Sources: '01 brief warned of attack Rest of AP article here. So, who here thinks they'll actually declassify every word of the PDB? I'll be extremely surprised if it's not covered in big giant black spots which contain the most damaging evidence of Al Qaeda planning an attack.
Re: Sources: '01 brief warned of attack Please; this government is EXACTLY the opposite of democratic transparency, all in the name of supposedly "saving democracy," and "protecting our freedom." We don't even realise that what's most important, what makes us different, what makes us an Experiment, is what we are in fact losing.
Re: Sources: '01 brief warned of attack Mel- This is scary-is there a thread here that you're not on? Time to return to the regular soccer threads, dude. That's where I'm headed. Gotta give this stuff a rest.
Listening to CNN, a Sat. late afternoon, almost night here in the East, some of the info given is still uncorroborated -Intel indicated OBL since '97 tried/wanted to conduct attacks within the US -He wanted to hijack airplanes in order to release ?? (cannot spell name), a fellow jihadist -FBI says that info since '98 indicates patterns consistent w/ hijackings and surveillance of buildings in NY.... -FBI had 74 ongoing investigations "OBL-related"- -Tracked down recruitment of youths in NY for attacks -Use of explosives were being explored Some more details should follow on TV news, articles, etc... The 74 investigations make one wonder how that Phoenix memo gets lost and does not reach the proper channels...
To me, this is a Rove/Cheney strategy. "Get the memo out there and out of the way, so that it can be forgotten. The memo will only be covered once or twice, for less than a week. Then we can bring the focus back to our daily drumbeat of ads and sympathetic (pathetic?) media outlets." Otherwise, why flip-flop? Congrats to Ben-Veniste for using Rice's sham testimony to make Cheney and Rove have to deal with this as an issue; they need to continue to keep them responding, on the back foot...
Declassified and Approved for Release Now you can read it like Bush did. Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release Very interesting. Looks like they had bits and pieces of the necessary information to stop the Sept 11th attacks, but they didn't have what was needed to connect the dots. There is mention of hijacking planes, but no mention of using the planes as missiles. There is mention of Bin Laden wanting to do an attack in Washington, but not how. Warning of survelience of New York targets, and an immentent attack in the US with explosives. My guess is that the inteligence was pretty good, but the bad guys were talking in code. That makes it difficult to have enough information to stop an attack in the planning stages.
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release Bush's policy was driven by defense contracting and energy exploitation interests. That's why Condi was going to talk about missile defense development the day (9/11) that the result of NOT having a clear policy on UBL and ignoring your head of counter-terrorism came to be. In the face of clear evidence that the threat was somewhere else, they could not adjust their vision or strategy; in part b/c their strategy was driven by monied interests, in part b/c Wolfie and Rumsfeld and the DPI felt that "a little Bin Laden" was good for business, in part b/c the intelligence agencies were not monoliths, but individual humans who tried going over heads and knocking on doors, to no avail. Given that "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," there should have been a strategy titled "Determined NOT to let Bin Ladin Strike in US." AND IT DIDN'T TAKE THE PATIROT ACT TO DO IT. Remember, Clinton's administration foiled the Millennium attempts with the laws already in place. No, all it took was payng attention. But when you're on a month-long vacation (seomthing I can't relate to, having never had a vacation - or a honeymoon - in my life) in Crawford, whose got time for rightheaded thinking? Besides, Cheney wasn't holding the wee-wee in TX when Bush was asked to read this...
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release How many more dots did they need before warning the FAA? Nobody ever warned the FAA that islamic terrorists wanted to highjack planes.
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release Commissioner Gorelick agrees with you. From her Q&A with Rice: JAMIE S. GORELICK: Dr. Rice, thank you for being here today. I'd like to pick up where Fred Fielding and you left off, which is this issue of the extent to which raising the level to the Cabinet level and bringing people together makes a difference...First of all while it may be that Dick Clarke was informing you, many of the other people at the C.S.G. level and the people who were brought to the table from the domestic agencies were not telling their principals. Secretary Mineta, the secretary of transportation, had no idea of the threat. The administrator of the F.A.A., responsible for security on our airlines, had no idea. Yes, the attorney general was briefed, but there is no evidence of any activity by him about this...
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release Ben-Vineste says an advisory went out and Clarke says it's understandable that the intielligence community "didn't connect the dots" but he felt he could. So the FAA was warned
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release Ressam's being foiled had nothing to do with the Clinton administration, nor their policies. The US got lucky when they caught him at the border. It wasn't because there was a bulletin out on him, or the possibilty of someone like him. It was because the Customs Agent got suspicious of Ressam when he was hesitant in answering questions. When they did a thorough search of his car (keep in mind that U.S. immigration pre-clearance agents were mildly suspicious of Ressam and made him open his trunk, but saw nothing) the found the explosive materials -- which they at first took to be drugs -- in the trunk of the car, Ressam tried to run away. He was caught and arrested. The Clinton administration had NOTHING to do with the foiling of the Millenium plot. They should that the Customs agent, if it wasn't for her Ressam most likely would have made it to LAX. More on Ressam and the Millenium plot can be found here
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release This is one of those things I find ridiculous: If this speech she (Condi) was going to make at the Hopkins Institute (if I'm not mistaken), was going to be given to the public. WHY is it now classified information? If we want to find out what was lacking in terms of priorities/coordination, etc., then what better than to know what was on Rice's mind precisely on the latest possible time (right before the day of the attack, as one figures speeches are written/ready at least a day in advance )... By default, it would give a comprehensive look at what was the priorities of this administration and help us see what could have been paid closer attention to, or at least find out if the order of priorities were just too out of whack to do the best job possible protecting us.... And about Bush/Cheney: really, I do not care if he takes vacations every month or goes to fundraisers every week....what really bothers is all these claims that he is disengaged and lacks curiosity. We need someone who cares enough about the issues to read about them and become better informed....From what we hear of O'Neil and Clarke , this is sadly not the case.... Bush, some insiders claim, asks few questions.....now THAT really worries me... You cannot leave everything to dinasours (Cheney, Rummy) when most their expertise comes from the COld War era....Heck they were industry executives before coming back to government....This fact alone would call for the Prez to be more involved in issues related to this "new kind of war", would it not?
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release Having the knowledge that the planes might be used as suicide bombs should not have made any difference in our governments ability to foil the plot beforehand. There is enough non-partisan blame to go around here. Sept. 11 was a culmination of a series of attacks on us that started 10 years ago. Unfortunately it took an attack on our mainland and 3,000 lives to finally get our attention. What is more disturbing to me than Bush's indifference to Al Quaeda prior to 9/11 is that fact that every 4 years our intelligence apparatus can re-direct itself so much as to make additional attacks more likely than not. I would have thought that CIA/FBI/NSA priorities are more set in a non-political fashion - i.e. there is a group out there who already attacked us more than once and have vowed to do it again - MAKE SURE IT DOESN'T HAPPEN rather than, OH WE DON"T LIKE SADDAM, GO DRUM UP SOME INFORMATION THAT MAKES IT SEEM OK TO INVADE IRAQ. Among other things, this is what really pisses me off about Bush. His agenda to rid us of Saddam misdirected the intelligence community and ADDED to (not caused) our failure to stop 9/11.
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release So, I am serious when I ask: Is it fair to say the Condi was lieing during her testimony when she said this was an "historical document that didn't have to do with AQ attacking inside the United States".
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release I have to say at this point it does not appear to me to be a smoking gun. I find any failure to respond pales in comparison to the choices that have been made since 9/11. I am sorry, but I work at a job in which I am constantly engaged in trying to figure out which situations are more risky and which situations need to be handled first. In every case in which something goes wrong, you can second guess what was done in the past and see that the warnings where as big as Texas. Clinton and Bush both could have responded better to threats. It's a fact. If we can learn from this to make our intelligence and response greater, great. But anyone clamoring for blood, anyone wanting a fall guy -- that is just misplaced effort. Some things are so big, and the historical lead up to those things so broad based, that it is simply counterproductive to try to pin this incident on someone or some memo or some single thing. Again, I simply just don't want this tail to wag the dog that has been this Administrations conduct since 9/11.
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release I looked for that quote in the transcript and couldn't find it so I think you are the one who is lying. Here is what was actually said in the testimony,
Re: One of the most ironic letters ever written. You want irony? With regard to the Aug. 6, 2001 President's Daily Brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.", President Bush defended his inaction by stating on Sunday that "there was not a time and place of an attack ... What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to? ... I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America - at a time and a place, an attack." (1) So, you're saying that when there is no specific threat, the US won't take specific actions, like, say, for example, invade Iraq? (1) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/12/politics/12PANE.html?hp
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release I agree, I am much less concerned with what happened pre-9/11 and who bears responsibility for what. There is, it seems, plenty of blame to go around. What is really concerning is this Administration's conduct post-9/11, the manipulation of facts and intelligence, waging a war on Iraq instead of focusing on those who were responsible for 9/11, stretching our military to its limit and overestimating Iraqi goodwill to our efforts..... Almost everything since 9/11 has been a miscalculation or an outright lie, and we should be holding those in power accountable for the decisions they have made.
Re: Declassified and Approved for Release This is not exactly a full and accurate assessment of events. The US Customs officer, along with 18,000 police agencies, military bases and US embassies, had only recently been put on heightened alert for suspicious activity. Would Diana Dean, the Customs officer, have noted Ahmed Ressam's activity but for the alert? It's impossible to know. Furthermore, it's not as if Ressam'e plan to blow up LAX was the only element of the over-arching "Millenium Plot". The capture of Ressam, and even more importantly the busting of a cell in Jordan that was planning attacks there and in NYC, led to further action by US authorities. The FBI broke a sleeper cell in Montreal, and tracked down more al Qaeda operatives in Boston and Brooklyn. There was an attempted attack in Yemen against a Navy ship that simply failed due to poor planning on the terrorists' part. Lots of preparations were made to prevent or react to eventualities that in the event did not occur - but no one will ever know whether those preparations helped prevent them, or whether nothing was going to happen anyway.
RICE: Well, Aug. 6 is most certainly a historical document that says here's how you might think about Al Qaeda. A warning is when you have something that suggests that an attack is impending. And we did not have on the United States threat information that was in any way specific enough to suggest that something was coming in the United States. BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO ATTACK INSIDE THE UNITED STATES - not a warning? - not threat information? - not suggesting something was coming in the United States? ...and that's just the title. The thing actually said AQ was in the United States planning an attack. "Doctor" Rice should be working for the government in duties relating to turning big rocks into small rocks at Fort Leavenworth, not sitting with her thumb up her ass wondering what kind of job "National Security Advisor" entails.
I'm wondering why, when the President asks about AQ potential in the US, this little page and 1/2 memo with some historical generalities and ominous hints about potential OBL hits in the US is the best that he's given. The memo says "lack of urgency" even though this could have been the perfect opportunity to bubble up the urgency that Clarke says resided in the Intel community at the time. I wonder who decided not to brief the Prez more fully and raise the level of priority when the opportunity presented itself. Seems like Condi dropped the ball ... big time (as Cheney would say).