The headline exposes the intent....GET ASHCROFT!! I mean, you have to notice it's Ashcroft who gets his name in the headline, not Mueller. Ashcroft's the one who gets blamed for not telling Bush about the July memo immediately after he heard about it.
But what's the big deal here? This is like finding your husband in bed with another woman, but you didn't get mad about it until the PI you hired brings you some incriminating pictures. I mean, President Bush already knew terrorists had attended flight schools by the time Ashcroft and Mueller saw the memo. I'm thinking this will turn out to be an easily explained, meaningless rehash of what we already know, a NYT generated continuation of the Bash Bush rant that began last week.
But really. President Bush didn't have to be briefed about an obscure July memo from an agent in Phoenix. He (and the rest of us), have known about terrorists attending American flight schools for many weeks.
We could all wish that agent in Phoenix had flown to Washington, and been so certain of his analysis, that he broke into the White House to hand deliver his memo to President Bush. But that didn't happen. And we can't change or alter past events by wishing. And even if he had, President Bush wouldn't have been able to do anything before 9-11 that would have prevented the WTC being blown up.
Think about it: If President Bush saw that Phoenix memo in July, and decided to act, the only thing he could have done to prevent 9-11 would have been to issue a directive that no swarthy middle eastern men could fly on commercial airlines. Or at least they had to be detained, searched, questioned. Can you imagine the uproar? the allegations of racial profiling? the race card? Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and the rest of the democratic presidential candidates would have raised hell.
Furthermore, if those swarthy middle eastern men had been detained, searched, and questioned, they had legal passports, visas, and they didn't have guns or knives. Chances are, they would have been allowed to proceed on their flights.
Assuming this article is truthful and accurate, I don't know why Ashcroft and Mueller didn't brief President Bush or someone in National Security on the Phoenix memo. But I bet there were many many other water over the dam memos they didn't brief him on either....Why would they?