Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings
Reports Preceded August 2001 Memo
By Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer

By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President’s Daily Brief headlined ”Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US,” the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda’s intentions. So had Vice President Cheney and Bush’s top national security team, according to newly declassified information released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports ”Bin Laden planning multiple operations,” ”Bin Laden network’s plans advancing” and ”Bin Laden threats are real.” …

Without knowing when, where or how the terrorists would strike, the CIA ”consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil,” according to one of two staff reports released by the panel yesterday.

”Reports similar to these were made available to President Bush in the morning meetings with [Director of Central Intelligence George J.] Tenet,” the commission staff said.

”The system was blinking red,” Tenet told the commission in private testimony, the panel’s report noted.

Ashcroft’s Efforts on Terrorism CriticizedBy Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writers

The former acting director of the FBI testified yesterday that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft rejected any further briefings on terrorist threats in the weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and did not view combating al Qaeda as ”a top item on his agenda.”

Thomas J. Pickard, who ran the FBI for several months before the attacks, also told the commission investigating the terrorist strikes that Ashcroft rejected a plea that summer for an extra $58 million to combat al Qaeda. Pickard testified that he received the formal denial on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the attacks. …

The allegations came during another day of dramatic and often tense testimony before the panel. They prompted an aggressive defense from Ashcroft, who denied barring Pickard from offering him threat reports and said he was highly focused on the dangers posed by terrorists that summer.

Ashcroft sought to blame the Clinton administration for many of the shortcomings in counterterrorism strategies before the attacks….

One day after telling the Senate that combating terrorist attacks was his highest priority, Ashcroft issued a memo on May 10, 2001, outlining the Justice Department’s strategic goals that contained no mention of counterterrorism. Dale Watson, the FBI’s terrorism chief at the time, told the commission staff that he “almost fell out of his chair” when he read it.

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: The 9-11 Commission Staff statements from the hearing are available online in PDF format.

Media access limited during Scalia’s speeches By Antoinette Konz

While U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spoke to high school students on Wednesday about the importance of protecting the rights provided by the Constitution, the recording devices of two reporters were confiscated by a federal marshal.

”You may wonder what makes our Constitution so special. I am here to persuade you that our Constitution is something extraordinary, something to revere,” Scalia told students at Presbyterian Christian High School in Hattiesburg.

During Scalia’s speech at the high school, U.S. Marshal Melanie Rube demanded that a reporter with The Associated Press erase a tape recording of the justice’s remarks. Rube also took a tape recording made by a reporter with the Hattiesburg American.

Rube said Scalia had asked that his appearance not be recorded. But there was no prior announcement that electronic recordings of Scalia’s speech were prohibited.

At an earlier appearance at William Carey College, Scalia talked about the religion clauses contained in the Constitution. At a reception honoring the Supreme Court justice, television reporters with WDAM-Channel 7 were told by Scalia to leave and newspaper photographers were initially not allowed to take photographs. …

Scalia, named to the high court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, has long barred television cameras from his speeches, but does not always forbid newspaper photographers and tape recorders. …

Last year, Scalia was criticized for refusing to allow television and radio coverage of an event in Ohio in which he received an award for supporting free speech.

[Originally published Thursday, April 8, 2004]

Scalia continues to show his hypocrisy and contempt for real freedom. If Bush is elected in November, Scalia will become the Chief Justice of the United States and will poison the land for a generation. Impeach Scalia! mjh

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Scalia’s Lawrence dissent followed speech before anti-gay group By ADRIAN BRUNE, Friday, March 19, 2004

Congressman Barney Frank accuses Supreme Court justice of ”very vigorous prejudices”

One month before writing a stinging dissent in the Lawrence vs. Texas Supreme Court decision, which overturned state sodomy laws, Justice Antonin Scalia delivered a keynote address to an anti-gay advocacy group in Philadelphia.

While going largely unnoticed last May, the appearance now has some experts questioning Scalia’s objectivity in the Lawrence case as well as in future gay civil rights lawsuits brought before the Supreme Court.

Scalia spoke at a $150 per plate dinner given by the Urban Family Council, a social conservative group that has filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Philadelphia’s domestic partner benefits for city employees. The case is now pending in front of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and could appear on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket in the future, sources said. …

Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) took issue with Scalia’s objectivity during a recent speech on the House floor, saying the justice’s actions only supported the biased views already written in most of his decisions.

”Questioning Justice Scalia’s impartiality is like questioning Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction,” he said in the speech. ”You cannot call into question that which does not exist. In fact, if you read Justice Scalia’s opinions, they are singularly devoid of impartiality.

”Here is a man of very vigorous prejudices, and he does not see any reason why he should not write them into various opinions.”

Remarks by the President to the Travel Pool

Obviously, I pray every day there’s less casualty. But I know what we’re doing in Iraq is right. It’s right for long-term peace. It’s right for the security of our country. And it’s hard work. And today, on bended knee, I thank the good Lord for protecting those of our troops overseas, and our coalition troops and innocent Iraqis who suffer at the hands of some of these senseless killings by people who are trying to shake our will. …

This inarticulate fool thinks it’s in god’s hands, not his. He thinks this is a contest of wills and ”hard work.” mjh

[In response to a question about the now-famous Presidential Daily Briefing…]

PRESIDENT: Right, and had they found something, they would have reported it to me. That’s — we were doing precisely what the American people expects us to do: run down every lead, look at every scintilla of intelligence, and follow up on it. But there was — again, I can’t say it as plainly as this: Had I known, we would have acted. …

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. Of course we knew that America was hated by Osama bin Laden. That was obvious. The question was, who was going to attack us, when and where, and with what. And you might recall the hijacking that was referred to in the PDB. It was not a hijacking of an airplane to fly into a building, it was hijacking of airplanes in order to free somebody that was being held as a prisoner in the United States.

Full text of Rice’s testimony Q&A

BEN-VENISTE: I want to ask you some questions about the August 6, 2001, PDB. We had been advised in writing by CIA on March 19, 2004, that the August 6th PDB was prepared and self-generated by a CIA employee. Following Director Tenet’s testimony on March 26th before us, the CIA clarified its version of events, saying that questions by the president prompted them to prepare the August 6th PDB.

Now, you have said to us in our meeting together earlier in February, that the president directed the CIA to prepare the August 6th PDB.

The extraordinary high terrorist attack threat level in the summer of 2001 is well-documented. And Richard Clarke’s testimony about the possibility of an attack against the United States homeland was repeatedly discussed from May to August within the intelligence community, and that is well-documented.

You acknowledged to us in your interview of February 7, 2004, that Richard Clarke told you that al-Qaida cells were in the United States.

Did you tell the president, at any time prior to August 6th, of the existence of al-Qaida cells in the United States?

RICE: First of all, yes, the August 6th PDB was in response to questions of the president — and that since he asked that this be done. It was not a particular threat report. And there was historical information in there about various aspects of al-Qaida’s operations.

Dick Clarke had told me, I think in a memorandum — I remember it as being only a line or two — that there were al-Qaida cells in the United States.

Now, the question is, what did we need to do about that?

And I also understood that that was what the FBI was doing, that the FBI was pursuing these al-Qaida cells. I believe in the August 6th memorandum it says that there were 70 full field investigations under way of these cells. And so there was no recommendation that we do something about this; the FBI was pursuing it.

I really don’t remember, Commissioner, whether I discussed this with the president. …

BEN-VENISTE: Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States. …

This particular PDB had a long section on what bin Laden had wanted to do — speculative, much of it — in ’97, ’98; that he had, in fact, liked the results of the 1993 bombing. …

Yahoo! News – EXIT STRATEGY: FIRE THEM ALL By Richard Reeves

As smart and alone as she is in her job, [Condoleezza Rice] made a huge mistake in answering questions from commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, the combative little lawyer who was a majority (Democratic) counsel during the Watergate hearings 30 years ago.

Ben-Veniste questioned her about the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) of Aug. 6, 2001, and in her nervous answer she blurted out the classified title: ”Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” Ben-Veniste knew that, but could not say it because he and other commissioners had been allowed to see parts of the memo on condition that they not reveal its title or contents. Rice, in effect, declassified that title on her own. Many reasonable people will interpret the lack of follow-up — she lamely said follow-up was not part of her job — as stupidity and incompetence.

But that is now the hallmark of this administration: stupidity and ignorant incompetence — in gathering, interpreting and following up pre-9/11 intelligence, and in going to war in Iraq. …

There are a lot of patriots in this administration who should be fired for their incompetence and unwillingness to recognize it, admit it, adjust to reality — and then move on. That list includes National Security Adviser Rice; Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, whose Iraq analyses now look laughable or deliberately deceptive; Dynamic Don Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, whose mind and mouth move too fast for his own good; Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has shown himself to have no significant policy input; and Vice President Richard Cheney, a huckster with contempt for the rights and consent of the governed, a man who feels he has no responsibility to facts. …

9/11 Hoax: Media Shock over PDB bin Laden Warning

According to Mr. Clinton’s public comments two years ago, he knew bin Laden wanted to strike America as far back as 1996.

Explaining why he declined an offer from Sudan for bin Laden’s extradition, Clinton revealed, “At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him — though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.”

If President Clinton was so unconcerned about the prospect that bin Laden wanted to commit crimes against America that he couldn’t be bothered to extradite him, how was a PDB briefing that merely restated that ancient fact supposed to set Bush’s hair on fire?

Still, don’t look for the press to come clean on the earlier Clinton warning. They’ve kept his tape-recorded confession on the topic bottled up for more than two years now. No point in spoiling a perfectly good election year hoax with the truth.

Note how a conservative ”news” site undermines this story with words like ”hoax” — how is this information a ‘hoax’? That same site tries to equate Clinton in 1996 with Bush in 2001, though in the 5 intervening years the attack on the USS Cole and various ”millenium threats” occurred.

Don’t forget: Bush was on a 5 (FIVE!) week vacation before 9/11. Time to retire him to the ranch permanently. mjh