Newly released CIA doduments indicate Bush warned several times about Bin Laden.

[blankslate]

Newly declassified documents indicate that the Bush administration didn't really take Bin Laen overly seriously in the early months of 2001

http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/V...ngs_about_Osama_bin_Laden_Attack_Plans_120622

Seven newly released intelligence documents have revealed that the Bush administration ignored multiple warnings prior to September 11, 2001, about planned attacks by Osama bin Laden.

The declassified, but heavily censored, documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by The National Security Archive at George Washington University, were authored by the Central Intelligence Agency just months, and even weeks, before the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC.

From June to August 2001, seven CIA Senior Intelligence Briefs revealed that terrorism plots were imminent. One brief produced on June 25 (“Bin-Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats&#8221 stated that bin Laden planned “to launch multiple attacks over the coming days.” Another already notorious brief issued on August 7 and titled “Terrorism: Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in the US,” warned that “Bin Ladin was planning to exploit an operative’s access to the US to mount a terrorist strike….Al-Qai’da members, including some US citizens, have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure here.”

Clinton isn't without fault either. He didn't appreciate the threat Bin Laden posed until his second term....

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/02osama-bin-laden-obituary.html?pagewanted=all

Bin Laden, however, demanded to be noticed. In February 1998, he declared it the duty of every Muslim to “kill Americans wherever they are found.” After the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa in August 1998, President Clinton declared Bin Laden “Public Enemy No. 1.”

However, the first link gives lie to the idea that President Bush was as tough on (or concerened about) terrorism as his supporters make him out to be.

 

[nextJin]

Was it obvious that commercial airliners were going to be used to destroy the two tallest buildings in NYC and hit the pentagon? If not I'm not entirely sure what he was supposed to do, the failures were with multiple agencies that day.

 

[blankslate]

President Bush should have taken the warnings seriously and instructed all of the National Agencies to share data.

You probably don't get several warnings if you take the first one seriously from the get go.

From what I've heard and read about various pieces of the puzzle that the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. had prior to attacks if they shared information better they might have had a chance of stopping the hijackers.

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500164_162-509113.html

Two months before the suicide hijackings, an FBI agent in Arizona alerted Washington headquarters that several Middle Easterners were training at a U.S. aviation school and recommended contacting other schools nationwide where Arabs might be studying.

Instructions from the commander in chief to make possible terrorism a focus for National Law enforcement and Intelligence agencies would have made the suggested action mentioned in the link above more likely to happen.

AP reported last month that Filipino authorities alerted the FBI as early as 1995 that several Middle Eastern pilots were training at American flight schools and at least one had proposed hijacking a commercial jet and crashing it into federal buildings.

Sure there were failures, however, the link in the OP also points to a failure from the person who was the boss of the heads of those agencies.

 

[Matt1970]

Sounds like more of the same documents we knew about years and years ago.

Problem is there are lots of known threats out there but we have never really had a specific known plot that we didn't prevent.

Bush received plenty of criticism for wanting to have a missile defense system at the time.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I'll bash Bush all day for things he had control over but this is a case of 20/20 hindsight. This would have been one of a hundred concerns identified in some relatively short period of time. Picking the correct item is like picking winning lottery tickets. I'll have to give GWB a pass on this as I would with any President.

 

[UberNeuman]

I'll bash Bush all day for things he had control over but this is a case of 20/20 hindsight. This would have been one of a hundred concerns identified in some relatively short period of time. Picking the correct item is like picking winning lottery tickets. I'll have to give GWB a pass on this as I would with any President.

Just face it - Bush fucked up.... but, hey - we got a niffy war in Iraq for it....

 

[EagleKeeper]

I'll bash Bush all day for things he had control over but this is a case of 20/20 hindsight. This would have been one of a hundred concerns identified in some relatively short period of time. Picking the correct item is like picking winning lottery tickets. I'll have to give GWB a pass on this as I would with any President.

This ^^

It is one thing to assemble a puzzle when you know the result. Another without the reference picture. Then try doing it using the backside.

Those people that want to critize are those that have the final picture to work with.

Had there been inter-agency cooperation, you would be where there is a picture on the pieces, but no reference. What we had was doing the puzzle on the backside

 

[blankslate]

Normally I'd accept the hindsight explaination....

however, unless Ron Suskind is lying about this.


http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ten-years-ago-today-countdown-911/story?id=14191671#1

August 11, 2001


President Bush is on vacation in Crawford, Texas, where five days earlier he had been warned by the CIA of a possible attack in a paper titled: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." The document said al Qaeda members were believed to be in the U.S., and that a caller to the U.S. embassy in the United Arab Emirates said "a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives." According to "The One Percent Doctrine" by Ron Suskind, the president told the CIA briefing officer, "All right. You've covered your ass now."

That cavalier response to a briefing speaks of negligence.

 

[UberNeuman]

Normally I'd accept the hindsight explaination....

however, unless Ron Suskind is lying about this.


http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ten-years-ago-today-countdown-911/story?id=14191671#1


That cavalier response to a briefing speaks of negligence.

No one could predict an upcoming attack on the U.S. - unless information was given that an upcoming attack was more likely than less...

So with going after Bill Clinton and all the "wag the dog" BS - what's left from it.....


\frankly - the GOP should not run the country....
\\as they hate the evolving nation...

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Normally I'd accept the hindsight explaination....

however, unless Ron Suskind is lying about this.


http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ten-years-ago-today-countdown-911/story?id=14191671#1





That cavalier response to a briefing speaks of negligence.

What the Suskind doesn't tell you is the PDB title "Bin Laden Determined To Stike In US" was specifically requested by Bush in response to earlier CIA briefings about AQ.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=August_6,_2001,_President's_Daily_Briefing_Memo

I wrote about 40 PDB's during my four year tenure at the CIA. This particular PDB article was written in response to a presidential request. I am told that Bush's request was a reaction to the intelligence warnings he was hearing during the daily CIA morning briefings. Something caught his attention and awakened his curiosity. He reportedly asked the CIA to come back with its assessment of Bin Laden's intentions. The CIA answered the question--Bin Laden was targeting the United States.

Clearly Bush was not being cavalier about anything. The problem is that the intelligence was non-specific and really was nothing new. There had been CIA claims of an AQ threat against the US for years. There was no way to know what would happen a few weeks later on.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Bush deserves a wealth of harsh criticism but this topic is not one of them. Pretty sure everyone with even the slightest knowledge of world evens would conclude that bin Laden was determined to strike in the U.S.

I would be curious to learn all the details of the warnings about flight schools and what action was or wasn't taken though.

 

[HendrixFan]

Bush may not take blame, but the Republicans sure are scumbags in all of it. After the "wag the dog" period where a handful of Republican congressmen actually defended bin Laden against Clinton, they continued to paint Democrats as weak and unable to handle AQ after 9/11. The icing on the cake was after Obama was able to get bin Laden killed and they decried the whole affair. Sheesh.

 

[cybrsage]

President Bush should have taken the warnings seriously and instructed all of the National Agencies to share data.

That was against the law at the time. Since the CIA is not supposed to spy on Americans (that is the job of the FBI), the FBI giving it information would appear to violate that. It was determined that the seperation for our safety from abuse actually caused us harm.

Must have sounded like a good idea to seperate them at the time.

 

[cybrsage]

\frankly - the GOP should not run the country....
\\as they hate the evolving nation...

Most evolutionary changes are useless to the host who gains them. A few are actually detrimental to the host who gains them. Very very few actually benefitial.

 

[blankslate]

That was against the law at the time. Since the CIA is not supposed to spy on Americans (that is the job of the FBI), the FBI giving it information would appear to violate that. It was determined that the seperation for our safety from abuse actually caused us harm.

Must have sounded like a good idea to seperate them at the time.

The C.I.A. could have given information to the F.B.I. any information they might've had about Al-Qaeda money coming into the U.S. around that time and let the F.B.I. do the work to connect anyone in the U.S. to accounts associated with that money. Sharing information didn't require having the C.I.A. explicitly spying on people inside the U.S.

You're point also doesn't address the fact that the F.B.I. doesn't appear to have looked at foreign nationals at flight schools saying odd things with enough diligence. Direction from a commander in chief who took the C.I.A. briefings with more gravity than a person who tells his briefer "Ok, now you've covered your ass."

No one could predict an upcoming attack on the U.S. - unless information was given that an upcoming attack was more likely than less...

A scenario involving aircraft was brought up as something that the U.S. should watch for to the F.B.I. by foreign authorities. as mentioned in post #3

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500164_162-509113.html

AP reported last month that Filipino authorities alerted the FBI as early as 1995 that several Middle Eastern pilots were training at American flight schools and at least one had proposed hijacking a commercial jet and crashing it into federal buildings.

The avenue of attack used on 9/11 was brought up as a possibility to the F.B.I. years before 2001.

Richard Clarke who worked in a government position as a counter terrorism expert and had access to President Clinton's administration remained on into the first few months of President Bush's first term had the same concerns as the C.I.A. was trying to get the Bush Administration to pay attention to Al-Qaeda.

Additionally the first link in the OP has this text

Another already notorious brief issued on August 7 and titled “Terrorism: Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in the US,” warned that “Bin Ladin was planning to exploit an operative’s access to the US to mount a terrorist strike….Al-Qai’da members, including some US citizens, have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure here.”

 

[Doppel]

I've reviewed some of the docs we've known about for years and although hindsight is 20/20 I have to conclude that Bush was asleep at the helm to some degree. These were not merely another document in a hundred. I recall some very high level individuals really trying to stress how important it was to look at this soon, but that never happened.

As as has now been mentioned in this thread it's not merely Tom Clancy who thought of terrorists flying into buildings. Real intelligence operatives had spoken to it.

 

[alkemyst]

Bin Laden wasn't a serious threat then. Had be been the ONLY potential terrorist on the planet I am sure Bush would have been more focused on him. There are tons of these types of guys out there everyday that the public doesn't get to hear about.

 

[Dari]

Was it obvious that commercial airliners were going to be used to destroy the two tallest buildings in NYC and hit the pentagon? If not I'm not entirely sure what he was supposed to do, the failures were with multiple agencies that day.

Yes, it was obvious. They tried, but failed, in 1995 when they hijacked some planes and headed for France. Their plan was to fly into the Eiffel Towers but needed to refuel in Marseille. That's when the French got them...

 

[Dari]

That was against the law at the time. Since the CIA is not supposed to spy on Americans (that is the job of the FBI), the FBI giving it information would appear to violate that. It was determined that the seperation for our safety from abuse actually caused us harm.

Must have sounded like a good idea to seperate them at the time.

You are being obtuse because that is not what he said. The sharing can easily go one way or it can be done elsewhere...

 

[Dari]

Bin Laden wasn't a serious threat then. Had be been the ONLY potential terrorist on the planet I am sure Bush would have been more focused on him. There are tons of these types of guys out there everyday that the public doesn't get to hear about.

Yeah, I completely agree. Killing sailors is not a threat. Killing embassy employees and scores of civilians is not a threat.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Yeah, I completely agree. Killing sailors is not a threat. Killing embassy employees and scores of civilians is not a threat.

Those threats were always overseas. The violence was never extended to US landfall after the first attempt at the WTC in the basement garage bombing. Yet every month someone associated with the West was targeted.

 

[Orignal Earl]

Well, the important thing is that after 2 wars, billions of dollars, patriot act, Homeland security, body scanners, tighten borders, etc.. the world is a much safer place now, and no one in the US is fearful of such a thing happening again

 

[EagleKeeper]

Well, the important thing is that after 2 wars, billions of dollars, patriot act, Homeland security, body scanners, tighten borders, etc.. the world is a much safer place now, and no one in the US is fearful of such a thing happening again

Cheaters can always win when the opponent is required to play by the rules.

Now had we just turned loose hunter/killer teams on terrorist targets, the situation would be reversed

 

[waggy]

Those threats were always overseas. The violence was never extended to US landfall after the first attempt at the WTC in the basement garage bombing. Yet every month someone associated with the West was targeted.

exactly. I don't fault bush or Clinton. i do fault the fbi,cia etc. they didn't share information like they should have.

 

[Anarchist420]

I don't know why everyone is making excuses for such a traitor to the American people.

The truth is that he (and especially Dick Cheney) wanted it to happen. That's an ugly truth for many who trust agents of the state, but the more people who realize it, the better off we'll be.