Turns out Dubya ignored A LOT of warnings about 9/11.

[weemadando]

What's that? His obsession with Iraq led to dismissals of the repeated attack warnings? Sheeeeiiiit. Turns out Iraq DID cause 9/11.

The Deafness Before the Storm
By KURT EICHENWALD
Published: September 10, 2012

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.

On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief — and only that daily brief — in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.

Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.

That same day in Chechnya, according to intelligence I reviewed, Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. Within 48 hours, an intelligence official told me, that information was conveyed to the White House, providing more data supporting the C.I.A.’s warnings. Still, the alarm bells didn’t sound.

On July 24, Mr. Bush was notified that the attack was still being readied, but that it had been postponed, perhaps by a few months. But the president did not feel the briefings on potential attacks were sufficient, one intelligence official told me, and instead asked for a broader analysis on Al Qaeda, its aspirations and its history. In response, the C.I.A. set to work on the Aug. 6 brief.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur. That is true, as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.

Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all.

Kurt Eichenwald, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a former reporter for The New York Times, is the author of “500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars.”

[Vaporous]

It does perfectly fit the Bush Administration profile, but without actually reading the classified briefs he claimed to have seen, there's no way to confirm any of this.

[Gaidin]

"We're going to be attacked somewhere, somewhen."

As much as it'd be nice to add this to the list of Bush missteps, I find it hard to. As I understand the information available to the writer of the article, the magic ingredient for everything coming together seems to be hindsight. Maybe one day should I ever see those reports. But then, if I somehow did, I probably wouldn't be able to talk about them.

[Flagg]

"Bin Laden Deterimined to Attack Within US" isn't a cause for concern, dumbass? You can't beef up security at major targets after getting that warning, like you know, at airports?

[Thanas]

What's that? His obsession with Iraq led to dismissals of the repeated attack warnings? Sheeeeiiiit.

I fully expect some people to claim that Bush was not obsessed with Iraq at all but that he was just given bad intelligence.

[Dalton]

What's that? His obsession with Iraq led to dismissals of the repeated attack warnings? Sheeeeiiiit.

I fully expect some people to claim that Bush was not obsessed with Iraq at all but that he was just given bad intelligence.

Can't it be both? His obsession with Iraq led him to jump at the chance to take on Saddam after that bad "yellow cake" intel, no?

[Thanas]

Bad Yellow Cake "intel"? More like completely fabricated by your own cronies most likely on your orders intel.

[Dalton]

Bad Yellow Cake "intel"? More like completely fabricated by your own cronies most likely on your orders intel.

Easy dude. I am on your side.

[Thanas]

Sorry, but when you repeat stuff that has been covered since several years while repeating the old GOP talking point of "it was just bad intel and definitely no foulplay" then I kinda tend to forget that.

[Gaidin]

"Bin Laden Deterimined to Attack Within US" isn't a cause for concern, dumbass? You can't beef up security at major targets after getting that warning, like you know, at airports?

Why am I looking at airports again when reports according to the article haven't connected them?

[PainRack]

"Bin Laden Deterimined to Attack Within US" isn't a cause for concern, dumbass? You can't beef up security at major targets after getting that warning, like you know, at airports?

Except that that was one paper, amongst what? 20 other declassified intel we know of saying that Al Queda was preparing an attack against the US?

Given the sheer volume of danger/threats the US face, I won't be surprised if it skipped through the filter.


Beefing up security isn't easy for the US, since the Department of Homeland Security didn't exist then. Correct me if I'm wrong, but such security would had been local, right? Unless the FBI got involved.

[Patrick Degan]

The problem with that argument is that Richard Clarke, among others, had urged the late maladministration —repeatedly— to start convening NSC meetings to determine the terrorism threat level and appropriate responses to the potentialities for hostile actions against the U.S. by non-state actors. Those calls were persistently ignored. Nor did it require the existence of a Department of Homeland Security for Bush's NSC to actually do its job. There had already been the recent bombing attack on the USS Cole and the disruption of the Millenium bomb plot the year before that by the Clinton administration, so the notion that the August PDB just "skipped through the filter" doesn't wash either. It was more than reasonable for the NSC to have put itself on increased watch for another attempt by Al Qaeda against the United States given recent history at that point and Osama BinLaden's very hostile propensities. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice just couldn't be bothered to take an interest.

And to clarify: airports are federal as well as state and local responsibility in the areas of law enforcement and security. Especially due to the threat of terrorism and hijacking even as it existed and was perceived back in 2001.

[PainRack]

That's a bit disingenous. Richard Clarke call was for an offensive campaign against Osama, not a campaign to beef up security against a 9/11 style hijacking.

[Zinegata]

I saw Eichenwald getting interviwed on Anderson 360, and he says that the Clinton Administration thwarted some attacks in '99 because they raised the alert, which the Bush Administration didn't do in 2001. The Pro-Bush guy in the same interview countered by saying they issued an alert in 2001 but for foreign posts because that's where the intel said the attack would come from.

I thought that was a little vague, but does anyone have any details on what Clinton did in '99? Were there any arrests and stuff? How about 2001? Were there really alerts posted on foreign postings?