The Post-911 Bush/Cheney Commission Interview Summary Declassified

[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.