8/6/01 PDB Memo. Released
 

CR was correct, it was historical in context and not specific in any way.

This assumes the text provided contains all of the text except as indicated in the site.

What was the big deal about relesing that?

Why the heck do you peruse Faux News, man? :laugh:

This is the most telling an it most certainly is new information:

Al-Qa'ida members — including some who are US citizens — have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa'ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted text] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What tree did they shake? The faux ficus tree in the corner of the Oval Office? :confused:

But my point is, it shows the history of Al-Q in and out of America and it points to only a vague and in general threat that had existed in one way or another for a few years. Again, thge buck stops at CR, but this memo. shows the Fed. Govt., including the WH was actively investigating Al-Q and what they were up to, nit sitting on their rear ends and doing nothing :shrug:

This whole issue is driving me completely crazy. Yes, the document did not contain any "specific" information about upcoming attacks, and was mostly "historical" information. But the whole point of including these non-"specific", "historical" items in the memo was to tell the President that:

BIN LADIN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S.

And from everything I've seen, heard, and read, the politicians (yes, they were being politicians, not leaders) ignored the whole point and CONTEXT of the memo. The memo wasn't titled, "Gee, Bin Ladin Is A Really Bad Terrorist," or "The Late Show's Top 10 Bin Ladin Terror Actions."

BIN LADIN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S.

Yet, a month later, neither Al-Qaeda nor Bin Ladin were even mentioned in the speech that Rice was supposed to give on the morning of 9/11/01. Sure, there were no specific threats, but if you were President, wouldn't a memo whose title told you that terrorists were going to attack INSIDE THE COUNTRY prompt you to take a closer, more detailed look at the whole situation and at least come up with an overall plan of action? At least START to take the threat seriously?

Or would you push forward full-steam with a 20-year old "Star Wars" missile defense program that BOTH your father and his predecessor had failed miserably in even getting off the ground because it had been determined to be practically and technically unfeasible and cost-prohibitive?

Let's put this in a Mac context. Let's say you received a letter that was titled, "Fleetwood Mac Will Play Private Concert In Your Backyard". But then, the letter gave the entire history of the band with no specifics as to when they would be there. What would you do? My bet is that you would immediately call the party planner and get quotes on how much chairs and food would cost, and then you'd call a landscape company and start making plans to fix up the yard, and you'd start saving up your money for the big day.

IMO, This is just a witch hunt.....there were no specifics in that letter, I mean honestly, there was nothing EITHER administration could've done about it! There will never be a clear cut answer as to why 9/11 happened...it happened...and I truly feel that it probably could not have been prevented, period.

~Alex

True enough Alex - I think that as well. But, Condi, W and the rest of them have not had the nads to say we screwed and we are sorry for that. That pisses me off a little even though I know no politician would say it.

Oh dear. The World Trade Center was mentioned in the very first paragraph. the last two paragraphs are anything but "historical." The actual document was rumored to be 11.5 pages long. Obstuction of justice? They are in deep, deep ****.

What, if anything, did they do? Junior was on vacation when this was given to him-had been for about a month. Forty percent of the "war president's" term has been spent on vacation.

The documents mentioned buildings in New York.....HOWEVER, no where is a specific threat mentioned. No one knew they were going to hijack planes and crash them into the WTC. In fact, the memo says that Al Qaeda was planing on using explosives (we all know how wrong that turned out to be). The point Im trying to make is, that the threats were not specific enough. Neither Clinton or Bush can be held responsible for this. Intellligence agencies is a whole other matter.

~Alex

Unfair. Dont balme the guy just cause he was in Crawford.

~Alex

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

(snip)

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...emo/index.html

So you have no problem with him being on vacation for 40% of his term?

Where are the specifics? That is really a blanket, it could cover anything. Really, theres nothing you could do in such a situation. If theres one thing I can gather from these documents is...

1. Bin Ladin is a threat
2. He wants to attack us

Honestly, those are such general threats.

~Alex

40%? C'mon....that is a tad bloated.

~Alex

Thought you might say that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Apr8.html

"This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency."

Funny, I wouldn't call most of those trips vacations...This is just being a little ridiculous, the man cant catch a break. You act like he just sits around and plays with his gameboy all day (Try to avoid comments about the gameboy:laugh: ).


~Alex

Dude, it's the Washingotn Post, not the Enquirer. :lol:

[QUOTE=greatdarkwingThis is just being a little ridiculous, the man cant catch a break.
~Alex[/QUOTE]

Can't catch a break? This is a guy who had it all smoothed over for him his entire life. From the AWOl gig in Texas, to his multiple DUI's, to skating through the best schools money could buy (Harvard and Yale), set up in his first business by ridiculously wealthy Saudi's (whose last name happened to be BIN LADEN), to that land deal he pulled off on the Ballpark At Arlington, I'm not even going to get into Harken here, to losing the 2000 election and being appointed president by the Supreme Court, this guy couldn't catch a break alright. What comes around goes around. His number's up.

In this day and age of the information highway, I can see a valid argument that W or any Pres. does not realy need to be physically in Wash. all of the time. But, by anyone's standards the above cited percentage has the appearance of being too high. Again, if my employee took that much time away from the physical office, negelected to stop a huge terrorist attack despite the info. being out there, started an unnecessary war based on a bold faced and calculated lie in Iraq (nuclear stuff), and then gave away the corporate treasury and cut all hope of revenue by about half, I would fire them on the spot no matter how ggod they were in any other field.

So, Alex, although ITA agree with you that to stop 9/11 would have required pretty much blind luck even though the packets of info. were known ut not connected by the gov., the buck stops at W. So, the issue for me is what has he done since then to ensure it will not happen again and is what he has done better than what anyone else sould have done. In the end, I say no, pretty much solely based on Iraq, because the unnecessary invasion of Iraq has apparently created a whole new faction of teorrists chomping at the bit to attack the U.S. This in my opinion is where W fails.

Note, there are other issues regarding why I cannot stand W, but this is def. a top one.

:cool:

AND - Goldie - I feel compelled to remind everyone again, that all sources indicated W won Florida despite the intervention of the USSC - so W did in fact win the election :cool:

He wouldn't have won if the recounts had been concluded, as they should have been. There is also the issue with the counting of absentee ballots with the wrong postmarked date on them, etc. I don't want to start digging out all of the evidence that supports my opinion but he didn't win, straight up. :)

The Miami Herald conducted the recounts even after they had been ordered stopped, and Bush would have won by a handful of votes.

~Alex

Almost every credible news source in the country counted those ballots on their own and they all admitted a recount of Florida indicated W won :shrug:

Note: I am not happy about it. I think the USSC should have let Fla. do what it wanted. Etc.

But, if there was any validity to this the press would have found it and made a big deal of it by now. They did not. Rather, they all have said that an independant recount under the Sunshine Laws of Fla. indicate W won the vote there, not that I am happy about it :cool:

Havind said that, W is a liar and he needs to go! :cool:

Also, there were issues with the military mail in vote, but the Fla. Legis. has the authority to deem the late ones "legal." Apparently, in this case, there was an issue with the mail getting to Fla. on time through no fault of the military.

Finally, if we go to the states where the vote was very close and delved into hanging chads, etc., those states could influence the election as well.

Thus, this is a dead issue IMO. It is important, however to remember it in the context of it should not happen again.

Let's get back to the briefing, shall we? So knowing that it was likely that Bin Laden was determined to hijack planes in the US, why didn't the FBI or CIA issue warnings to the FAA and the Airlines? That didn't happen.

I remember being so surprised within an hour or so of the events of 9/11, government officials were naming Bin Laden as the likely culprit. I couldn't understand how they could know so quickly who was responsible. Now I do.

But here's where it gets even stranger in my mind--what did Shrub say was his initial reaction after learning about the first plane that crashed into the WTC--"Boy, that's some bad pilot." Did he ever actually see this briefing or did he just not understand it? Or was he lying as usual? Supposedly, he'd read this PDB five weeks before 9/11. Is his short-term memory that bad?

Let's connect the dots shall we--he reads (does he?) this brief that says that a) Bin Laden is determined to strike in the US b) the WTC might be a target c) Airplanes might be used. So how huge a lleap in ogic should it have been for him, of all people, having been briefed on this a mere 5 weeks before, to know that the first plane hitting the WTC was no accident?

I read something interesting over the weekend--about how Clinton used to demand PDB's that were many, many pages long, detailing info from every side of an issue. When Bush took office, the respective government agencies were told that their briefings should be as. . .well. . . as brief as possible, preferably 2 pages or less. One person inside the CIA was quoted as saying that the substance of these briefs went from being like a NY Times article to being akin to USA Today or People. I guess that's what happens when you've got an unelected leader (and you believe your sources about who won the recount in Florida, I'll believe mine) with limited intellectual abilities and a limited intellectual curiosity.

OH, and the annotated briefings? Apparently Shrubbie doesn't even like to read those--he prefers instead just to receive oral briefings from his staff (then again, so did Clinton--but only from select interns). Bush doesn't seek diversity of opinions either--which is why the critics and opponents of the Iraqi war within his own administration were silenced --and as a result, we're in Operation No End in Sight over there.

The 8/6/01 PDB mentioned the WTC by name? I do not remember that.

In any event, since OBL and his henchmen bombed it the first time, I do not think it was a huge leap for everyone to assume they were resp. the second time :shrug:

Again, I think W and comp. are solely responsible because it happened on their watch - period. I just think this whole "they knew about it and did nothing but ignore it because they are just plain stupid" vibe is wrong and here is why :cool: The evidence clearly states the FAA was put on some sort of notification and the FBI and the CIA were monitoring some sort of operations. That to me that proves the govt. was working on the treat. They just did not connect the dots in time, which in hindsight are always easier to connect IMO. That they did not connect the dots in time along with all of their other "I am going to make you a fundamentalist Christian crap" is reason enough to boot them out of office.

Moreover, regarding "and you believe your sources about who won the recount in Florida, I'll believe mine" - it is not what I believe, it is what the facts state :cool:

It's in the first paragraph. It's in a post of mine in bold print on this thread. :)

Yes, it mentions the 1993 WTC attacks in an historical context. It says

"Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997' has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and 'bring the fighting to America.'"

That is wildly different than saying on 9/11/01, they are going to hijack four planes and ram them into the WTC and then the Pentagon and, perhaps, the White House.

Again, I am not praising the Bush team. I think they failed us and should pay for it. All I am saying is that CR did not lie when she said the WH had no specific, advanced warning of these exact attacks. Moreover, they were not sitting around twidling their thumbs whistling "Dixie." Completely to the contrary, the evidence indicates the govt. had many ongoing investigations including this statement from the 8/6/01 PDB "The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related."

:shrug:

Lest you all think I am a W supported :laugh: , here is some fodder:

President spends 40% of time out of the office

Gary Younge in New York
Monday April 12, 2004
The Guardian

President George Bush has spent more than 40% of his presidency at one of his three retreats, sparking criticism from Democrats that he is not taking his job seriously at a crucial time in US history.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...190302,00.html



Bush Catches Bass With Crew From TV Show

Saturday April 10, 2004 7:46 PM

By SCOTT LINDLAW

Associated Press Writer

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - President Bush skipped a second round of fishing in his ranch pond Saturday with a crew from an outdoors show, though his performance the day before was something to brag about.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...962870,00.html


_______________________-

Have Fun!!!!!! :woohoo:

They had an employee on MSNBC this morning who resigned from the WH last week and he said that the admin. did not follow up on those "70" field investigations and that the memo was kept hush-hush until he saw it on September 10. Smells fishy. :distress:

It gets better--a Republican member of the 9/11 Commission was on the Today show this morning and it would seem that the commision can find no evidence of the 70 field investigations mentioned in the memo. He said that FBI officials would be questioned about this in the hearings this week.

Nor will they ever. I am sure some are classified :shrug:

Again, no one has contradicted my point. The WH and staff are responsible - period.

But, all this implication that W, CR, and others were respeatedly warned and did absolutely nothing is just tommyrot in my book. None of the evidence from anyone, including Clarke, supports that.

BTW - W is a schmo and needs to get the boot.

It seems the WH in July 2001 ordered the FBO to do something as evidenced in this NY Times Art. today.
_______________________________________________________________
from http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/12/po...68738453237481

Disclosures Put F.B.I.'s Actions Under Scrutiny

April 12, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU


WASHINGTON, April 11 - New disclosures about the warnings President Bush received before Sept. 11, 2001, are fueling a central question for the commission investigating the attacks on that date: What exactly was the F.B.I. doing that summer to deter an attack by Al Qaeda on American soil?

The answer, Mr. Bush said on Sunday, was that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating known links to Osama bin Laden in the United States, with 70 active cases reported that summer. "That's great, that's what we expect the F.B.I. to do," he told reporters.

Critics of the F.B.I., however, say the bureau missed
numerous opportunities to head off the attacks.

Agents that summer were tracking tantalizing leads that included a suspicious flight student in Minneapolis, an ominous warning in Phoenix and a phone call to a United States embassy in the Middle East.

But investigations were stymied by miscommunication, dead
ends, bureaucratic and legal obstacles and unclear
priorities, officials say. And it is still unclear what the bureau's response was to a classified White House memo in July 2001, which officials said directed all 56 field offices to increase surveillance of suspected terrorists.

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks will hear testimony this week from current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft; his predecessor, Janet Reno; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I.; and Louis J. Freeh and Thomas J. Pickard, former directors.

Among the main questions will be whether the bureau
responded aggressively enough to warnings in the summer of
2001 and whether the internal changes made since go far
enough to solve structural problems.

A joint Congressional committee concluded last year that
the F.B.I. and the Central Intelligence Agency had failed
to heed warnings about Al Qaeda's desire to strike the
United States and that intelligence officials had "missed opportunities to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot."

Slade Gorton, a Republican member of the Sept. 11
commission, said on "Fox News Sunday," "It seems to me the F.B.I. has more questions to answer than Condoleezza Rice or Dick Clarke or anyone we've had testify before us so far."

Mr. Gorton said he was interested "in these so-called 70
field investigations."

"I don't know where they were," he said. "I don't know what they did. I don't think they got to a point where anyone could take action on them."

A senior F.B.I. official who spoke on condition of
anonymity said the 70 investigations cited in the White
House briefing "show that we were actively looking at what
was going on with anyone who might be connected to bin
Laden, but we did not have specifics on the plot."

Lee H. Hamilton and Richard Ben-Veniste, Democratic members
of the 9/11 panel, said in interviews on Sunday that this week's hearings would be critical in reaching recommendations about the F.B.I.'s future role in fighting terrorism.

Mr. Ben-Veniste said, "There's general agreement that
despite the extraordinary individual efforts of F.B.I.
agents, there is a dysfunctional element in the operation
that interfered with its efficient counterterrorism
functions" before Sept. 11.

Mr. Hamilton, the co-chairman of the commission, said Mr. Mueller "wants genuinely to change the culture of the F.B.I."

"The question is how effective is that effort and how long-lasting will it be when you have different leadership." Mr. Hamilton said.

At the time of the attacks, the bureau was undergoing a
change in leadership, with Mr. Freeh having left in June
2001, and it was consumed with internal problems like the arrest of an agent, Robert P. Hanssen, on espionage charges and the disappearance of documents in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

But critics said such issues did not fully explain the
bureau's inability to piece together strands of information before Sept. 11.

"The F.B.I.'s budget for counterterrorism was vastly
increased prior to 9/11, and its failure to take serious
note of the threat is really just unfathomable," said
Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council aide.

Mr. Freeh, in an op-ed article for Monday's issue of The
Wall Street Journal, defended the Bush administration for
its "prompt response and focus on terrorism."

He added, "The fact that terrorism and the war being waged
by Al Qaeda was not even an issue in the 2000 presidential campaign strongly suggests that the political will to declare and fight this war didn't exist before Sept. 11."

In the weeks and months before the attacks, as an alarming
rise in possible terrorist warnings was detected, F.B.I.
agents pursued leads that signaled the possibility of an
attack within the United States:

¶In the United Arab Emirates, the United States Embassy received a call in May saying that "a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives," according to a briefing that was given to Mr. Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, and was declassified on Saturday.

¶In Phoenix, an F.B.I. agent warned superiors in July that
he suspected extremists might be training at American
flight schools and urged a nationwide inquiry.

¶In Minneapolis, a French citizen named Zacarias Moussaoui
was arrested on immigration charges in August after
arousing suspicions at a flight training school.

¶In Seattle, interrogations of Ahmed Ressam, arrested in
1999 in a failed attempt to blow up Los Angeles
International Airport, revealed details about Qaeda's
tactics.

¶In New York City, the bureau had detected "recent
surveillance of federal buildings," pointing to possible preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, according to the Aug. 6, 2001, briefing memorandum.

¶In Yemen, an investigation into the 2000 bombing of the
Navy destroyer Cole brought the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. close
to 2 of the 19 eventual hijackers.

But the leads ultimately went nowhere. Supervisors deemed
the Phoenix memorandum too speculative. A Minneapolis agent said headquarters had blocked her office from conducting a more aggressive investigation into Mr. Moussaoui, now charged with conspiracy in the Sept. 11 plot. Miscommunication between the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. prevented investigators from discovering that the two hijackers linked to the Cole bombing were living in San Diego. Men suspected of casing New York buildings were found to be Yemeni tourists, and the United Arab Emirates report also appears to have been unconnected to the Sept. 11 plot, White House officials said.

"You add all the different leads together and you see
colossal, glaring failures," said Kristen Breitweiser,
whose husband died in the attacks. "The overriding question
is, what did we do in the summer of '01, knowing that there
was going to be an impending domestic attack by Al Qaeda?"
________________________________________________________________

What part of the gravity of that statement escaped them? All of it, apparently.

Then explain to me whyt the FBI had at least 70 open investigations. What more did you want W and/or CR to do personally. I just do not get that people think they did absolutely positively nothing but sit in their rear ends. They reacted to the threats earlier that Summer. They were reacting when they got this memo. They continued to react. Even Clarke admits that :shrug:

Again, I think they are resp. because it happened on their shift, but you cannot truthfully say they did 100% nada IMO - the facts just do not support it. :shrug:

BTW - not a personal attack (as you know) :xoxo:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...2/MN229389.DTL

Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel

Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
Wednesday, September 12, 2001



For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss came late Monday when he got a call from what he described as his airport security - - a full eight hours before yesterday's string of terrorist attacks -- advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel.

The mayor, who was booked to fly to New York yesterday morning from San Francisco International Airport, said the call "didn't come in any alarming fashion, which is why I'm hesitant to make an alarming statement."

In fact, at the time, he didn't pay it much mind.

"It was not an abnormal call. I'm always concerned if my flight is going to be on time, and they always alert me when I ought to be careful."

Exactly where the call came from is a bit of a mystery. The mayor would say only that it came from "my security people at the airport."

Mike McCarron, assistant deputy director at SFO, said the Federal Aviation Administration "routinely" issues security notices about possible threats. He said two or three such notices have been received in the past couple of months,

but none in recent days.

Whatever the case, Brown didn't think about it again until he was up, dressed and waiting for his ride to the airport for an 8 a.m. flight to New York, where he was to attend a state retirement board meeting. That was when he turned on the TV, and like millions of other Americans, saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center crumble and the Pentagon go up in smoke.

I never said they didn't do anything. You're putting words in my mouth so to speak. No, I've always thought they were complicit. My question is, how complicit?

BINGO!!!!!!!!

Do you live on the moon, Jason? :laugh: Have you been paying attention? If so, you tell me all about the "70 open investigations" that are spoken of in that FRACTION of the REAL briefing?

HINT: The "70 open investigations" have been called into question by a great deal of government officials.

I'll say it. They didn't do jack to protect us or the 3,000 Americans who died that day. To say the facts do not support that conclusion is utter ****. If you want to say that, you have to draw the exact conclusions when you say they did do something. Where is the proof? I'll tell you: in the White House, under lock and key. That briefing is a phoney and I have no problem saying it. 17 sentences on such a serious topic that the president himself inquired about?! I was born at night, but not last night. Sean Insanity can explain bin Laden and Al-Qaeda better than that briefing. No, that briefing is a distraction and it's a fake. The real meat and potatoes lies in the other 4,000 briefings that talked of Al-Qaeda, mainl ones from May, June, and July of 2001. The WH itself has said that the average length of these types of documents are at least 15 pages long. So, what did they do? What did they do? Nothing. Our national security advisor is a nincompoop with no skills at all that qualify her for her current position. The same can be said for our (un)president. There is no proof that those 70 investigations ever occurred. The FBI denies it. So, what did they do?