The Post-911 Bush/Cheney Commission Interview Summary Declassified

[Axxman300]

Direct link to PDF of interview summary here:

https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2012-163-doc-1-release-material.pdf

Nothing new, or shocking. No surprises. Not sure why this was classified in the first place.

Here's The Intercept's take on it:

https://theintercept.com/2022/11/10...ntercept&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Perhaps the most interesting passages from the document relate to the extent to which Cheney was empowered to effectively take command authority that morning. Bush said he was pressured to get on Air Force One, so he “made some quick remarks and blasted out of there.” Cheney, he recalled, urged him, “Don’t come home.” Cheney “told him that Washington was under attack. He strongly recommended that the President delay his return to Washington. There was no telling how much more the threat might be. The President agreed, reluctantly.” Once Cheney was at the helm inside the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, an underground bunker beneath the East Wing of the White House, he and Bush discussed the “rules of engagement” for the evolving situation, including confronting other potential hijacked aircraft. “Yes, engage the enemy. You have the authority to shoot down an airplane,” Bush reportedly told Cheney. “The President understood this from his experience in the Texas Air National Guard,” according to the notes. “He had been trained to shoot down planes. He understood generally how this worked — one plane would lock on, one would ID. He understood the consequences for the pilot, how a pilot might feel to get the order to shoot down a US airliner. It would be tough.”

Again, nothing new.

 

[pgimeno]

Colour me... eh... no, don't colour me.

 

[Axxman300]

What annoys me the most about this is that it was kept secret in the first place. Secrecy fuels stupidity, and certainly fed the 9-11 Trutth CTs. This and the "28 pages" held no revelations. In in the direct case of this new release, BOTH Bush and Cheney have repeated these statements in multiple interviews since 2001.

This underlines how impossible a conspiracy would be to keep secret. The government's clear lack of judgement about what should be secret in this case remains the most stunning aspect of their investigation(s). And then the key principles, Bush, Cheney, et al proceed to repeat their classified testimonies to journalists over the next twenty years, anyway.

Yet these same guys could orchestrate 1,800 people across three states to pull off a fake attack?

 

[Allen773]

It infuriates me that those two are free men.


Anyway, enough politics…jet fuel can still fatally weaken steel beams.

 

[Allen773]

the "28 pages" held no revelations.

Except for all of the stuff about Prince Bandar bin Sultan and his wife, and the money they gave to a network of Saudi intelligence officers and embassy and consular employees who seemed very, very eager to go beyond and above in helping known al-Qaeda operatives Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar settle in the US, and these Saudis agents’ ties to one Anwar al-Awaki—you know, the English-speaking, Yemeni-American Al-Qaeda leader who was later assassinated via drone in Yemen on President Obama’s signoff. Or the two Saudis attending a party at the embassy in DC who tried to get into the cockpit of an America West flight in late 1999, forcing the plane to land. One of these was later arrested with Abu Zubadayh in Pakistan.

Speaking of, Zubadayh also had the unlisted phone number of the security company that managed Prince Bandar bin Sultan’s Aspen, CO residence, along with the phone number of a bodyguard at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. Oh, and Zubadayh reportedly had memorized the phone numbers of three Saudi princes and a Pakistani military officer—all four of whom died within a year of Zubadayh’s capture.

Then there’s the Saudi couple in Sarasota, FL who were the daughter and son-in-law of a wealthy Saudi businessman with close ties to the royal family, including the current king and his immediate family. This couple showed a lot of hospitality toward Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and other hijackers at their house. And the couple, along with the father/father-in-law, abruptly left the US in a rush mere days before 9/11.

This is all part of a pattern. But you’re right—the “revelations” of the 28 pages are merely more strong evidence of what many of us have long suspected about the pernicious duplicity of the Saudi government, and the betrayals of our own government in maintaining the corrupt bargain.

 

[Axxman300]

Except for all of the stuff about Prince Bandar bin Sultan and his wife, and the money they gave to a network of Saudi intelligence officers and embassy and consular employees who seemed very, very eager to go beyond and above in helping known al-Qaeda operatives Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar settle in the US, and these Saudis agents’ ties to one Anwar al-Awaki—you know, the English-speaking, Yemeni-American Al-Qaeda leader who was later assassinated via drone in Yemen on President Obama’s signoff. Or the two Saudis attending a party at the embassy in DC who tried to get into the cockpit of an America West flight in late 1999, forcing the plane to land. One of these was later arrested with Abu Zubadayh in Pakistan.

Speaking of, Zubadayh also had the unlisted phone number of the security company that managed Prince Bandar bin Sultan’s Aspen, CO residence, along with the phone number of a bodyguard at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. Oh, and Zubadayh reportedly had memorized the phone numbers of three Saudi princes and a Pakistani military officer—all four of whom died within a year of Zubadayh’s capture.

Then there’s the Saudi couple in Sarasota, FL who were the daughter and son-in-law of a wealthy Saudi businessman with close ties to the royal family, including the current king and his immediate family. This couple showed a lot of hospitality toward Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and other hijackers at their house. And the couple, along with the father/father-in-law, abruptly left the US in a rush mere days before 9/11.

This is all part of a pattern. But you’re right—the “revelations” of the 28 pages are merely more strong evidence of what many of us have long suspected about the pernicious duplicity of the Saudi government, and the betrayals of our own government in maintaining the corrupt bargain.

Much is this stuff ended up in a handful of good books in the years after 9-11. The Looming Towers is the best of these. In the end, the Saudis took care of most of the bad actors on their side of things. Not like we'd have done much of anything anyway, just look at the recent news re: Biden giving immunity to Prince whatshisface over the Khashoggi hit. They've got us by the balls, Al Qaeda not withstanding.

 

[Oystein]

It infuriates me that those two are free men.


Anyway, enough politics…jet fuel can still fatally weaken steel beams.

You want to rid two men of their freedom based on politics?
Shouldn't this be a legal issue? Like which specific page of the US Penal Code would you want to throw at them?

 

[Allen773]

You want to rid two men of their freedom based on politics?

No, it’d be because of a war of aggression based on falsehoods, authorization of torture, warrantless surveillance….I think these things could plausibly be called crimes. But Obama took a pass on accountability and continued (and expanded) the “Global War on Terror”, and his successors have likewise continued on that trajectory. Each has a different style, but much of the underlying substance is the same.

Ultimately, whomever of these Presidents you believe to be worse tends to depend on your…politics.

 

[Axxman300]

No, it’d be because of a war of aggression based on falsehoods, authorization of torture, warrantless surveillance….I think these things could plausibly be called crimes. But Obama took a pass on accountability and continued (and expanded) the “Global War on Terror”, and his successors have likewise continued on that trajectory. Each has a different style, but much of the underlying substance is the same.

Ultimately, whomever of these Presidents you believe to be worse tends to depend on your…politics.

Congress handed the Bush Administration permission to do all of those things. They did so at the behest of their constituents, the American people.

The war in Iraq? 75% approval rating at the time of the invasion. And I will point out again that the Iraqi Army thought they had WMDS too, and were shocked to discover a week into the invasion that they did not. The USMC discovered a stash of thousands of brand new chemical warfare suits, and masks. So while the Bush Administration pushed a lot of poorly sources claims, some seriously twisted, they were based around what turned out to be Kabuki Theater by Saddam's people.

Torture? Congress signed off on that too. Sure, they claimed to have been misled, but the fact is they didn't care at the time. I'm not condoning it, torture does not work, and I'm not sure why CIA chose to throw everything they knew about torture and interrogation to go down that path. But they did with an official stamp of approval.

"Warrantless Surveillance" is a complex issue. The NSA gets everything, and then discards the domestic captures...unless a target region, or target phone numbers are contacted, in which case the activity is reported into the domestic intel chain. In the years after 9-11, US intelligences was playing catch-up, and they were looking everywhere.

You should be asking why the CIA is STILL doing it now.

 

[bknight]

Congress handed the Bush Administration permission to do all of those things. They did so at the behest of their constituents, the American people.

The war in Iraq? 75% approval rating at the time of the invasion. And I will point out again that the Iraqi Army thought they had WMDS too, and were shocked to discover a week into the invasion that they did not. The USMC discovered a stash of thousands of brand new chemical warfare suits, and masks. So while the Bush Administration pushed a lot of poorly sources claims, some seriously twisted, they were based around what turned out to be Kabuki Theater by Saddam's people.

Torture? Congress signed off on that too. Sure, they claimed to have been misled, but the fact is they didn't care at the time. I'm not condoning it, torture does not work, and I'm not sure why CIA chose to throw everything they knew about torture and interrogation to go down that path. But they did with an official stamp of approval.

"Warrantless Surveillance" is a complex issue. The NSA gets everything, and then discards the domestic captures...unless a target region, or target phone numbers are contacted, in which case the activity is reported into the domestic intel chain. In the years after 9-11, US intelligences was playing catch-up, and they were looking everywhere.

You should be asking why the CIA is STILL doing it now.

I disagree with you, torture works in the way of the tortured saying what the tortures want said. KSM admitted to pretty much all of what the intelligence(?) agencies knew he did. Of course once the torture stopped he recanted, old defense tactic. These admissions probably won't be allowed during his trail.

 

[Axxman300]

I disagree with you, torture works in the way of the tortured saying what the tortures want said. KSM admitted to pretty much all of what the intelligence(?) agencies knew he did. Of course once the torture stopped he recanted, old defense tactic. These admissions probably won't be allowed during his trail.

Nothing he said under "duress" is admissible in court. They have the documents recovered from Abbottabad, and the public statements made by Al Qaeda over the years. But KSM will die of old age in Gitmo, he'll never see a trial at this point.

The larger issue is our torture became a recruiting tool for jihadists around the world. And undermines our credibility when we try to call out other nations for doing it. Granted, nothing we did rises to the level of what Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, North Korea, or China do. But at the end of the day we joined their club, and it's not a good fit.

 

[Allen773]

Nothing he said under "duress" is admissible in court. They have the documents recovered from Abbottabad, and the public statements made by Al Qaeda over the years. But KSM will die of old age in Gitmo, he'll never see a trial at this point.

The larger issue is our torture became a recruiting tool for jihadists around the world. And undermines our credibility when we try to call out other nations for doing it. Granted, nothing we did rises to the level of what Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, North Korea, or China do. But at the end of the day we joined their club, and it's not a good fit.

Coming back to this—the larger issue is that torture “working” or not was immaterial. Or at best, a post hoc justification (ie,, the “ticking time bomb” thing) for the bleak truth that the US government—and bleaker still, plenty of ordinary Americans after 9/11—wanted revenge, eye for an eye, put a boot in your ass it’s the American way, nuke the entire Arab/Muslim world while we’re at it (the more extreme end, but hardly an uncommon sentiment after 9/11).

With all the shock, trauma, fear, and anger after 9/11, Americans as a whole, from the very top of the Bush administration down to the CIA and certain soldiers and contractors at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and all of the various “black sites” all over the world, from the FBI and what became DHS down to many ordinary Americans engaging in hate crimes or harassment or bullying against Muslims or people who “looked Muslim” like Sikhs—all of these people and institutions indulged in “the dark side” as Cheney put it in an interview a few days or so after 9/11 that is in retrospect, chilling.

Recruiting tool for jihadists, indeed.

 

[Axxman300]

Coming back to this—the larger issue is that torture “working” or not was immaterial. Or at best, a post hoc justification (ie,, the “ticking time bomb” thing) for the bleak truth that the US government—and bleaker still, plenty of ordinary Americans after 9/11—wanted revenge, eye for an eye, put a boot in your ass it’s the American way, nuke the entire Arab/Muslim world while we’re at it (the more extreme end, but hardly an uncommon sentiment after 9/11).

With all the shock, trauma, fear, and anger after 9/11, Americans as a whole, from the very top of the Bush administration down to the CIA and certain soldiers and contractors at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and all of the various “black sites” all over the world, from the FBI and what became DHS down to many ordinary Americans engaging in hate crimes or harassment or bullying against Muslims or people who “looked Muslim” like Sikhs—all of these people and institutions indulged in “the dark side” as Cheney put it in an interview a few days or so after 9/11 that is in retrospect, chilling.

Recruiting tool for jihadists, indeed.

The issue with the CIA's torture is the concept went against EVERYTHING they'd learned since the Korean and Vietnam wars. Hell, the whole MK-Ultra thing showed them the limits of artificial psychological influence when compared to basic, heads-up interrogation techniques. Subtle mind-games net more quality intelligence than physical pain. A good interrogator can engage a prisoner in casual conversation, and end up spinning them around until they can't keep track of what they've said. A good conversation about soccer/football can reveal backgrounds, social attitudes, and tactical philosophies. After which the interrogator might point of the prisoner was captured wearing "really expensive" brand-name sneakers, and this can lead back to a supplier, and ultimately a chain of finance.

Interrogation takes time.

The CIA seems to have had two missions: the first was to play catchup, since they'd crapped the bed on Al Qaeda, and international terror in general going all the way back to Munich in 1972. The second, as bknight pointed out, was to coerce detainees into reciting a narrative that could be handed to Congress to justify so many things. And they knew it was wrong from day one, but they did it anyway because Congress let them. Sure, once the invasion of Iraq went south some democrats claimed they never signed off on torture, but they did, but were happy to make political points on the issue once the public sentiment changed enough.

But even with all of the rebukes, and all of the hand-wringing, and all of the moral outrage from the left...Guantanamo Bay's prison camps are still in operation, and the US military and the Department of Justice have yet to initiate trials for KSM and the others.

I'm sure Congress will feel appropriately outraged at some point in the future, maybe in the 2030s.

 

[Allen773]

Here's a Business Insider from last November, relevant to this thread:

Secret 9/11 memo reveals Bush rewriting the history of the 9/11 attacks and the warnings he'd tuned out

Bush's repeated insistence that he was never informed of a specific threat on US soil will be hard to take seriously by anyone who has read the August 6 PDB, which the commission, to its credit, reprinted in full. Bush told the commission that the PDB was "historical in nature." Indeed, it uses earlier Qaeda attacks for context, but it also contains some prescient warnings: "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." And again, the headline: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike In US." But the 9/11 commission chose not to emphasize the degree to which Bush's own account of what he knew, and what he claimed not to know, was inconsistent with such a stark warning.

The commission was right to document the institutional problems underlying these near misses. The CIA and the FBI needed better coordination. They needed clarification from Congress about the limits of their authorities, particularly on US soil. But less attention was paid to Bush's own attitude toward Al Qaeda, and its downstream effect on how cases like Moussaoui's were handled. If Bush never learned about Moussaoui, is that because Tenet didn't think to bring it up? Or because he knew that Bush's focus from the beginning of his presidency was on Saddam Hussein and Iraq, and that his appetite for Qaeda-related warnings was quite limited?

What's clear is that Tenet, for months, had been doing everything he could think of to sound the alarm and get Bush focused on Al Qaeda. So had Richard A. Clarke, who handled domestic counterterrorism in the Bush White House, and reported up to Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor. "We agreed that Tenet would ensure that the President's daily briefings would continue to be replete with information on Al Qaeda," Clarke wrote in his memoir. The day after the September 11 attacks, according to Clarke, Bush told him to "see if Saddam is involved" and "look into Iraq." Clarke famously claimed that he tried and failed to get past Rice so his concerns about Al Qaeda would reach Bush. Clarke wanted counterterrorism to be taken seriously as its own issue at the cabinet level; the record shows it was treated with less urgency, as an extension of US policy in the Middle East and South Asia. Clarke's inability to make domestic counterterrorism a policy focus for the White House tends to implicate Rice, but it does not absolve Bush. It's clear that Bush received the same sorts of urgent warnings that Clarke was seeing regularly, from Tenet and the CIA. He just doesn't seem to have responded, as both Clarke and Tenet did, with a sense of alarm.

https://www.businessinsider.com/911...d-bush-cheney-attacks-bin-laden-qaeda-2022-11

 

[paloalto]

NOTHING NEW?

Direct link to PDF of interview summary here:

https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2012-163-doc-1-release-material.pdf

Nothing new, or shocking. No surprises. Not sure why this was classified in the first place.

Here's The Intercept's take on it:

https://theintercept.com/2022/11/10...ntercept&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social



Again, nothing new.

What the ****! NOTHING NEW?

We learn that Bush claimed in this interview that the CIA had told him the al Qaeda terrorist attacks that were about to take place were going to occur overseas. But the CIA claims in over 40 warnings that the president was told the attacks would likely take place inside of the US.

So someone lied, the CIA when they said they gave the information to Bush that the attacks would take place in the US, or is lying now, Bush, claiming the CIA told him the attacks would take place overseas.

Either the CIA lied and committed treason, or President Bush is lying now and is a mass murderer. So what is it?

The CIA knew by the third week of July 2001 that the Bush administration was going to do nothing to prevent the al Qaeda terrorist attack that was just about to take place inside the US. In the last week of July, the CIA knew for sure that the attacks were aimed at targets inside the US, i.e., at the meeting the last week of July, Tenet asked: Where will this al Qaeda attack take place? The meeting went silent when Blee replied, "They are coming here."

While Cofer Black claimed in a radio interview that it was not the fault of the CIA the attacks on 9/11 took place because the Bush administration did nothing to prevent these attacks, it is clear that the CIA could have prevented these attacks on 9/11 without this order from the administration.

All they had to do was rescind their order to their spy inside the FBI, Tom Wilshere, to withhold the Kuala Lumpur information from the FBI criminal investigators. The last time for the CIA to have done this was when they were informed on August 22, 2001, that al Qaeda terrorists Mihdar and Hazmi were inside the US. Wilshere himself could have given this information to Michael Maltbie on August 24, 2001, and Wilshere could have ordered the people under his direction at the FBI ITOS, FBI SA Agent Dina Corsi and FBI SSA Rod Middleton, to give this information to FBI Agent Steve Bongardt who wanted to start an FBI criminal investigation for Mihdhar and Hazmi, and not shut down his investigation. Almost 3000 people were murdered because the CIA did not rescind this order to Wilshere, who was secretly taking orders from the CIA while working at the FBI, while effectively he was in charge of all FBI investigations of al Qaeda terrorists.

 

[Axxman300]

Cool story, Bro.

Now where's my explanation of how the State Department was able to issue a travel warning for the Mediterranean wherein they state that they had intelligence that Al Qaeda was planning to hijack commercial jetliners sometime in August, 2001? That's travel warning expired in the first week in September.

If DoS knew something was up, why not the FBI? I ask that because the FBI handles internal criminal affairs. And if DoS knew, how much intel was the FBI ignoring in the summer of 2001?

But sure, it's all the CIA's fault...

 

[Allen773]

If anything the CIA, and specifically George Tenet and his deputies, acted worse after the attacks by caving to political pressure from the Bush administration on Iraq (not to mention, rendition and torture). Tenet’s overriding desire to keep his job undercut his own analysts and contributed to the politicization (and discrediting) of intelligence analysis. And that sorry Iraq War saga had damaging consequences for American democracy itself.

Bush’s Iraq War Lies Created a Blueprint for Donald Trump

…one piece of deceit and disinformation stands out. Along with other official lies, it morphed into a lasting conspiracy theory that set a dangerous precedent and helped pave the way for the rise of Donald Trump: the assertion by the Bush White House that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

There was never any evidence that it was true, and the Bush administration knew it had nothing to support the claims. Yet the White House began to push the theory almost immediately after the September 11 attacks; President George W. Bush and his advisers saw the Saddam–9/11 connection as the silver bullet that could guarantee public support for an invasion of Iraq.

The battle between the Bush White House and the CIA over the intelligence on Saddam’s connections to 9/11 and terrorism consumed much of the 18-month interregnum between 9/11 and the Iraq invasion and turned increasingly bitter after Vice President Dick Cheney personally visited CIA headquarters and, along with his aides, began to pressure analysts to agree to the White House position. But the battle was waged almost entirely behind the scenes; it would surface only through occasional anonymous leaks to the press from CIA officials, accusing the administration of politicizing the intelligence, and conversely through statements from Iraq hawks close to the administration complaining about CIA intransigence.

The agency’s stance was badly weakened when CIA Director George Tenet refused to publicly engage in the battle, or even to criticize the Bush White House for pushing the Iraq–Al Qaeda link. At the time, Tenet’s hold on his job was fragile, and he believed he owed Bush for not firing him after the intelligence failures related to 9/11 prompted many critics to call for his ouster. In fact, there were several instances when CIA officials, speaking on background without attribution, would discuss the lack of an Iraq–Al Qaeda connection with reporters, only to see Tenet then publicly deny that there was any disagreement between the White House and the CIA, including when he was questioned by Congress. Tenet’s actions thus left CIA dissenters badly exposed to political pressure.

The CIA’s utter failure on WMD intelligence ultimately cost Tenet his job and poisoned American attitudes toward the war in Iraq. Yet the Bush administration’s persistence in pushing the obviously false narrative of a connection between Saddam and 9/11 may have had more lasting consequences for American politics. Bush set a precedent by officially sanctioning a conspiracy theory. His White House had engaged in a bitter battle with intelligence analysts, who Bush’s lieutenants and most ardent supporters saw as the enemy, to disseminate that conspiracy theory.

Donald Trump followed that model when he sought to convince Americans that he had won the 2020 presidential election, but that dark forces — including a “deep state” inside the U.S. intelligence community — had rigged the outcome to make Joe Biden president.

https://theintercept.com/2023/03/19/george-bush-iraq-lies-trump/

 

[Axxman300]

If anything the CIA, and specifically George Tenet and his deputies, acted worse after the attacks by caving to political pressure from the Bush administration on Iraq (not to mention, rendition and torture). Tenet’s overriding desire to keep his job undercut his own analysts and contributed to the politicization (and discrediting) of intelligence analysis. And that sorry Iraq War saga had damaging consequences for American democracy itself.

Bush’s Iraq War Lies Created a Blueprint for Donald Trump


https://theintercept.com/2023/03/19/george-bush-iraq-lies-trump/

You need to remember, the Iraq War happened because of 9-11 Trutherism. The Bush NSC were the first Truthers. They didn't/couldn't/refused to believe Al Qaeda acted alone, and Iraq was a terrorist hub/clearing house/financier. This is the irony of the 9-11 Truth "movement", Truthers in the Bush NSC ran with half-truths, cherry-picked intelligence, and fabricated claims to justify the invasion. But the 9-11 Truth community could never see it, and continued to be guilty of the same mistakes, the only difference being that they held no positions of power.

 

[paloalto]

If anything the CIA, and specifically George Tenet and his deputies, acted worse after the attacks by caving to political pressure from the Bush administration on Iraq (not to mention, rendition and torture). Tenet’s overriding desire to keep his job undercut his own analysts and contributed to the politicization (and discrediting) of intelligence analysis. And that sorry Iraq War saga had damaging consequences for American democracy itself.

Bush’s Iraq War Lies Created a Blueprint for Donald Trump

Your post:

"At the time, Tenet’s hold on his job was fragile, and he believed he owed Bush for not firing him after the intelligence failures related to 9/11 prompted many critics to call for his ouster."

There was never a CIA intelligence failure related to 9/11. The CIA knew an al Qaeda terrorist attack would occur inside the US and cause mass casualties. Tenet admitted this at the April 14, 2004, public hearing of the 9/11 Commission. The CIA has even publicly admitted that they deliberately allowed the attacks on 9/11 to take place after they clearly knew this attack would kill large numbers of Americans. In this confession, the CIA, specifically Cofer Black, said it was not the CIA that was at fault but that the Bush administration was at fault since the CIA had given Bush and his administration multiple warnings of this attack, and they did nothing to prevent this attack.

But the CIA and Tenet knew by the third week of July 2001 that the Bush administration was going to do nothing to stop this attack. And according to Black, all the CIA did was give Bush more warnings of this attack, knowing full well the administration would do nothing to stop it. The CIA and Tenet did this to give themselves cover when this al Qaeda attack took place, and investigations wanted to know what warnings the CIA had given to Bush and this administration.

While the CIA had been giving many warnings of the attacks before August 24, 2001, after this date, there is no evidence that the CIA ever tried to warn anyone again, even anyone in the Bush administration.

Why did the CIA no longer warn anyone after this date? We now know that the CIA and George Tenet were told on August 22, 2001, that two al Qaeda terrorists were in the US, and on August 23, 2001, that a person thought to be a terrorist had been arrested when MPLS FBI was told a person with a private pilots license was training on a B747 and his instructors told them that he was likely a terrorist. On August 24, 2001, Tenet flew down to Crawford to have a two-hour meeting with Bush and Condoleezza Rice. We know this because the press conference sighted in the prior posts detailed this meeting: https://www.businessinsider.com/911-...-qaeda-2022-11. Tenet had already been to Crawford on August 17, 2001, so why did he go to Crawford on August 24, 2001?

And what did Bush tell Tenet to make him do nothing after this date to warn his administration?

As posted before, even if the CIA had not been given orders to stop this al Qaeda terrorist attack, they had been illegally withholding the information that came out of the Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda planning meeting and the fact that Mihdhar and Hazmi had taken part in the planning of the Cole bombing, from the FBI Cole bombing investigators, they could have prevented this attack. Tenet and the CIA knew that without this information, these investigators would not have the probable cause to start a criminal investigation for these terrorists, and, as a result, thousands of Americans would be murdered in this al Qaeda terrorist attack.

The CIA knew that to stop this al Qaeda terrorist attack, all they had to do was no longer withhold this information from the Cole bombing investigators. The CIA had even effectively ordered Tom Wilshere, the CIA spy inside of the FBI, never to give the Kuala Lumpur information to the FBI Cole bombing investigators, and they could have rescinded this order when they were told Mihdhar and Hami were inside the US on August 22, 2001. Under the direction of Tom Wilshere, FBI agents Dina Corsi and Rod Middleton shut down the FBI criminal investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi even after these FBI investigators told Corsi that if this investigation were shut down, people would die.

To answer the question, was Tenet and the CIA guilty of treason for not giving the proper warnings to the Bush administration, or was Bush guilty of mass murder for not acting on Tenet's warnings and deliberately allowing the al Qaeda terrorists to murder almost 3000 people? The answers to these questions are left up to the American people.

 

[Fonebone]

You need to remember,
the Iraq War happened because of 9-11 Trutherism.

To not "remember"
exposes one to the dangers of acute epiphanies
followed by severe bouts of chronic mentation.


On March 2nd of 2007 on a nationally broadcast radio show
"Democracy Now" the show host, Amy Goodman, interviewed
a retired U.S.Army four star general Wesley Clark before a live audience
in New York City USA
https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re...q-Syria-lebanon-Libya-somalia-Sudan-Iran/5166
[excerpts]
General to retired four star General Wesley Clark...

SIR! “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.”
--and--
...I said,
“Are we still going to war with Iraq?”
And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.”
He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper.
And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.”
And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years,
starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.”
I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo!
I didn’t show it to you!”[/excerpt]

The Bush NSC were the first Truthers

.
Absolute unmitigated Flap doodle'

This is the irony of the 9-11 Truth "movement", Truthers chicken hawks,war mongers,neocons and boil suckers in the Bush NSC ran with half-truths, cherry-picked intelligence, and fabricated claims to justify the invasion.

FTfY

But the 9-11 Truth community could never see it, and continued to be guilty of the same mistakes, the only difference being that they held no positions of power.

 

[Axxman300]

There was never a CIA intelligence failure related to 9/11. The CIA knew an al Qaeda terrorist attack would occur inside the US and cause mass casualties. Tenet admitted this at the April 14, 2004, public hearing of the 9/11 Commission.

I knew Al Qaeda was planning an attack in the US. A lot of people knew Al Qaeda was planning an attack. We knew because they said they would. We weren't thinking hijacked airliners turned into missiles, but we knew they'd hit big, and the safe bet was NYC since they'd already hit the WTC, and had planned a subway attack.

The CIA has even publicly admitted that they deliberately allowed the attacks on 9/11 to take place after they clearly knew this attack would kill large numbers of Americans.

This is a lie. They didn't allow anything. The CIA does not operate inside CONUS. And while they dragged ass in notifying the FBI about two of the hijackers, the FBI was busy ignoring a pair of its field offices about Arab nationals learning to fly - but not land commercial jets, and trying to get a FISA warrant for Zacarias Moussaoui. The FBI dropped as many balls as CIA did.

In this confession, the CIA, specifically Cofer Black, said it was not the CIA that was at fault but that the Bush administration was at fault since the CIA had given Bush and his administration multiple warnings of this attack, and they did nothing to prevent this attack.

The Clinton Administration did nothing to prevent the 1993 WTC bombing, and had seven years to deal with Al Qaeda. But sure, it was all Bush's fault.

But the CIA and Tenet knew by the third week of July 2001 that the Bush administration was going to do nothing to stop this attack. And according to Black, all the CIA did was give Bush more warnings of this attack, knowing full well the administration would do nothing to stop it. The CIA and Tenet did this to give themselves cover when this al Qaeda attack took place, and investigations wanted to know what warnings the CIA had given to Bush and this administration.

No, briefing the POTUS on national security threats is actually the CIA's main job. And I'll point out that Langley never leaked any information to the NYTimes or Washington Post, like they usually do when they feel important things are being ignored. And as of this date, there is no CIA Presidential Brief that detailed an attack using hijacked airliners.

While the CIA had been giving many warnings of the attacks before August 24, 2001, after this date, there is no evidence that the CIA ever tried to warn anyone again, even anyone in the Bush administration.

What new intel do you allege they had? They'd alerted the FBI by the 24th. ALEC Station was still playing keep-away with the FBI and the CIA Counter Terrorism desk. The FBI counter-terrorism desk had its own issues with the NYC field office's Bin Laden group. Neither CIA nor the FBI had intelligence that Al Qaeda would hijack commercial jets.

And what did Bush tell Tenet to make him do nothing after this date to warn his administration?

They had already warned the administration

As posted before, even if the CIA had not been given orders to stop this al Qaeda terrorist attack,

Not their job in 2001. They had no special operations capabilities. Their job was to develop intelligence, and pass it along to the White House, Congress, DoD, DoS, etc.

they had been illegally withholding the information that came out of the Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda planning meeting

They are under no legal obligation to tell the FBI anything.

and the fact that Mihdhar and Hazmi had taken part in the planning of the Cole bombing, from the FBI Cole bombing investigators, they could have prevented this attack. Tenet and the CIA knew that without this information, these investigators would not have the probable cause to start a criminal investigation for these terrorists, and, as a result, thousands of Americans would be murdered in this al Qaeda terrorist attack.

The CIA also knew that the FBI crapped the bed during its investigation in Yemen, and the Clinton Administration's ambassador also hamstrung the FBI. Was she under orders too? Or was she just another Ivy League bureaucrat who didn't take terrorism seriously?

The CIA knew that to stop this al Qaeda terrorist attack, all they had to do was no longer withhold this information from the Cole bombing investigators.

No they did not know this. The FBI was busy ignoring the Phoenix field office about mysterious Middle Eastern men taking flying lessons. The FBI could have reviewed daily US Customs reports of incoming individuals with Middle Eastern passports too, The FBI missed a lot of obvious things because before September, 2001, Arab terrorists weren't considered a threat to CONUS.

The CIA had even effectively ordered Tom Wilshere, the CIA spy inside of the FBI, never to give the Kuala Lumpur information to the FBI Cole bombing investigators, and they could have rescinded this order when they were told Mihdhar and Hami were inside the US on August 22, 2001.

First, Wilshire was the CIA LIASON to the FBI, it would have said CIA on his ID card. Everyone knew he was CIA. So maybe can the dramatic BS. And Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had been in the US since February, 2000. They had visas that allowed them to come and go, something ten minutes on the phone with Customs would have revealed. The best investigations are the ones that actually investigate.

Under the direction of Tom Wilshere, FBI agents Dina Corsi and Rod Middleton shut down the FBI criminal investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi even after these FBI investigators told Corsi that if this investigation were shut down, people would die.

Except the FBI doesn't work for the CIA, as they love to point out to each other.

To answer the question, was Tenet and the CIA guilty of treason for not giving the proper warnings to the Bush administration, or was Bush guilty of mass murder for not acting on Tenet's warnings and deliberately allowing the al Qaeda terrorists to murder almost 3000 people? The answers to these questions are left up to the American people.

Those are BS questions. Let's address your insane obsession with the CIA while giving the FBI a pass on their long list of mistakes leading to 9-11, and their longer list since then. And then there is the CIA-White House briefing memo titled Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US. Kind of an obvious and over-the-top title for a security briefing. On behalf of the CIA, I have to ask, what the hell else could they do? Their job is to pass along intelligence to the White House, they held multiple meetings Richard Clarke, and Rice, and while Clarke was already freaking out about bin Laden, Rice was focused on this Putin guy.

What was Tenent supposed to show Bush? They had no timeline, they had no targets within the US, and the ciIA hadn't bothered to request intercepts from the NSA (and they had almost the whole thing, except for the hijacking part). The State Department had intel about hijackings, but it was thought to be for the Middle East, not CONUS.

And then what was Bush supposed to do in August, 2001? We already had a pair of security alerts in the years prior from potential hijackings, wherein everyone got extra screenings. But box cutters were still allowed on planes. Does he put out a BOLO on any suspicious Arab men? How would that have gone over? Americans don't like to be inconvenienced, especially before and before 9/11/2001 . Even if they tracked down all the hijackers, then what? They'd committed no crime, the CIA sure as hell wasn't handing over intel to the DoJ or some defense attorney, so they all walk. The attacks come a few years later, maybe with more planes.

We need to address the racist undertone of your claims. George Bush and the CIA didn't ALLOW the attacks to happen. Neither man is guilty of murder. The truth is Al Qaeda pull it off. A bunch Middle Eastern men with little training, and no military, or espionage background skunked the United States of America. That you refuse to give credit where credit is truly due speaks to a fair amount of bigotry on your part. Al Qaeda killed those people. They killed them thanks to people like you, people with irrational beliefs about the CIA, and FBI, and elected officials who tied the hands of both agencies in the 1990s. In your view, dirty Arabs couldn't have done 9-11 without the tacit approval of their white overlords. How dare they. How dare George Bush just look the other way, who cares that the CIA nor FBI ever presented a concrete case with targets and dates?

Al Qaeda got past us. Hats off to them. Had you bothered to read anything about Al Qaeda you'd know this attack split them between the ones against it, and bin Laden's crew. They upped their game, and hit NYC and D.C., and launched us into a never ending war on terror. Not bad for under $160,000. They studied us, and found our weakest points. Turned out our soft spots were large enough to fly four 767s through. Who knew? Anyone who read the newspapers. Not just that some kind of attack was coming, but that the CIA and FBI would probably jack the whole thing up. You can't talk about the intelligence failure outside of the context of 1990s America. Nothing was clear about what Al Qaeda would do, not even on September 10, 2001.

 

[Fonebone]

I knew Al Qaeda was planning an attack in the US. A lot of people knew Al Qaeda was planning an attack. We knew because they said they would. We weren't thinking hijacked airliners turned into missiles, but we knew they'd hit big, and the safe bet was NYC since they'd already hit the WTC, and had planned a subway attack.

--Diatribe snipped--


Axxman300

And then there is the CIA-White House briefing memo titled Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US. Kind of an obvious and over-the-top title for a security briefing.

https://www.salon.com/2006/06/20/911pdb/
[excerpt] ...Ron Suskind
What we didn't know is what happened in between the briefing and the fishing, and now Suskind is here to tell us.
Bush listened to the briefing, Suskind says, then told the CIA briefer:
"All right. You've covered your ass, now."


Wiki CYA Cover Your ASS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_your_ass
[excerpt]...But, in a different sense, according to The New York Times' language expert William Safire,
it describes "the bureaucratic technique of averting future accusations of policy error or wrongdoing by deflecting responsibility in advance".

It often involves diffusing responsibility for one's actions as a form of insurance against possible future negative repercussions


Disclaimer from CNN preceding publication of the August6,2001 PDB transcript...
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/
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.

 

[Axxman300]

To not "remember"
exposes one to the dangers of acute epiphanies
followed by severe bouts of chronic mentation.


On March 2nd of 2007 on a nationally broadcast radio show
"Democracy Now" the show host, Amy Goodman, interviewed
a retired U.S.Army four star general Wesley Clark before a live audience
in New York City USA

Such a fine source of independent thinkers.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re...q-Syria-lebanon-Libya-somalia-Sudan-Iran/5166
[excerpts]
General to retired four star General Wesley Clark...

SIR! “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.”
--and--
...I said,
“Are we still going to war with Iraq?”
And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.”
He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper.
And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.”
And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years,
starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.”
I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo!
I didn’t show it to you!”[/excerpt]

So where's that memo? Why hasn't that one leaked with all the others?

You do know why Clark was relieved of command, right?

.

Absolute unmitigated Flap doodle'

Sorry, the Bush NSC were 9-11 Truthers before it was cool. You've jumped on a sinking ship without asking who the captain is.

 

[Axxman300]

--Diatribe snipped--


Axxman300
https://www.salon.com/2006/06/20/911pdb/
[excerpt] ...Ron Suskind
What we didn't know is what happened in between the briefing and the fishing, and now Suskind is here to tell us.
Bush listened to the briefing, Suskind says, then told the CIA briefer:
"All right. You've covered your ass, now."


Wiki CYA Cover Your ASS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_your_ass
[excerpt]...But, in a different sense, according to The New York Times' language expert William Safire,
it describes "the bureaucratic technique of averting future accusations of policy error or wrongdoing by deflecting responsibility in advance".

It often involves diffusing responsibility for one's actions as a form of insurance against possible future negative repercussions


Disclaimer from CNN preceding publication of the August6,2001 PDB transcript...
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/
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.

Starting to wonder if you're George W Bush. What you've posted is the fact that the CIA briefed the POTUS as best they could. You don't believe terrorists 9-11 in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, yet Bush was supposed to innact, what? Martial Law because he though the CIA was over-hyping a Middle Eastern terror organization's abilities? I have news for you, in August, 2001, you could count the number of intelligence veterans and Middle Eastern Terrorist experts on one hand who thought Al Qaeda could pull this kind of attack within CONUS. I was lectured by an Arab expert about how it was impossible and implausible that Al Qaeda would strike within the US after I expressed the concept that they sure as hell could.

There is the world before 9/11/2001, and the world afterword.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

And still it comes.

Pentagon security clip used to spread baseless 9/11 conspiracy theory

 

[dudalb]

Starting to wonder if you're George W Bush. What you've posted is the fact that the CIA briefed the POTUS as best they could. You don't believe terrorists 9-11 in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, yet Bush was supposed to innact, what? Martial Law because he though the CIA was over-hyping a Middle Eastern terror organization's abilities? I have news for you, in August, 2001, you could count the number of intelligence veterans and Middle Eastern Terrorist experts on one hand who thought Al Qaeda could pull this kind of attack within CONUS. I was lectured by an Arab expert about how it was impossible and implausible that Al Qaeda would strike within the US after I expressed the concept that they sure as hell could.

There is the world before 9/11/2001, and the world afterword.

Hey, I thought Al Qaida would attack within the US eventually before 9/11. but I never thought they could do something on the scale of 9/11.

 

[Axxman300]

Hey, I thought Al Qaida would attack within the US eventually before 9/11. but I never thought they could do something on the scale of 9/11.

I got together with my Army Ranger friend a few days after the attacks. He and I had toyed with starting a security consulting agency, mostly to justify reading defense industry magazines, newsletters, and maybe actually working. We used to plan hypothetical terror strikes on all kinds of places. We'd do walk-throughs, and see how long it took for security to kick us out, or how long until someone called the cops (no one ever did, we never looked suspicious enough). We couldn't believe how ballsy Al Qaeda had been.

From a terror standpoint 9-11 is a masterpiece.

Again, I'll point out that all US military installations closed off public access in the Spring of 2001 siting a terrorist threat. Not a possible terrorist threat, a terrorist threat that forced DoD to spend money on security upgrades at every base in the world. Here, the Defense Language Institute and Naval Postgraduate School built new fences, added cameras, and built a bunker at their main gate. An attack was in the wind, some took it seriously, but most did not.

No conspiracy, just human nature.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Direct link to PDF of interview summary here:

https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2012-163-doc-1-release-material.pdf

Nothing new, or shocking. No surprises. Not sure why this was classified in the first place.

Not hard to imagine none of the "principles" (Conde Rice's label bragging about her position when she talked down to Richard Clarke) involved wanted to be reminded of their colossal failures for as long as possible hoping time would make people no longer interested in things like,

Democratic committee member: "Ms Rice could you please read the title of the PDB."
Rice: "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US".​

Second 42-44: "Bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of [the Blind Sheik and other extremists]" ...

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

It goes on to describe the FBI having 70 "full field investigations" it considered Bin Laden related. "... a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."

Rice's opening statement made excuse after excuse as to why they couldn't have done anything. Every time Shrub opened his mouth for a long time after this PDB came out repeated the same excuses.

At 3:12 in the video the PDB is shown, "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US".

To this day I can't stand looking at that smug bitch's face. And a lot comes back to me. The Bush admin purposefully tossed out all the work that had been done under Bill Clinton as it related to the Bin Laden threat. The incoming full-of-themselves GW people couldn't wait to sit in their privileged chairs so sure they knew everything. ....

When I first started on the JREF forum I argued with a lot of the resident right-wingers here (there?), I'm not sure who they were but they discounted what I had to say about Clarke and Rice and GW and the rest of them.


Bottom line, no this isn't new stuff but it doesn't hurt for people who denied a lot of it at the time to be reminded just how wrong GW et al were.

 

[Axxman300]

To this day I can't stand looking at that smug bitch's face. And a lot comes back to me. The Bush admin purposefully tossed out all the work that had been done under Bill Clinton as it related to the Bin Laden threat. The incoming full-of-themselves GW people couldn't wait to sit in their privileged chairs so sure they knew everything. ....

When I first started on the JREF forum I argued with a lot of the resident right-wingers here (there?), I'm not sure who they were but they discounted what I had to say about Clarke and Rice and GW and the rest of them.


Bottom line, no this isn't new stuff but it doesn't hurt for people who denied a lot of it at the time to be reminded just how wrong GW et al were.

The Clinton Administration shares equal blame for 9-11.

Much of it stems from the 10/3/93 Mogadishu raid, and Waco. The rest evolved out of a policy of low-risk foreign policy, and Clinton's distrust of the CIA based on his 1960s/1970s activist beliefs. This created a major roadblock between what the CIA and Special Operations said had to be done, and what the Clinton NSC could stomach. Proposed raids into Afghanistan by JSOC units were dismissed because there was risk involved to US forces, and civilians in the area. At least one Predator drone strike was thwarted because an politically connected Arab prince was with bin Laden.

And everyone ignores Sandy Burger stealing a key document from the National Archives to protect his, and the Clinton Administration's actions re: Al Qaeda.

And all of this took place against the backdrop of 1990s America, where terrorism happened somewhere else, even though it happened in NYC in 1993, and Oklahoma City in 1995.

The Hart/Rudman Commision laid it all out in 1998:

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA387277.pdf

On page 16 the number one prediction?statement reads:

America will become increasingly vulnerable to attack on our homeland, and our military superiority will not protect us.

Nobody read the report. It garnered 20 minutes on the Sunday news roundtables, and that was it. If you read it today it's more like a blueprint, right down to the pandemic.

Politicians get elected by telling people what they want to hear, rarely for demonstrating a grasp of the real world. Even more so today. In fact, in many ways the US is right where it was politically and intellectually on September 10, 2001. Bush's attitude toward terror was a continuation of the previous administration, and the administrations before that dating back to Reagan. Terrorism was a law enforcement problem, not a national security problem. Doesn't get Bush off the hook, just makes him the last POTUS standing when the music stopped.

 

[Allen773]

Before 9/11 being assigned to Counterterrorism was widely considered a career-killer within the CIA. And the FBI treated counterterrorism on a literal (in law enforcement terms) case-by-case basis: investigate, get warrants, arrest the bad guys, and hand it off to the US Attorney to prosecute. The NSC officials of successive administrations spent most of their time arguing about what was the best strategy. Other parts of the US government were for the most part not involved.

Most members of Congress didn’t care about the issue, and the media reported on terrorism but the American public as a whole didn’t know or care about the issue. The airlines, FAA, NORAD—no one was prepared and no one bothered to prepare. As far as most people were concerned something as audacious and destructive as 9/11 was the stuff of action thriller movies, not real life, and the vast majority of Americans wouldn’t have believed you if you had said something like that would happen—you’d have been dismissed as a fearmongering crank. That was certainly the attitude of most people in the US government. The exceptions in the CIA, FBI, and a handful of others like Richard Clarke at the NSC were precisely that, EXCEPTIONS. No wonder the attacks happened.

 

[Axxman300]

I wouldn't say counter terrorism was a career killer at Langley prior to 9-11. It was and is a sub-discipline within the agency like folks who specialize in Geology, arborist, and cartography. It's a bigger deal now, obviously, and has grown from a desk to a department with sub-desks. The difference now is people listen too them...to a point. We have no problem blasting, and shooting missiles with spinning blades at HVTs in the Middle East, but the rest of the world's terrorists still receive inconsistent attention based on who they are, their cause, and which country they're targeting/working for.

The FBI is still batting .500 in the terrorism department. They missed the Boston Marathon Bombers, even after a pointed phone call from the FSB saying they had been hanging out with some bad dudes. And then there was the January 6, 2017 Capitol Riot where it seems they were the only ones who didn't see it coming. In their defense, the FBI has to work within the boundaries of the US Constitution, the CIA does not.

 

[Oystein]

Before 9/11 being assigned to Counterterrorism was widely considered a career-killer within the CIA. And the FBI treated counterterrorism on a literal (in law enforcement terms) case-by-case basis: investigate, get warrants, arrest the bad guys, and hand it off to the US Attorney to prosecute. The NSC officials of successive administrations spent most of their time arguing about what was the best strategy. Other parts of the US government were for the most part not involved.

Most members of Congress didn’t care about the issue, and the media reported on terrorism but the American public as a whole didn’t know or care about the issue. The airlines, FAA, NORAD—no one was prepared and no one bothered to prepare. As far as most people were concerned something as audacious and destructive as 9/11 was the stuff of action thriller movies, not real life, and the vast majority of Americans wouldn’t have believed you if you had said something like that would happen—you’d have been dismissed as a fearmongering crank. That was certainly the attitude of most people in the US government. The exceptions in the CIA, FBI, and a handful of others like Richard Clarke at the NSC were precisely that, EXCEPTIONS. No wonder the attacks happened.

All this doesn't ring as very plausible, to be honest.
Islamic terrorism was very much a thing in 2001, with high-profile, multiple-deaths attacks on US target having occurred very very recently.
And terrorism in the US homelend was very much a thing in 2001, with Oklahoma City having occurred only 6 years ago, and Ted Kaczynski having been active also until 1995.
Clinton had been targeting bin Laden in Afghanistan
Pundits and experts were very quick on 9/11, in the first hours after the attacks, to single out bin Laden's group as the most plausible perpetrator.
Clinton's "Presidential Decision Directive 62 (PDD-62), titled Combating Terrorism, ...signed on May 22, 1998 by President Bill Clinton ... identified the fight against terrorism a top national security priority."^[WP]. It created Richard Clarke's position of "National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the National Security Council. In this position, he had cabinet-level access to the president."[WP][/SUP]

According to Clarke, the incoming Bush administration - Bush himself, NSA Rice, DepSoD Wolfowitz, etc. - just didn't prioritize counter-terrorism.
Did the views within the CIA about jobs in counter-terrorism dim so dramatically during the less than 8 months since Bush had taken office?

-------
Footnote: If you think that the Wikipedia article on PDD-62 reads like a press release by Clinton's personal chief of communications, I agree with you

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Congress handed the Bush Administration permission to do all of those things. They did so at the behest of their constituents, the American people.

The war in Iraq? 75% approval rating at the time of the invasion. And I will point out again that the Iraqi Army thought they had WMDS too, and were shocked to discover a week into the invasion that they did not. The USMC discovered a stash of thousands of brand new chemical warfare suits, and masks. So while the Bush Administration pushed a lot of poorly sources claims, some seriously twisted, they were based around what turned out to be Kabuki Theater by Saddam's people.

I concede that there was massive approval for the war in Iraq, but you have to remember the context that nobody in a position of authority was giving even the tiniest bit of pushback against the giant whopper lies being told by the Bush administration. The spurious claims about Iraq and the justification for a war of aggression existed in a near total vacuum of serious criticism.

Alternative histories are entirely speculative, of course, but you have to wonder what public opinion would have been had the opposition party not totally abdicated their duty to BS check the President's claims, which were later revealed to be transparently fraudulent.

I don't think it would have taken much work to undermine the entirely fraudulent claims that Iraq was at all linked in any meaningful way to Global Terror or the 9/11 attacks.

 

[Axxman300]

All this doesn't ring as very plausible, to be honest.
Islamic terrorism was very much a thing in 2001, with high-profile, multiple-deaths attacks on US target having occurred very very recently.
And terrorism in the US homelend was very much a thing in 2001, with Oklahoma City having occurred only 6 years ago, and Ted Kaczynski having been active also until 1995.
Clinton had been targeting bin Laden in Afghanistan
Pundits and experts were very quick on 9/11, in the first hours after the attacks, to single out bin Laden's group as the most plausible perpetrator.
Clinton's "Presidential Decision Directive 62 (PDD-62), titled Combating Terrorism, ...signed on May 22, 1998 by President Bill Clinton ... identified the fight against terrorism a top national security priority."^[WP]. It created Richard Clarke's position of "National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the National Security Council. In this position, he had cabinet-level access to the president."[WP][/SUP]

According to Clarke, the incoming Bush administration - Bush himself, NSA Rice, DepSoD Wolfowitz, etc. - just didn't prioritize counter-terrorism.
Did the views within the CIA about jobs in counter-terrorism dim so dramatically during the less than 8 months since Bush had taken office?

-------
Footnote: If you think that the Wikipedia article on PDD-62 reads like a press release by Clinton's personal chief of communications, I agree with you

The between 1979 and 2001, the US talked a good game on counter-terrorism. We spun up SFOD-D and SEAL Team 6, and they conducted missions from time-to-time. But we never prosecuted, meaning hunted down, terrorists as a priority. Carlos the Jackal was under surveillance by a CIA officer in Sudan, a man named Billy Waugh who is a special operations legend. His apartment was down the street from Carlos, and cattycorner to another compound where Osama bin Laden lived. Waugh split his time watching Carlos, and watching bin Laden. He cabled Langley asking if they wanted to do anything about bin Laden, who had already helped train Somalis to shoot down our Blackhawks in Mogadishu. Langley said no.

The man who planned the US Embassy bombing and USMC barracks bombing in Lebanon was never hunted down. CIA officer, Robert Baer said that almost every taxi driver in Lebanon knew where the guy lived, but when he alerted Langley (during the Clinton Administration) they said hands off.

Robert Baer was the CIA's lone officer in that part of the Middle East, and the Clinton CIA had zero assets in Iraq, even with the ongoing UNSCOM mission.

There is a decent list of lost opportunities to deal with bin Laden between 1994 and 2001.

I get the buck stops here, and Bush was the guy in the Oval Office on 9/11/2001. And I get that Bush was not the sharpest tool in the shed, just a tool. But his NSC were neo-conservative ideologues, and D-list Cold Warriors, meaning he was at the mercy of some willfully stupid, and ambitious people posing as experts. And in no way am I trying to get Bush off the hook for his part in 9-11. But bin Laden and company had planned the attacks over a seven-year span where Bush was not POTUS.

And I need to point out that nobody went after Clinton for the 1993 WTC bombing to point out his NSC's failings, or to question our relationship with the Saudis. After the bombing the press stories were all about the "Blind Shiek" and Ramzi Yousef, but the connection to Al Qaeda was not underlined. The 1993 bombing was expressed to the American public as the work of a small cell working out of New Jersey.

My point is the intelligence failures of the CIA and FBI were the result of a machine designed to fail at key locations as a result of neglect of four Presidential administrations, not one.

 

[Allen773]

All this doesn't ring as very plausible, to be honest.
Islamic terrorism was very much a thing in 2001, with high-profile, multiple-deaths attacks on US target having occurred very very recently.
And terrorism in the US homelend was very much a thing in 2001, with Oklahoma City having occurred only 6 years ago, and Ted Kaczynski having been active also until 1995.
Clinton had been targeting bin Laden in Afghanistan
Pundits and experts were very quick on 9/11, in the first hours after the attacks, to single out bin Laden's group as the most plausible perpetrator.
Clinton's "Presidential Decision Directive 62 (PDD-62), titled Combating Terrorism, ...signed on May 22, 1998 by President Bill Clinton ... identified the fight against terrorism a top national security priority."^[WP]. It created Richard Clarke's position of "National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the National Security Council. In this position, he had cabinet-level access to the president."[WP][/SUP]

According to Clarke, the incoming Bush administration - Bush himself, NSA Rice, DepSoD Wolfowitz, etc. - just didn't prioritize counter-terrorism.
Did the views within the CIA about jobs in counter-terrorism dim so dramatically during the less than 8 months since Bush had taken office?

-------
Footnote: If you think that the Wikipedia article on PDD-62 reads like a press release by Clinton's personal chief of communications, I agree with you

I’ll admit I exaggerated a lot in that post. Perhaps a better way of putting it is that on counterterrorism, including the specific threat of al-Qaeda to the American homeland, people throughout the US government—often within the same departments and agencies—weren’t on the same page internally and so were in no position to “sing from the same hymn book” to the American public on the issue.

Strategic guidance from the top, while certainly crucial, is unfortunate not sufficient in addressing the systemic, institutional problems and limitations of the federal bureaucracy—to say nothing of dealing with domestic political issues or managing relationships with other countries.

 

[Fonebone]

I knew Al Qaeda was planning an attack in the US. A lot of people knew Al Qaeda was planning an attack. We knew because they said they would. We weren't thinking hijacked airliners turned into missiles, but we knew they'd hit big, and the safe bet was NYC since they'd already hit the WTC, and had planned a subway attack.

What was Tenent supposed to show Bush? They had no timeline, they had no targets within the US, and the ciIA hadn't bothered to request intercepts from the NSA (and they had almost the whole thing, except for the hijacking part). The State Department had intel about hijackings, but it was thought to be for the Middle East, not CONUS.

The CIA had multiple stacks of data accumulated by the CIA Al Qaida unit
stacked in Richard Blee's office pre 9/11 per Cofer Black, the CIA head of counter-terrorist center.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=13451802#post13451802

No, briefing the POTUS on national security threats is actually the CIA's main job. And I'll point out that Langley never leaked any information to the NYTimes or Washington Post, like they usually do when they feel important things are being ignored. And as of this date, there is no CIA Presidential Brief that detailed an attack using hijacked airliners.

The pentagon conducted a mock exercise,MASCAL (mass casualties), of a terrorist hijacking of an airliner and crashing into the pentagon center courtyard months before the 9'11/21001 pentagon attack.
http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=7382

 

[Axxman300]

The CIA had multiple stacks of data accumulated by the CIA Al Qaida unit
stacked in Richard Blee's office pre 9/11 per Cofer Black, the CIA head of counter-terrorist center.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=13451802#post13451802

Sure. And what did this data say, exactly? We already know what it said because they briefed the White House using that data...so...you got me?

The pentagon conducted a mock exercise,MASCAL (mass casualties), of a terrorist hijacking of an airliner and crashing into the pentagon center courtyard months before the 9'11/21001 pentagon attack.

Did you read what you linked to? I doubt it.

On Oct. 24, there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident to name just some of the scenarios that were practiced to better prepare local agencies for real incidents.

October seems to be the Pentagon's annual disaster training month, something they do every year, and did every year prior to 9-11-2001.

And then they simulated a plane crash on a table top:

The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid. An Arlington Fire Department chief dispatches his equipment to the affected areas.
Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the "plane crash" was a simulated one.
The Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to Oct. 24-26 in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room.

What's missing from this scenario? It's described as a plane crash, not a terrorist hijacking/suicide attack. I doubt it was the first time they had run this scenario at the Pentagon.

You understand that the Military trains for all kinds of events, and scenarios based on historic, and or current events, right? That's why our military is so good at the little things. That's why key people at the Pentagon knew what to do on 9-11. Fire and police departments (the good ones) do this kind of thing too. This exercise is proof of nothing other than folks running the Pentagon were/are good at their job.

And it no surprise you linked to a nutjob website.

 

[KDLarsen]

With National Airport right around the corner, the centreline of one of their runways extending right through the Pentagon (though I have no idea if said runway has ever been used for landings or takeoffs), and the River Visual having aircraft in the final stages of an approach literally flying right past them, it would be grossly irresponsible not to have an exercise involving a plane crash. Especially after Air Florida flight 90...

 

[Allen773]

From a terror standpoint 9-11 is a masterpiece.

Yes, and not least because of how compartmentalized the operation was even within the al-Qaeda network---hell, even within the al-Qaeda leadership, and it was just as well for bin Laden since many of his top deputies and advisors opposed the "Planes Operation", as did the Taliban for obvious reasons (i.e., we don't want to experience the military wrath of the US and its allies).

Not that bin Laden wasn't dropping hints of what was to come to al-Qaeda trainees in their camps in Afghanistan during the late spring and summer of 2001. But again, it was run through KSM, Ramzi Binalshibh, and a tiny few other operatives and financial facilitators, including one of KSM's nephews (not the long-imprisoned Ramzi Yousef, obviously--this other nephew has been rotting in Guantanamo alongside KSM for two decades now). And most of the "muscle hijackers" weren't even briefed on the plot before they arrived in the US, where the four pilot hijackers already were living as were Hazmi and Midhar (though he left in 2000 to be with his wife in Yemen, only to return to the US in July 2001). All they knew was they had volunteered for a "martyrdom operation" in the United States. And importantly, KSM insisted on a great deal of operational autonomy from bin Laden (to which bin Laden acquiesced), and in turn KSM delegated a lot of operational decision-making to the leader of the hijackers Mohammed Atta, with Binalshibh being their go-between.

Other than what looks like a logistical support network of some ideologically sympathetic Saudi officials/agents working in the Kingdom's sprawling overseas Wahhabi-supporting networks (but again, I rather doubt that many of them knew relevant details about the 9/11 plot), and maybe a handful of other ideologically sympathetic officials working for the governments of Pakistan, Qatar, UAE---and again, at most, they would have collectively known a few bits and pieces of what Osama bin Laden and KSM were plotting, and their knowledge wouldn't have overlapped much if at all, considering again how incredibly compartmentalized the 9/11 plot was---, that was the sum total of who was involved in the 9/11 plot, and that relative smallness and intense compartmentalization was a big part of why it succeeded. Not to discount all of the failures on the American side, but yes, we gotta give these devils their due in terms of the ballsiness in what they did and the shrewdness in how they managed to do it. Never underestimate an adversary, especially if they're a non-state actor (or network, as is the case for Al-Qaeda).

Oh, and to all the conspiracy theorists out there: THIS is what an actual, successful, and world-changing conspiracy looks like.

 

[Axxman300]

The fact is sometimes the bad guys win.