Ashcroft Learned of Agent's Alert Just After 9/11 but Bush Was Not Told

New York Times ^

[Quicksilver]

...Aschroft and Mueller should both be canned.

Why?

[RCW2001]

the Bill of Rights.

The "Bill of..." what??? lol

[Timesink]

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.

Easy: Before 9/11, any attempt to take action against Islamic terrorism - ANY action, no matter how minor - would have immediately been latched onto by Dashole, Gephardt, McAuliffe & Co., and they'd have screamed "RACISM! RACISM!" from the rooftops every hour of every day. Coming right after the Florida mess. This would have sent Bush's popularity, which was only around 50%, down to Nixon-in-'74 levels. And when a president's approval rating gets that low, he can't accomplish anything. Even his own party will desert him on any issue even slightly controversial.

In short, there's nothing Bush could have done unless he had concrete, incontrovertible proof of a plan to attack the US on X date at X hour in X way. And even THEN the Democrats would have attacked him and accused him of making it all up.

[Hattie]

Right, and do you suppose we are going to see headlines tomorrow saying "Bush Didn't Know". Are we going to hear the media correct all their lies they have spread for the last four days?

[I. M. Trenchant]

The failure of Ashcroft to tell Dubya about the gross failures of the FBI and CIA to fulfill their missions to prevent violent assaults on U.S. territory -- something that should have been disclosed to the U.S. public as soon as possible -- is really a dividend for Dubya's Administration because it indicates that Dubya's Attorney General failed, as Nixon's Attorney General did, to inform his boss about something he should have let Dubya know about immediately. Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, by denying (to the day he died) that he, Mitchell, without Nixon's knowledge, had ordered the Watergate breakin, led Nixon to construct an elaborate coverup that was the undoing of his Administration. If Mitchell had come forward and had taken the heat for failing to tell Nixon that he, Mitchell, had ordered the breakin, there never would have been a Watergate coverup.

By revealing that Dubya's Attorney General did NOT tell his boss about gross ineptitude in the FBI and CIA over the past 8 months, the NYT may be getting Dubya off-the-hook with respect to his being responsible for the sort of coverup that Hillary was hinting his Administration was guilty of just last week. Of course, the Democrats will work overtime between now and 2004 trying to adduce evidence that Dubya knew all about the CIA and FBI ineptitude soon after 9/11, independently of Ashcroft, and chose not to report it to the U.S. public. Knowing the NYT, I'd not be surprised if they first build a story by pointing out the Ashcroft lapse only as a prelude to a later story they have up their sleeve, i.e., first get the attention of the public with this story, and then later, drop the other shoe. Never underestimate the cunning at the NYT, which still festers over the fact that the Washington Post, not the NY Times, brought down another GOP Administration.

[Timesink]

It is important because the mouthpiece of the Democrats/left, the New York Times, has basically thrown in the towel on the "what did he know and when did he know it" witch hunt.

Tim Russert made this specific point on MSNBC tonight. The RATS have once again had one of their hateful plans of lies blow up in their face, and been forced to completely abandon their "Bush knew and yet did nothing" attack strategy. He said there's no way now any sort of "Congressional investigatory commission" can be used to attack Bush. The only people that will come out of such an investigation looking bad are the FBI and the Clinton White House.

[TLBSHOW]

Good then lets get the Clinton Whitehouse. Lets not move on. That is the problem. Lets stand right here and look into Clinton.

[glorygirl]

Because, apparently, neither of them told Bush what he needed to know when Bush needed to know it, which was IMMEDIATELY after they found out.

I am willing to give Mueller more of a pass because he was new on the job and because Ashcroft is his boss, but he STILL should have told Bush, even if he was new and his boss didn't agree with him.

If the President of the United States isn't informed of stuff like this, immediately, it can become a huge embarrassment to his administration. It could even destroy him in the eyes of the American people.

Don't kid yourselves, folks, the dems were on a roll last week. They were sniffing blood, and if Bush and his closest buds hadn't struck back firmly and immediately, we might be singing a different tune today. This story could be part of that response.

I tend to agree with unblinking eye.

Ashcroft has been more of an embarassment to the administration than anything else.

It may also turn out that he deliberately witheld information from President Bush that may have affected the president's decisions on a number of security-related issues, way prior to 9/11. Louis Freeh is responsible for the way a lot of this stuff was implemented.

Maybe Mueller was earnestly trying to clear up the FBI muck, but with Ashcroft, who is afraid to tell anybody anything, how could he?

[Swiss]

If Ashcroft resigns over this I predict the odds that Bush will face some sort of impeachment goes up. Look at history almost every major scandal that has brought the AG down has tarnish the sitting President from Teapot Dome to Watergate.

I have always believed that if the Republicans had forced Janet Reno out then Clinton would of been toast. The AG is the shield for the Presidency IMO. I think we would be better off holding on to Ashcroft than pitching him over the side now that the seas has become rough.

[Quicksilver]

Excellent point. You'd think that investigative reporters would appreciate the extreme difficulty in connecting-the-dots BEFORE something happens since they know how hard it is to do AFTER something happens. I would liken it to trying to assemble a picture puzzle with pieces from thousands of puzzles mixed together and not knowing what the picture should look like.

[RCW2001]

If the President of the United States isn't informed of stuff like this, immediately, it can become a huge embarrassment to his administration. It could even destroy him in the eyes of the American people.

When I was directing a litigation staff of 325 souls...my only directive was 'no surprises'!!! God help those that didn't abide by that rule...

[Prodigal Son]

Those are good points and I'll readily admit I'm not too good at thinking in terms of political strategy. Before I posted I was trying to "game it out" in my head and could come to no conclusion that I liked better. If you "can" him, this is a direct reflection on the admin- if you keep him and win the battle you're all the better for it- if you keep him and get dragged down with him, you lose too.

[mass55th]

"This is totally weird and obsessive. So what they didn't tell him about this specific memo in some far away state - they knew the same thing in about two days after 9/11 - that Al Qaeda trained at American flight schools (and not the Arizona one)."

Exactly! Within 48 hours, the investigation had uncovered the flight school connections, etc. By the time Ashcroft and Mueller were told of the memo, whatever info that had been in it, was already common knowledge and reported in the press. This whole thing has been a waste by the Dems, and if they persist in holding hearings on what Bush knew and when, they're going to be mighty sorry pups in November.

[katze]

Oh, you know how it works, throw enough on the wall, maybe something will stick. Anyone care to guess who's the next target?

Or could it be a diversion to offset an upcoming Dem scandal?

[america-rules]

Some lady called Hannity today and had a perfect vision on how to look at this whole issue:

She said how many people who saw The Sixth Sense with Bruce Willis knew that he was really dead the entire movie? Everyone at the end said to their selves "I didn't catch any of the clues" until the movie was over !

9-11 is just like this movie and the clues slap you in the face but during the movie the clues passed everyone by !

[Prodigal Son]

I would liken it to trying to assemble a picture puzzle with pieces from thousands of puzzles mixed together and not knowing what the picture should look like.

I like that metaphor. I tend to like to think in pictures and I like to reduce complex problems to simpler visual allegories so I can manipulate them mentally- it has flaws but I'm comfortable with that. At any rate, I'm always on the look out for new ones and this one you've provided is a good one.

At least the media had a picture to help them.

[Prodigal Son]

It may also turn out that he deliberately witheld information from President Bush that may have affected the president's decisions on a number of security-related issues...

Exactly. That'll be the question Joe Everyman is going to run through his head- "If he didn't tell him about this, what else didn't he/isn't he telling him?"

[Quicksilver]

Because, apparently, neither of them told Bush what he needed to know when Bush needed to know it, which was IMMEDIATELY after they found out.

I disagree. He did not need to know at that time. There were literally thousands of things more important at that time than this memo. What possible use could it have been for him to know what had become obvious? BTW, Mueller had been on the job a couple of weeks on 9/11.

[Texasforever]

Then they should be summarily disbanded and dissolved, this is just yet another in a laundry list of major cases where they have screwed up in reverse and people have died for it.

Great idea. Then what?

[mass55th]

"She said how many people who saw The Sixth Sense with Bruce Willis knew that he was really dead the entire movie? Everyone at the end said to their selves 'I didn't catch any of the clues" until the movie was over !'"

I knew he was dead when he went to dinner with his wife and she didn't answer him. I guess I suspected he had died after he was shot in the beginning of the movie.