White House releases bin Laden memo
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| Sat, 04-10-2004 - 7:46pm |
Presidential briefing was at center of Rice's testimony.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/bush.briefing/index.html
The White House declassified and released Saturday the daily intelligence briefing delivered to President Bush a month before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Portions of the intelligence report dealing with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and dated August 6, 2001, have been redacted for national security reasons, the White House said.
The memo, titled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States," had been described by the White House as a largely historical document with scant information about domestic al Qaeda threats.
The memo includes intelligence on al Qaeda threats as recent as three months before the attacks.
More.......... http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/bush.briefing/index.html
Transcript: Bin Laden determined to strike in US
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/index.html
The following is a transcript of the August 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing entitled Bin Laden determined to strike in US. Parts of the original document were not made public by the White House for security reasons.
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."
After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a -- -- service.
An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told - - service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.
The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S.
Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that in ---, Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.
Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.
Al Qaeda members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.
Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.
A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden 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 ---- 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.
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.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.
PDF file of transcript. You can see the areas deleted. It appears very sketchy, as if pages are missing, JIMO.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/images/04/10/whitehouse.pdf


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Renee
I still feel that the chances of 9/11 being prevented were almost completely nil, but perhaps there could have been one plane or two planes instead of four, or maybe the plane that hit the Pentagon could have been diverted or shot down if the Air Force had been on high alert and in the air partolling on 9/11, rather than on the ground and unable to respond for over a precious hour. This is the kind of preventive preparation that a level of foresight may have provided. We will never know.
Glassy
Yes, the amount of traffic should have been a warning sign, but such warning signs aren't something which you can really work from. An indicator that more vigilance was needed, sure. That something was in the works, yes. But not anything we could really take affirmative action against.
~mark~
That's all the government can do as well, not just individuals. Wishing, wanting, or needing more or more detailed information is well and good, something to work toward, but in the end you have to work with what you actually have at hand. The information available to the government at the time in question was insufficient to take any really substantive action on. We may wish it was otherwise, and with the benefit of hindsight say "we should have done this", or "that", but that's hindsight speaking, not objective reality at the times in question with the available information.
~mark~
Of course, if President Bush had treated the Aug. 6 PDB as actionable intelligence, there are indeed several measures he could have taken that would have guaranteed that a Sept. 11-style attack on America would never have happened.
* Because the CIA memo mentions only Osama bin Laden by name, Bush would have had to round up any and all of bin Laden's potential followers inside the U.S., i.e., every Muslim in America, and throw them into internment camps - just as FDR did with Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.
* Since reporters have been able to sneak any number of weapons past airport screeners even with post-9/11 security measures in place, President Bush would have had to close all of America's airports to completely eliminate the possibility of hijackings.
* In order to protect against another Millennium Plot bombing attack - which the memo explicitly refers to - Bush would have had to order that all shopping malls, schools, museums, movie theaters, train stations, large office buildings and other potential high-value targets be closed till further notice.
* Because Millennium Plot potential bomber Ahmed Ressam tried to sneak across the Canadian border, Bush would have had to seal both the Canadian and Mexican borders until the war on terrorism was won.
* In order to assure the elimination of the bin Laden threat, Bush would have had to launch a pre-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan. If the master terrorist ran to Pakistan, the U.S. would have needed to invade that country as well.
Had Bush taken the above steps, the economy would have been in shambles, the airline industry destroyed, most of the nation unemployed, the U.S. at war, and 6 million Muslims - nearly all of them innocent - would be behind bars.
But the Sept. 11 attacks would have been prevented - at least for the few months that it would have taken for the Congress to impeach and remove President Bush from office for massive abuses of power.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/11/151412.shtml
I guess it all depends on how far people are willing to go for "protection". At some point the trade-offs aren't worth it, but few people are willing to actually state what the line is there.
~mark~
All that said, we know that hindsight is always 20-20. It just seems that so many of the responses and plans of this administration put the cart before the horse. Decide the outcome you want, then find the ways to justify the course of action you plan to take instead of responding to what is actually happening. It's happened in Iraq.
Gettingahandle
Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.
The purpose of the PDB is to give the President an overview of the world at large as well as at home on a daily basis, routine matters as well as general national security issues. If the NSA finds that there's firm indicators of anything viewed to be a threat or requiring a response from the administration, it's brought to the presidents attention and is usually followed by a specific briefing to cover specific information known to the US. Even if there isn't specific information, the general situation is brought up as it was here. The NSA can and does advise the president (as do other officials) on national security issues, but in the absence of substantive information there is little substantive action which can often be taken. As you yourself said, you can only work with what you have at hand, and this PDB is an indicator of what they had to work with.
One other thing I need to comment on... "Decide the outcome you want, then find the ways to justify the course of action you plan to take instead of responding to what is actually happening. It's happened in Iraq."
While there is some truth to this, it's also true that in military operations you decide what your goal is, and then find a way to make it happen. That's the way it works. If you're constantly having to react to the actions of the other side, you'll lose, pure and simple, just as anyone will playing by the other sides rules. You still have to take the opposing sides actions into account, but you win by forcing him or them to react to your plays, not the other way around. So in general terms what the administration has done was correct on some levels (such as planning from the goal and working back to find ways to make it happen), inappropriate on others (tactical decisions rather than strategic, like shutting down that newspaper).
~mark~
Yes, the amount of traffic should have been a warning sign, but such warning signs aren't something which you can really work from. An indicator that more vigilance was needed, sure.
Isn't that what they spent millions of dollars setting up with
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