Posted on 05/20/2002 8:17:22 PM PDT by RCW2001
ASHINGTON, May 20 — Attorney General John Ashcroft and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, were told a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks that the F.B.I. had received a memorandum from its Phoenix office the previous July warning that Osama bin Laden's followers could be training at American flight schools, government officials said today.
But senior Bush administration officials said neither Mr. Ashcroft nor Mr. Mueller briefed President Bush and his national security staff until recently about the fears of an F.B.I. agent in Phoenix that members of Al Qaeda were training at American flight schools, though the two men began daily briefings of the president at the White House immediately after the hijackings.
The disclosure that neither Mr. Ashcroft nor Mr. Mueller told the White House or Congressional leaders about the memorandum when they learned about it shortly after Sept. 11 is certain to magnify criticism of the F.B.I.'s performance, including its failure to act on the memorandum before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Neither Mr. Mueller nor Mr. Ashcroft have said publicly when they learned of the July 10 memorandum, but the officials said senior law enforcement officials grasped the document's significance as a potentially important missed signal within days of the attacks.
Today, several F.B.I. and Justice Department officials said that in the chaotic days after the attacks, discussions between Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller were hurried and that their recollection of events were somewhat blurred by frenetic pace of activity. Some officials said they recalled high-level discussions about how the hijackers had attended American flight schools, but one Justice Department official did not recall a briefing about the memorandum.
Spokesmen for Mr. Mueller and Mr. Ashcroft would not discuss the issue today. A senior Justice Department official said, "The attorney general was not briefed in any detail or with any specificity about the document known as the Phoenix memo until about a month ago."
Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, who was traveling today with the president in Miami, said, "We have nothing that indicates the president had seen or even heard about this memo prior to a few weeks ago."
Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said last Thursday that the president had not heard about the memorandum before the hijackings and had only recently learned of it. "I personally became aware of it just recently," Ms. Rice said, adding that she asked Mr. Mueller and George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, to review the matter.
The Phoenix memorandum, written by Kenneth Williams, an agent in Phoenix, was sent to F.B.I. headquarters as an electronic computer message on July 10. It was reviewed by midlevel supervisors, who headed the agency's bin Laden and Islamic extremist counterterrorism units.
But the officials said the memo was never sent to top F.B.I. managers, including Thomas J. Pickard, who was acting director in the summer of 2001 before Mr. Mueller took over early in September. Other senior officials were unaware of the memorandum before Sept. 11, including Michael Rolince, who managed the bureau's international terrorism unit, and Dale Watson, his superior, the officials said.
The issue of when top officials knew of the Phoenix memorandum is emerging as a main focus in Congressional inquiries getting under way. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has asked the F.B.I. to identify anyone at the agency who knew about the memorandum before the attacks.
But lawmakers also want to know when Bush administration officials learned about the memorandum after the attacks. Some lawmakers have asked whether administration officials were told about it soon after the attacks, but were slow to disclose it.
Several lawmakers, including Richard Shelby, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have already singled out the F.B.I. for blunt criticism after Mr. Williams's memorandum came to light several weeks ago.
The Phoenix memorandum is one of two documents under heavy scrutiny by Congressional investigators. The other is a daily intelligence report, shown to Mr. Bush on Aug. 6. The report mentions the threat of Qaeda members' carrying out hijackings in the United States. The White House has refused to produce the document, and administration officials have said that the information was too vague to act on.
Mr. Mueller has acknowledged that the bureau's failure to evaluate the Phoenix memorandum fully was an analytical failure that the F.B.I. has tried to correct. "It is a very worthwhile process and a process we are undertaking to change what we do in response to that instance and others where perhaps we did not have the analytical capability," Mr. Mueller said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 8.
"We did not have the people who were looking at the broader picture to put the pieces in place," he said adding that nothing in the memorandum would have enabled the F.B.I. to thwart the attacks.
The memorandum remains classified, and much of its contents are unknown. But officials have confirmed that it expressed concern that Mr. bin Laden and other groups could be using the flight schools to prepare for terror attacks. It urged F.B.I. officials to check the visas of foreigners at American aviation academies. But no action was taken before Sept. 11.
The memorandum was sent to counterterrorism offices in two cities — one copy went to John O'Neill, then the top counterterrorism agent in the F.B.I.'s New York office. Mr. O'Neill retired from the F.B.I. in late August. He had just begun a job as the security chief of the World Trade Center when he was killed in the attacks.
Usually, internal investigative proposals that involve agencywide resources are reviewed by high F.B.I. officials. But in this case F.B.I. officials have said that officials who read the memo were distracted by other cases, a plot against American interests in France and the investigation of the October 2000 attack on the destroyer Cole.
Two or three days after the attacks, Dale Watson, who was then assistant director for counterterrorism, brought the memorandum to the attention of Mr. Pickard, the acting director at the time, officials said. Mr. Pickard and several other agents then briefed Mr. Mueller and Mr. Aschroft on its existence, the officials said.
The Phoenix agent's memorandum was not based on intelligence but on concerns and recommendations based on "conjecture and assumptions," said a senior official who has read it.
"This was just a good investigator taking a look at something," the official said. "It was pure hunch."
For that reason, the official speculated that the memorandum had not set off strong alarms among other law enforcement officials who had reviewed it at the bureau.
This was diverting the dogs away from the hunt.
Of course, there is this question: would Ashcroft have been in a position to respond better/quicker if his confirmation had not been held up until just a few weeks before 9/11.
It's more than just Dems this time who are upset at the failure of the current administration to act forcefully while this avalanche of information was coming in and was swept under the rug.
Why weren't the borders secured? Why weren't known Muslim extremists in the US taken into custody for interrogation?
It's been 6 or 7 years now since Steve Emerson's Jihad in America was shown on PBS. We had plenty of advance warning. I can understand the Clintons' ignoring illegal immigration and Islamic terrorism within our borders, but I am dismayed by the inaction of our present administration, despite all the information they had in advance.
"29. What do you want?
I want my uniform back, my back pay at $4,210.90 a month and my honor. I want President Bush to give me a full and complete pardon and the amnesty of the U.S. government. I am owed that. I want Bush personally to know everything that I know, and what kind of threats there are against the U.S."
This would seem to further indicate that this is another of the Clinton crimes we are just barely scratching the surface of. This comments indicate that President Bush has/had no idea of the details of this operation.
Time to get the Clinton holdouts out!
One more thing. Did we have any American officials in Iraq at this time? Any speculation out there as to what official capacity that official might have been serving in?
This especially when we are being told that near 'war plans' were laying upon Condo Rice's desk as to how to deal with Al Qaeda just days before 9-11.
Is this what you "feel" is true, or do you have reason to actually believe it is true? You are usually more on top of things than you sound in this post.
LOL! And they still aren't. But lets not discuss the obvious. It's not trendy.
Got the flame-retardant suit on, so here goes:
Let me be the first to say Aschroft and Mueller should both be canned. I hope Bush has the guts to do it, and don't be surprised if it happens.
This story was leaked by somebody WAY high up in the Bush administration, maybe at his behest,perhaps to prepare us for the coming "massacre" -- (to revive a phrase from the Nixon administration.)
Let's just wait and see.
I think the burning, glaring question should be, "Why are the borders and our immigration "free for all" still NOT secured?
What a way to fight a war.
Without any specific information regarding the method that the terrorists planned to use (not methods that they could use), I do not see how anyone could have connected this memo to anything else and guess that the terrorists were going to fly hijacked planes into buildings.
You know, I speculated on this yesterday after reading Newsweek/MSNBC's piece- "What Went Wrong about intel to prevent 9-11". It seemed like the authors of that article were giving Dubya a free pass and were going after Ashcroft. The lefties hate Ashcroft worse than they hate Bush. This makes me wonder if there isn't a lot of collusion in the media right now between reporters for different papers at least. This steady assault seems timed almost. If that's so we'll have to start crying "What did the media know and when did they know it".
This looks bad for Ashcroft, much as I hate to admit it. The media are going to focus on him now- it'll resemble a crucifixion. I can think of no good answer he can give them when they ask- "Why did you not tell the President what you knew?". I agree with everyone else on this thread, whether he did or didn't tell the President had no real effect and that he learned these things after 9/11 renders the thing moot in real terms- but the media have gotten enough people stirred up now, they're going to try to go for blood.
They're figuring if they can't hurt Bush directly because they have nothing and he' popular with the people- they can attack his flank by taking down one of his key people. It might be that to avoid damaging the Bush administration further, Ashcroft- right or wrong- might have to resign. The alternative will be to defend him rigourously in the coming days- that's Dubya defending him- what Rice and Cheney will have to say about it won't amount to a hill of beans to the people. They'll want to hear from Bush himself what his position on this is. And after he makes his position clear, if he defends him and says "He's my man"- he will be tied to and responsible for anything else they dig up on Ashcroft- hence my mentioning the AG's resigning. It's BS, but that's politics sometimes.
I want to make clear, I, personally am not calling for his resignation. But if we had a crystal ball and could look down the road two weeks, one month or to election time and we could see that Ashcroft staying on is going to hurt us more than help us- what's the best course of action? Something to consider. Maybe better for him to simply say "Rather than there be any question to my integrity- I will resign" than them tar and feathering him in public and his reputation being forever tarnished and him winding up resigning afterwards.
Yes they held up Ashcroft position along with a few other appointments . but I think you mean Mueller .. he took over 2 weeks before
Gosh..somehow I missed what had to be massive media coverage of this poll surge...
You make me think about another aspect. I haven't heard anyone say this yet, so hear goes.
We have heard much grumbling and witnessed fingerpointing about how the intelligence community failed us on 9/11 and I suppose there's a lot to be said for that- whatever the reasons. But actually, the media, when looked at as one large entity IS perhaps the largest intelligence agency in the world. Reporters have sources just like CIA agents do. They do much of their work the same way- sifting through "chatter". Plus there's an economic and egocentric incentive behind the media's intelligence gathering (Pulitzer Prize, esteem, big salary etc) so in some ways they are a much more motivated group.
It has taken them this long to come up with this and they are NOT rank amatuers. It seems a bit disingenuous for them to complain that our intelligence community did not find the one suspected needle in the haystack that might possibly have helped when it has taken their own apparatus this long to find it even when they knew the needle must be there (theoretically).
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