HOUSE DEMOCRAPS WERE BRIEFED ON AUGUST 1ST 2001 ON BIN-LAUDIN TERRORIST THREAT

FOXNEWS BREAKING ALERT | 5/16/02 | FOXNEWS

[Bommer]

Well well! Dick wants info on what the President knew and when he knew it, but it looks like 'DICK' needs to look in mirror to find where the failure truly lies!

Gephart youz gots alots of explanin' to dooz!

[VOA]

Gephardt is a lying SOS, again. And he got caught, again.

Almost as good as Daschle finally being forced to admit that he'd been to the underground
complex for the "Shadow Government" and thus fully knew of the contingency plan.

I think it was a FOX News operative (Tony Snow? Brit Hume?) that got this admission
for the moral-midget Dashcle.

[epluribus_2]

I'm happier now - bummed out yesterday over the mediagasm over this, but let's not forget why dems think it's ok to lie about everything. The only ones smart enough to see through their lies or accept facts refuting their carvillisms were never going to vote for them anyway. Their lies are targetted at the 33% core they can count on to tip elections. (Gore really won, Pubs are for starving Seniors, W wanted more arsenic... ad nauseum)

[TomGuy]

Bush Was Told Before Sept. 11 of Possible Hijackings; Lawmakers Demand Answers

By Ron Fournier The Associated Press
Published: May 16, 2002


WASHINGTON (AP) - Top lawmakers on Thursday pushed for tough inquiries after the White House revealed President Bush was told a month before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack American airplanes. "Was there a failure of intelligence?" asked House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo. "Did the right officials not act on the intelligence in the proper way? These are things we need to find out."

Some law enforcement agencies were quietly put on alert last summer based on the information given to Bush during a regular intelligence briefing, the White House said. But officials said the president and U.S. intelligence did not know that suicide hijackers were plotting to use planes as missiles, as they did against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta was told of "long-standing concerns about possible hijackings" during his regular intelligence briefings, but "there was never a scenario put forward that was anything like the events of 9/11," said department spokesman Chet Lunner.

"There was no specific credible warning to disseminate," Lunner said. "It was more of a general global concern that something might happen."

Gephardt said Congress needs to find out - in hearings open to the public - what Bush and other officials knew, when they knew it and what they did with the information. He hinted he might push for additional inquiries, and said they "cannot be top secret."

"Right now we have an inquiry that's going on in the intelligence committees," Gephardt said. "It may or may not be sufficient to get all this done. We'll talk with the other leaders about ways to do this."

Peppered with questions about the presidential heads-up, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer sought to play down the development. He said there were long-standing concerns that Muslim extremists might carry out traditional hijackings, and that bin Laden had been a major worry for years.

"I don't think this should come as any surprise to anybody," he said of the warning given to Bush. "But the president did not - not - receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers. This was a new type of attack that was not foreseen."

The development, the first direct link between Bush and intelligence gathered before Sept. 11 about the attacks, drew criticism from congressional investigators already looking into whether the government failed to adequately respond to evidence of potential attacks.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the panel had received the same general warning that "was not specific in its content."

However, he said on NBC's "Today": "There was a lot of information, I believe and others believe, if it had been acted on properly we may have had a different situation on Sept. 11."

On CNN, Shelby also questioned why the White House waited so long to acknowledge Bush's knowledge of the hijacking threat. He said of the warning: "I think it should have been acted on, but it wasn't."

Shelby suggested he may demand that the White House release the top-secret CIA briefing received by Bush. He also said lawmakers will want to see a recently revealed FBI memo from its Arizona office that warned of suspicious activity by Arabs at U.S. flight schools and said bin Laden's al-Qaida network could organize such flight training.

A former FAA security chief, Billie Vincent, asked why, if law-enforcement agencies had been notified of a possible hijacking threat, they didn't do more to increase security.

"With that threat escalating, why was it permissible to continue to take cutting tools on airplanes?" Vincent asked, referring to the box-cutters the Sept. 11 hijackers used.

The revelation instantly created a politically charged atmosphere in which every White House statement about pre-Sept. 11 threats was subjected to new scrutiny. Fleischer, for example, was asked by reporters hours after the attacks whether "there had been any warnings that the president knew of."

He replied, "No warnings."

Fleischer stood by the comment Thursday, saying there indeed was no warning of suicide hijackings against American landmarks.

Bush himself said in January, "Never did we realize that the enemy was so well organized."

White House officials said Bush was steadfast in private that CIA Director George Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller have done a good job overhauling their agencies to close the gaps exposed by the Sept. 11 attacks. Their jobs are not in jeopardy, officials said.

One Bush associate quoted the president as saying "no one knew" that bin Laden was plotting to make the leap from traditional hijackings to the highly sophisticated suicide attacks on U.S. landmarks. "No one passed (that type of information) to me," Bush was quoted as saying.

At the White House Thursday, Fleischer said that starting in May 2001, there had been increased threats of terrorism strikes against U.S. targets - primarily abroad - and that security was tightened at U.S. embassies and military installations. With the threat of hijackings, there was "a pulling together of domestic agencies to make certain that they were aware of this information."

However, Fleischer did not say which agencies were told or what they did in response.

At least some agency officials, including Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, said Thursday that they had received no specific information about possible terrorist hijackings of airplanes before Sept. 11.

Wednesday night, Fleischer said the administration "notified the appropriate agencies. I think that's one of the reasons that we saw the people who committed the 9-11 attacks used box cutters and plastic knives to get around America's system of protecting against hijackers."

Fleischer would not discuss when or how the information was given to Bush, but a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the president was made aware of the potential for hijackings of U.S. planes during one or more routine CIA briefings last summer.

The Associated Press reported earlier this month that FBI headquarters did not act on a memo last July from its Arizona office warning there were a large number of Arabs seeking pilot, security and airport operations training at at least one U.S. flight school and which urged a check of all flight schools to identify more possible Middle Eastern students.

A section of that classified memo also makes a passing reference to bin Laden, speculating that al-Qaida and other such groups could organize such flight training, officials said.

AP-ES-05-16-02 1153EDT

[texasbluebell]

The press wolf pack is on the loose !

Yes, you can hear it in their voices. And they're just salivating. They're going to make this into a story no matter what. They're desparate to pin this on the WH.

[max_rpf]

If they do they may just become the story. There is no meat here.

[helper]

I wish, Gephardt will stand in front of the cameras and lie, CBS, ABC, & NBC will only report "Bush knew and didn't act" The sheeple will continue to vote Dem.

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

No, they see it is as ok to lie because no media (other than FOX) will come after them.

[callisto]

They're deperate, period. Without something to pin the blame on Bush for they have nothing to counter his soaring popularity and approval ratings in the polls. The Dems live for polls and fundraising and Bush is beating them at both. I wonder if they cry themselves to sleep at night?

[Lazamataz]

Hey - thanks Fox for fouling up the Dems - BIG PLAY.

The problem is, the ONLY network to report this will be Fox.

And the ONLY newspaper to print this will be the Washington Times.

So it is up to every freeper to call into every radio talk show and harass every newspaper editor and news anchor until they finally are FORCED to report this.

[Steve0113]

Almost as good as Daschle finally being forced to admit that he'd been to the underground complex for the "Shadow Government" and thus fully knew of the contingency plan.

Did he ever come up with an excuse for that, or did he just brazen it out?

[madison10]

Any 'net links yet?

The "Intelligence" committees in Congress need to have a major house cleaning. Who is leaking this CLASSIFIED info?

[Azrael]

I wish that Drudge would post this up.

[america-rules]

Fox now putting some heat on the Intel CMTE becasue they also knew !

[linn37]

dashole tried the same lie,was called on it and the dufus reporters just ignored it and moved to the next question

[texasbluebell]

Listening to Steven Emerson now on MSNBC, very reasonable, trying to explain to the anchor how W is now taking the rap for the FBI not being able to put this all together before 9-11. It would have required someone at the FBI putting all the pieces together and no one did that! This information did not even make it past a mid-level analyst level.

[lainie]

I was thinking the same thing watching 'coverage' of the 9-11 photo 'controversy' last night on the late news. I was thinking "geeze, if this is all the democrats have got......"

[VOA]

Did he ever come up with an excuse for that, or did he just brazen it out?

I don't recall all the details, but I think Daschle did say "Yes" to a question along
the lines of "You have been in this complex, right?"
And I think Snow followed it up with "So you know about it?" and got another "Yes"
out of Daschle.
I'll leave it to others who actually saw the interchange to correct me...but I think
that even if Daschle didn't publically cry "Uncle", he at least didn't make any more comment
about the issue.
Which means to me that he probably knew that he was screwed after the interchange on Fox.

[america-rules]

Carl Camron fox news now saying about 5 countries warned the USA of possible hijackings but Intel too General !

[lainie]

Drudge's headline has the Shelby quote inside. It'll all unfold today -- no way is this going to go the dems' way. Ain't gonna happen.

[RetiredArmy]

Put em next to each other!