description of the threat the U.S. faced than the August 6 PDB provided to President Bush. And yet, there has been precious little public testimony before the 9/11 Commission about this information, and precious little discussion about the Clinton administration's response to this information — including the inaction of the ever-prescient former National Security Agency official, Richard Clarke.

In 1999, a report for the National Intelligence Council mentioned that al Qaeda might use U.S. aircraft to fly into key government buildings. On May 18, 2002, the Houston Chronicle reported, in part:

A September 1999 report for the National Intelligence Council, an executive branch clearinghouse for data on terrorism, gave a chillingly accurate warning of the carnage that would strike the United States exactly two years later.

"Suicide bombers belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives...into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA or the White House," according to the report.

Again, this report, based on publicly available information, contained more accurate and specific information than the August 6 PDB. When asked about the 1999 report in May 2002, Bill Clinton played down the information. He told the Associated Press:

That has nothing to do with intelligence. All that it says is they used public sources to speculate on what bin Laden might do. Let me remind you that's why I attacked his training camp and why I asked the Pakistanis to go get him, and why we contracted with some people in Afghanistan to go get him — because we thought he was dangerous.

I wonder if this is what Richard Clarke meant when he lauded the aggressive focus on terrorism by the Clinton administration.

In any event, the August 6, 2001, PDB isn't the political weapon with which George W. Bush's detractors had hoped to undermine his presidency. The briefing did not provide the president with the information he would have needed to stop the terrorist attacks, which came less than five weeks later.

[newgeezer]

Ping!

[MrB]

Cici on the FNS round table misquoted the PDB on purpose.

She said that it contained information about Bin Laden planning to hijack planes...

however, she left out the rest of that sentence, "in order to secure the release of terrorist prisoners", or a blind shiek or something.

These people are shameless. And they wonder why Fox News, with its balance, is so popular.

[Eala]

[veronica]

The whole thing was ridiculous. There was no there - there - and the DNC operatives on the Get Bush 9-11 Commission knew it. They all make me sick. Our soldiers are giving their all, while these pantywaists are carrying on.

[alisasny]

Govorner Bush did not act on terrorist warning pre President Bush is the bottom line. I dont think the average joe citizen is going to fall for this garbage.

[syriacus]

These people are shameless.

Their motto: Do anything to score a momentary advantage.

[Reagan Man]

Mark Levin, aka. FReeper "holdonnow" has got it right.

Good job.

[xzins]

Furthermore, the PDB states the information, which was wrong, was uncorroborated but, nonetheless, there were 70 FBI field investigations occurring across the nation looking into bin Laden connections.

WHO Lied or Misinformed About the 70 Investigations The President was TOLD Were Keeping Track of THESE Terrorists in the US?

[Mo1]

Cici on the FNS round table misquoted the PDB on purpose

Did you catch the way CC was acting when she said those things about Condi?

[jwalsh07]

The release of a vague PBD is no smoking gun.

It's not even a dripping water pistol.

The smoking gun is Congress' failure to declare war on bin Laden and Al Qa'ida in '96 when he declared war on us but since this is a Congressionally authorised Commission and three of the commissioners were seated in Congress at that time, nobody will ever know that.

Not to mention Goreleick who was Janet of Waco's assistant during the same time frame.

The 9/11 Commission is a bad joke.

[Grampa Dave]

Here is something else the left wing media has spiked in their latest attempt to electronically lynch our president.

Please note year this was published in Slime the non news magazine:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1115745/posts

Report says bin Laden planning attacks on U.S. soil (>>> 1998 <<<)
Free Republic/Time Magazine ^ | Dec. 13, 1998 | Time Magazine


Posted on 04/11/2004 6:58:17 PM PDT by FairOpinion


Suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden may be planning strikes on Washington or New York to avenge a U.S. missile strike on his Afghan headquarters in August, Time magazine reported Sunday.

"We've hit his headquarters, now he hits ours," the magazine quotes a State Department aide as saying.

U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno organized an exercise at FBI headquarters in Washington on Oct. 14 to plan for a possible terror attack by bin Laden, the weekly said.

The 200 Washington policemen at the exercise, code-named "Poised Response," discussed four scenarios including an assassination attempt on Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a car bombing, a chemicals weapon strike on a Washington Redskins football game and an explosive device in a federal building.

The magazine's report, to be published in its December 21 issue and available on newsstands Monday, also reported that a bin Laden ring that had been planning an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan was broken up three months ago.

But U.S. agencies are questioning whether they could have prevented the August 7 twin bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that bin Laden is believed to have orchestrated.

Some 224 people, including 12 Americans died in the atrocities.

The United States responded by attacking suspected terrorist camps run by bin Laden in Afghanistan.

By August 1997, the CIA had evidence that bin Laden had agents operating in Nairobi, Kenya, but it believed that bin Laden would strike in a Persian Gulf country, where the U.S. had a presence, not East Africa.

Two separate inquiries by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general (CIA) and by a State Department Accountability Review Board have questioned whether clues were missed.

Time also chronicles a four-year campaign to contain and control bin Laden's activities, including attempts to bring him to justice in the United States.

In 1996, the CIA was planning to snatch bin Laden from a foreign country and bring him to trial in the United States, but he avoided traveling to those countries.

The investigation also revealed that intelligence officials discovered in 1993 that bin Laden was shopping for nuclear weapons.

But bin Laden agents scouring former Soviet republics for enriched uranium and weapons components were offered unusable low-grade reactor fuel or radioactive garbage.

[Grampa Dave]

Here is something else the left wing media has spiked in their latest attempt to electronically lynch our president.

Please note year this was published in Slime the non news magazine:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1115745/posts

Report says bin Laden planning attacks on U.S. soil (>>> 1998 <<<)
Free Republic/Time Magazine ^ | Dec. 13, 1998 | Time Magazine


Posted on 04/11/2004 6:58:17 PM PDT by FairOpinion


Suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden may be planning strikes on Washington or New York to avenge a U.S. missile strike on his Afghan headquarters in August, Time magazine reported Sunday.

"We've hit his headquarters, now he hits ours," the magazine quotes a State Department aide as saying.

U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno organized an exercise at FBI headquarters in Washington on Oct. 14 to plan for a possible terror attack by bin Laden, the weekly said.

The 200 Washington policemen at the exercise, code-named "Poised Response," discussed four scenarios including an assassination attempt on Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a car bombing, a chemicals weapon strike on a Washington Redskins football game and an explosive device in a federal building.

The magazine's report, to be published in its December 21 issue and available on newsstands Monday, also reported that a bin Laden ring that had been planning an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan was broken up three months ago.

But U.S. agencies are questioning whether they could have prevented the August 7 twin bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that bin Laden is believed to have orchestrated.

Some 224 people, including 12 Americans died in the atrocities.

The United States responded by attacking suspected terrorist camps run by bin Laden in Afghanistan.

By August 1997, the CIA had evidence that bin Laden had agents operating in Nairobi, Kenya, but it believed that bin Laden would strike in a Persian Gulf country, where the U.S. had a presence, not East Africa.

Two separate inquiries by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general (CIA) and by a State Department Accountability Review Board have questioned whether clues were missed.

Time also chronicles a four-year campaign to contain and control bin Laden's activities, including attempts to bring him to justice in the United States.

In 1996, the CIA was planning to snatch bin Laden from a foreign country and bring him to trial in the United States, but he avoided traveling to those countries.

The investigation also revealed that intelligence officials discovered in 1993 that bin Laden was shopping for nuclear weapons.

But bin Laden agents scouring former Soviet republics for enriched uranium and weapons components were offered unusable low-grade reactor fuel or radioactive garbage.

[MrB]

actually, no...

I was sent into apoplexy over the selective context elimination, and the plain gall that it took to try it.

[syriacus]

the DNC operatives on the Get Bush 9-11 Commission

Kerrey is especially ludicrous.

Kerrey questioned Rice's preparedness.

Yet he's the same guy who failed to use duck tape on a Navy Seals mission, to keep Vietnamese civilians quiet. Instead, Kerrey had the civilians shot.

[Steve_Seattle]

Ben-Veniste was deliberatley trying to convey the impression that the memo said something it didn't, and that's why Rice was getting angry. B-V should be tossed off the commission. He's never been anything but a partisan prick.

[Grampa Dave]

Here is another oldie goldie from the files of the Washington Compost:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1115491/posts

1994: John Kerry championed nomination of activist who declared he hated intelligence agencies
The Washington Post Archives | May 26, 1994 | Helen Dewar


Posted on 04/11/2004 7:45:56 AM PDT by nwrep


A sharply divided Senate yesterday raked the lingering embers of controversy over the United States' involvement in Vietnam two decades ago as it remained deadlocked over the ambassadorial nomination of former antiwar activist Sam W. Brown Jr.


Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who helped lead the fight for Brown's confirmation, said another vote to end the filibuster is possible after Congress returns June 7 from its Memorial Day recess.


A key point of dispute was a 1977 interview in Penthouse magazine that quoted Brown as saying, "I take second place to no one in my hatred of the intelligence agencies."


Kerry quoted Brown as saying the quotation "does not accurately reflect his views now or then" and was made in reference to a controversy at the time over CIA involvement with the Peace Corps, which Brown oversaw as head of the ACTION in the late 1970s.

[biblewonk]

#4 is funny!

[pawdoggie]

Wow! To think that I probably saw that Time article (my wife was a subscriber) and thought nothing of it. By the lights of Bob Kerrey and Ben-Veniste, the Clinton Gang was directly and personally responsible for the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Didn't shake the trees and rattle the cages; also didn't take the threats to the Pentagon and New York seriously enough. Guess there's no institutional memory at "Time" or it's parent corporation. They don't even seem to remember their own articles.

[kcvl]

Did you catch the way CC was acting when she said those things about Condi?

She had a little snit fit. She doesn't usually behave like that when Brit is on. I wanted to slap her.