9-11...DID BUSH KNOW?, page 1
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Topic started on 25-7-2003 @ 10:22 AM by Killuminati
White House, CIA Kept Key Portions of Report Classified

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 25, 2003; Page A01

President Bush was warned in a more specific way than previously known about intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda terrorists were seeking to attack the United States, a report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks indicated yesterday. Separately, the report cited one CIA memo that concluded there was "incontrovertible evidence" that Saudi individuals provided financial assistance to al Qaeda operatives in the United States.

These revelations are not the subject of the congressional report's narratives or findings, but are among the nuggets embedded in a story focused largely on the mid-level workings of the CIA, FBI and U.S. military.

Two intriguing -- and politically volatile -- questions surrounding the Sept. 11 plot have been how personally engaged Bush and his predecessor were in counterterrorism before the attacks, and what role some Saudi officials may have played in sustaining the 19 terrorists who commandeered four airplanes and flew three of them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

To varying degrees, the answers remain a mystery, despite an unprecedented seven-month effort by a joint House and Senate panel to fully understand how a group of Arab terrorists could have pulled off such a scheme. The CIA refused to permit publication of information potentially implicating Saudi officials on national security grounds, arguing that disclosure could upset relations with a key U.S. ally. Lawmakers complained it was merely to avoid embarrassment.

The White House, meanwhile, resisted efforts to pin down Bush's knowledge of al Qaeda threats and to catalogue the executive's pre-Sept. 11 strategy to fight terrorists. It was justified largely on legal grounds, but Democrats said the secrecy was meant to protect Bush from criticism.

And while the report contains extensive details about counterterrorism policy and operations under President Bill Clinton, it also leaves out substantial material deemed classified. The panel took testimony from former senior advisers to Clinton and Bush but did not interview either president.

Still, the report offers bits of new information about both presidents and the Saudis, and lays out a possible road map for the independent commission charged by Congress to pick up the investigation of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. It also offers pointed criticism of both Bush and Clinton, concluding that neither "put the government or the intelligence community on a war footing before September 11" -- despite ample evidence of al Qaeda's dangerous designs.

With respect to Bush, the congressional panel indicated that it tried to determine "to what extent the President received threat-specific warnings during this period" -- but obtained only limited information.

Among the only clues cited in the report about Bush's knowledge of al Qaeda's intentions against the United States is an Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Briefing (PDB) -- described in the report only as a "closely-held intelligence report" -- that included information "acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of [Osama] Bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives."

The PDB also said "that Bin Laden had wanted to conduct attacks in the United States for years and that the group apparently maintained a support base here." It cited "FBI judgments about patterns of activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks," according to the report.

In a May 16, 2002, briefing for reporters, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the PDB was a historical look at bin Laden's methods dating to 1997. She characterized the briefing as an "analytic report" that summed up bin Laden's methods of operation. "It was not a warning," she said. "There was no specific time or place mentioned."

The CIA declined to declassify the PDB, and the White House, which had the authority to release it, declined to do so, citing "executive privilege." Executive privilege allows the president to withhold from public disclosure all advice and communications he receives from advisers so that they feel free to offer frank advice without fearing that it will become public.

The Aug. 6 PDB came amid a barrage of intelligence reporting indicating that al Qaeda was planning attacks, somewhere, against U.S. interests. The intelligence community has said its focus was on possible attacks overseas.

Deputy national security adviser Steve Hadley, who refused to testify before the panel but submitted written responses to questions, told the panel that the National Security Council held four deputy committee meetings between May and the end of July 2001 in an effort to adopt a more aggressive strategy vis-a-vis al Qaeda. The review was finalized Sept. 4, 2001. Bush had not reviewed the proposal before Sept. 11, Hadley wrote the panel.

The committee also unsuccessfully sought budget information from the Office of Management and Budget to determine where in the Bush administration the decision was made not to provide more funding for counterterrorism activities.

CIA Director George J. Tenet said in a closed-door session on June 18, 2002, that he had told other members of the administration that his counterterrorism budget would be as much as $1 billion short each year for the next five years. "We told that to everybody downtown for as long as anybody would listen and never got to first base," Tenet told the panel.

On the issue of Saudi Arabia, the report cited a CIA memorandum that said connections between some hijackers and some Saudis living in the United States amounted to "incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists" from Saudi officials.

This section of the report refers only to "foreign support." Officials from various branches of the U.S. government said those two words refer to Saudi Arabia.

On the other hand, the report said, further investigation of these allegations "could reveal legitimate, and innocent, explanations for these associations."

The report makes no accusation that it was ever the policy of the Saudi government to support terrorism. Rather, the questionable activity involved Saudi citizens, some of whom worked for the Saudi government.

The panel also took the FBI to task for not aggressively pursuing allegations against Saudi individuals, including a network of businessmen and religious figures in San Diego who, together, provided two key hijackers with seemingly unlimited money, an interpreter and other support.

The report said that because Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally, "the United States had not established heightened screening for illegal immigration or terrorism by visitors from Saudi Arabia."

One U.S. official told the panel "he believed the U.S. government's hope of eventually obtaining Saudi cooperation was unrealistic because Saudi assistance to the U.S. government on this matter is contrary to Saudi national interests."

Yesterday, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, issued a statement refuting the criticism of his country. "It is unfortunate that false accusations against Saudi Arabia continue to be made by some for political purposes despite the fact that the kingdom has been one of the most active partners in the war on terrorism," he said.

Members of the panel offered differing assessments of the impact of the administration's efforts to keep secret certain politically sensitive subjects.

"We were never able to get much of the material we requested from the National Security Council," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), former ranking member of the House intelligence committee. "The nation was not well-served by the administration's failure to provide this critical information."

Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, said he doubted Bush was complacent about warnings he received. "The intelligence community was providing him information. He wasn't AWOL," Goss said. "In hindsight, it might take on a little more significance . . . but it's a huge stretch to say the president had information he should have acted on."


HERE ARE THE FACTS NOW

First the president did everything in his power to stop this 9/11 investigation

After he realized this investigation was going to happen regardless he promises it $11million, but then only funds its $2million and gives them a very short deadline
(Columbia Disaster gets $40million)

Then he demands he gets to chose the chairman of the commission.......he elects Henry Kissinger which is appalling because this is spose to be bipartisan

After Kissinger realizes how deep this 9-11 cover-up goes, he quits the commission

The president then enforces a very short time period for the 9-11 to conduct their investigation

After the report gets released he hides various pages from the American Public

CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME THIS ISN'T SUSPICOUS???

WHAT DOES THE PRESIDENT KNOW, AND WHAT IS HE HIDING!
3000 PEOPLE HAVE DIED
WE SHOULD ALL BE DEMANDING ANSWERS

members.blackplanet.com...


reply posted on 26-7-2003 @ 12:40 AM by Random Guy
(hello again, posting from a new location and account)

You can trust me, Bush knew a "terrorist attack" was coming, but as far as he knew, it was a tactic to engage the dogs of war. The Saudi's were involved in helping stage the surface facts, but had no idea about the faction war behind the scenes.

In reality, there were/are deeper struggles between the new neocons and what we always call "faction one" and "faction two".

I've said before, and am certain of this, the attacks on the WTC were planned to aid credibility in the terrorist story as the mind-controlled pilot destroyed faction two's operations in the Pentagon. There is evidence of this in the trail of activity leading up to the day.

But the attack on the WTC got out of hand. The buildings were only supposed to be damaged, and the time of the attack was planned for minimal casualties. As we know, there was an improper understanding of the structural aspects of the building, and all hell broke loose.

The new neocons capitalized on this, and faction two is now all but disabled.

The next plan of the new necons is to step up their campaign of confusion and disinformation by infiltrating sites like this. Their first strategy will be a massive effort to create conspiracy theories that don't have any basis in reality. The first is already in progress, direct from the NSA MockingBird Counter Intelligence Program. As you know. it involves theories that a passenger airline was not involved in attacking the pentagon. They've already begun the second phase of ramp-up in this effort to confuse you by registering domain names under the usual guises, so don't trust any of these sites or theories. Watch for people selling products promoting this theory, they are tied to the NSA.

That's all for now. It's all breaking so fast and furious here. Watch for the disinformation.

I'll post again under a new name in about a month.

ttfn


reply posted on 7-3-2006 @ 04:37 PM by Icarus Rising

The PDB also said "that Bin Laden had wanted to conduct attacks in the United States for years and that the group apparently maintained a support base here."


Imo, this support base did/does not consist only of Saudis and people linked to the Saudis. I see very little posted here, unless its by me, about the Anthrax Attacks, the piggyback follow-on to the 9/11 attacks. How many members think OBL or the Saudis were behind the AA's?


Four years after the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, one of the most exhaustive investigations in FBI history has yielded no arrests and is showing signs of growing cold as officials have sharply reduced the number of agents on the case.

FBI agents and postal inspectors have pursued leads on four continents, conducted more than 8,000 interviews and carried out dozens of searches of houses, laboratories and other locations. They traveled to Afghanistan twice in the past 16 months to follow up on tips that proved fruitless, said law enforcement sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue.

Within law enforcement circles, some say the investigation, which is referred to as the Amerithrax probe, is in urgent need of a big break.


They could be looking in the wrong places. Imo, the AA's were a homegrown show of support timed and planned to coincide with 9/11.


The investigation has been so expansive that authorities now are in the process of taking inventory. The FBI and postal inspectors have spent months piecing together a voluminous internal report that will review the scope of the investigation and explore issues including what has been the prevailing theory: The culprit is a U.S. scientist who had access to the high-grade anthrax and the knowledge of how to physically manipulate it and use it as a weapon. That theory emerged early in the investigation and remains viable today, authorities said.

The report will include the names of various people deemed to be "persons of interest" over the years, as well as updates on the scientific tests. Authorities long ago narrowed down the type of anthrax to a strain called Ames but have been unable to identify the lab of origin. Much attention has focused on the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, housed at Fort Detrick in the Frederick area.

Authorities hope that the report, which is to be completed soon and forwarded to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, will provide a concise road map of the probe and help determine its future direction.


An American scientist and an Army Lab. But they are unable to positively identify the individual or the source. This stinks to high heaven to me as part of a cover up of a faction in our own government that doesn't want its involvement and complicity in 9/11 and the AA's to become public.


Little Progress In FBI Probe of Anthrax Attacks

[edit on 7-3-2006 by Icarus Rising]
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