Many of the documents publicize for the first time what was first made clear in the 9/11 Commission: The White House received a truly remarkable amount of warnings that al-Qaida was trying to attack the United States. From June to September 2001, a full seven CIA Senior Intelligence Briefs detailed that attacks were imminent, an incredible amount of information from one intelligence agency. One from June called “Bin-Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” writes that “[redacted] expects Usama Bin Laden to launch multiple attacks over the coming days.” The famous August brief called “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US” is included. – Jordan Michael Smith, Salon.com
DECLASIFIED TOP SECRET CIA documents that are heavily redacted on Osama bin Laden and early warnings about 9/11 reveal an alarming lack of urgency by Pres. George W. Bush on the threats America faced just prior to 9/11. What they also show is that the CIA wasn’t given the support from Pres. Bush and his administration during the key time prior to 9/11.
One particular section, cited first by Raw Story, proves Vice President Dick Cheney lied to NBC’s Tim Russert when he claimed that Mohammed Atta had a meeting in Prague. It just gets worse from there.
Salon.com’s Jordan Michael Smith has a summary.
The material contains much new information about the hunt before and after 9/11 for bin Laden, the development of the drone campaign in AfPak, and al-Qaida’s relationship with America’s ally, Pakistan. Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.
As difficult as the documents are to read and comprehend, budgetary restraints, which can be seen in this particularly document, seem to have been the reason a drone program was stalled and efforts to track Al Qaeda moved from “offensive” to “defensive posture.”
And yet, simultaneously, the CIA declared that budget concerns were forcing it to move its Counterterrorism Center/Osama bin Laden Unit from an “offensive” to a “defensive” posture. For the CIA, that meant trying to get Afghan tribal leaders and the Northern Alliance to kill or capture bin Laden, Elias-Sanborn says. “It was forced to be less of a kinetic operation,” she says. “It had to be only for surveillance, which was not what they considered an offensive posture.”
I’d personally like to see Sean Hannity eat every one of the newly declassified pages of the CIA revelations, with just a little left over for Rudy Giuliani, because of the falsehoods they’ve both spouted.
The telling of history is a long and difficult task, but eventually the truth is told.
” But eventually the truth is told. ” To who? Is anybody besides you and me and a few other people paying attention or is it more likely that nobody cares anymore. This is the problem, the lack of caring, the lack of a need to bring people to account. Why? Everyone is bought and payed for, that’s why; the media, congress, even the executive branch and the justice department. The fix is in and the American public is too busy trying to survive to give a damn. But they should give a damn, everyone should give a damn, because for the most part, the Bush Administration is where it all began to rot, and the only way to breathe some fresh air is to clean it out.
No one can force people to care or educate themselves on their government.
But the truth is the truth and for those who do care and pay attention it matters.
I have little hope Democrats or Republicans will learn from it, but it will become part of history, which matters.
The problem your truther group is going to have getting much traction from this is that ” a full year before 9/11″ George Bush was Governor of Texas.
Also, the Atta misidentification was covered in the 9/11 Commission Report already, so your invitation to dinner isn’t going to make much news 8 years later.
um… Yeah, and when Bush became president he ignored a boatload of warnings, with these documents proving it, as well as his negligence or incompetence, whichever you prefer.
Again, you, like fangio, are thinking of history in terms of now, which is misguided, but not surprising, as people usually want gratification today.
Besides, if Democrats didn’t give two hoots about holding Bush accountable when they could, you really think it’s a surprise to me that these docs won’t get traction today? Come on.
ps – “Truther group” is really beneath you, casualobserver, plus being false. These are declassified NSA documents.
Cue the Bush apologia. It’s a full time job defending that Bozo so you’re going to have your work cut out for you. The thing is we CAN learn from this if we wish to and make sure it doesn’t happen again. So maybe instead of cranking out the apologia for a loser like Bush, you could work on making sure that we never have another president like him as long as we live.
A lot of this was alluded to in Richard Clarke’s first book “Against All Enemies” in spite of the CIA.
But sadly, in these times, once the deed is done and no one is held to account, people move on. Nothing is sacrosanct anymore. These people are the pillars of our society and apparently they will always be.
Yep, nobody listened to Richard Clarke, especially the Bush administration, which is one of many reasons 9/11 happened.
Unfortunately, that document is a DCI report, which means that it was prepared for George Tenet, the guy in charge of the CIA at the time. Given the distrust I developed for the guy, I suspect it’s as much about butt-covering as it is about exploring an issue. I saw no admissions of CIA mistakes there, and one would think that there would have been some in an operation that lasted almost a decade and covered a good deal of Asia.
We got hit hard on 9/11. I would get so upset when I drove by the Pentagon, after the tragedy. I proposed to my wife in Manhattan on 11/11/2001. THe was the first time she had been there and of course fell in love with New York City. We went back there after 9/11 because of all the great deals on hotels, we could easily afford it. The city smelled awful and all everyone talked about was the what happened that day and how it had affected their life every day since.
Rudy Gulliani was person of the year for 2001. For 2002 one of the people of the year was Coleen Rowley.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003998,00.html#ixzz1yUURtSui
More than one there were PDBs That were titled something like “OBL Attack on USA Eminent”.
I don’t blame President Bush fr what happened on 9/11. I blame the people who did it and everyone else involved in the attack.
I wish the attack did not happen. I wish something was done in order to had stopped it. We had the information we needed and the means to stop it. I do feel confident that we are doing everything we can to make sure it never happens again.