Free Republic

May 21, 2002 Ashcroft Learned of Agent's Alert Just After 9/11 but Bush Was Not ToldBy DAVID JOHNSTON and DON VAN NATTA Jr. 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...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A memo by an FBI (news - web sites) agent last summer urged the bureau's headquarters to investigate Middle Eastern men enrolled in American flight schools and named Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), suggesting followers could use the schools for terror operations, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. The memorandum said bin Laden's groups might be sending students to the flight schools to place Islamic militants in the civil aviation industry around the world, the report added, citing government officials. When four hijacked airliners plowed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon (news...