_sabotage_ wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opini ... .html?_r=0
This is the official reason Bush ignored the 6 warnings of an imminent attack.
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.
So back to my point about omitting relevant intelligence.
President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/10/us/au ... all&src=pm
Wow, which group doesn't want to hijack airplanes? Which group doesn't want to use explosives? Big deal. Many other reports like this come in.
Here's a possible smoking gun:
The Bush administration receives a tip-off from the NSA, which has intercepted a conversation between bin Laden and the key members of the imminent 9-11 attack. They revealed their means, the schedule, everything, yet the Bush administration failed to act.
See? If you had something which confirmed the above, then that would be much more convincing. But we don't. The 9-11 Commission did a terrible job of interviewing the representatives of the NSA and their role in this.
Let's continue with your source:
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.
Yeah, negligence. Government is incompetent, so I'm not surprised. But, that story is not as exciting as saying, "Bush knew about the 9-11 attack and him and/or his neocon friends let it happen!"
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.
So what's this all about? Some of the 9-11 operatives were inside US before the attack?? Well, this is the case presented in The Looming Tower. The event is exemplary of bureaucratic infighting. The CIA targetted someone on the inside who they wished to flip, but the FBI wanted to arrest two members of the soon-to-be 9-11 attack. The head director of the CIA had more political clout, got his way, and bungled it. The two members who the FBI could've arrested before the attack disappeared.
That's just how it is sometimes. Public officials are as self-interested as you and I, and here's one outcome of that. It's not as exciting a story as the conspiracy theorists', but hey that's how it goes.
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: "Bush administration acted negligently."
So, aside from the weak conclusion, what other reports was the Bush administration receiving? Gee, could they have suggested that other groups other than Al-Qaeda were plotting something in the US? Who knows--we are limited by this article, and I doubt Kurt Eichenwald did all he could to provide us the FULL picture of all intelligence reports received by the Bush administration.
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.”
"Will occur soon." --dated June 29.
Gee, that's useful. Then what do you do as president? I couldn't imagine much could be done--since other bureaucracies are charged with that responsibility (NSA, CIA, and FBI--to name the main three).
Here's the conclusion of that article, which doesn't maintain sabotage's position:
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.
Maybe "we can't ever know," but give the FOIA 30 years, and maybe we'll get something interesting. Until then, claims that the neocons in the Bush Adminstration created 9-11 or purposefully allowed it to happen are unfounded.
The DoD provided them with the alternate theory. The DoD also happened to change plane interception protocol after Bush was warned of imminent terrorist attacks using planes. While the warnings were coming in June, Rumsfeld changed the protocol on July 1, 2001 and changed it back on September 12, 2001.
So in the last 40 years, there have been 83 days where intercepting a plane went from automatic, to only with the authorization of Rumsfeld. The changed policy was put in after warnings of a pending attack by plane and removed the day after the attack.
This isn't confirmed by the NY Times article...
