Here’s the CNN transcript of the memo, fresh from the White House (which presumably means that it’s declassified, which is the only reason that I’ll link to it).
I’ll be revising this post as I go. For example, now I’m noting that it was via Harley (who I was rather snide to earlier; so much for ‘credit to the race’, huh?) and Reg over at Tacitus who gave me the head’s up.
UPDATE: Umm, none of the stuff in there is precisely a surprise; for that matter, based on my quick review of the relevant transcript Dr. Rice’s assessment of it seems pretty much on the money, and that Congressman Roemer was pretty much just waving the thing around. It’s not quite a CYA document; more of a summation of what was known at the time, which in hindsight was too little.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Yes, silly of me, it’s Mr. Ben-Veniste’s remarks that are of interest. Hold on… yup, he was just waving the thing around, too.
So we have a history of a desire to strike the US, and possibly measures taken to fulfill that desire. I thought one of Rice’s main defenses of the Admin’s actions in the Summer of 01 was that when they started getting threat warnings, they had no clue of where those threats were directed at. Does that mesh well with the facts/knowledge implied in the briefing? Does she seriously expect us to believe that they didn’t consider that the threats could be directed at the US? Or is info only solid enough to react to if they name the specific US city being targeted?
Also, given the evident danger from AQ ops in the US, given the ’01 threat warnings, why on earth wasn’t Rice more proactive with the FBI, etc? Her testimony made it sound like she considered her responsibility to be doing what was asked of her to do and no more. Is that a good quality in a National Security Advisor?)
It’s so short.
Personally, living in New York, I do find this somewhat more alarming than has been noted by the administration thus far:
The FBI stuff is the key.
I have long expected Ashcroft to be sacrificed in the first term.
Too bad, in some ways the best of the bunch.
Yawn
Well, the August 6 PDB has been declassified and released, and not at all surprisingly (unless you happen to be a frothing partisan with a wildly conspiratorial imagination, in which case you were expecting surveillance photos of Todd Beamer) there’s…
Gotta agree with Moe: this should’ve been a non-story.
I am, however, a bit incensed that Ari Fleischer, well over a year ago, told reporters the name of the PDB was “Bin Laden wants to attack [drop the “in”] the United States.” Talk about a lie by omission (yes, I’m presuming intent — though I think that’s an easy leap to make).
Moe, Von…too kind. Heck, even Bill Schneider’s got this one right:
“I think [this memo] could be seriously damaging. What this says is, the White House knew what bin Laden was capable of planning, where he intended to do it, which was New York or Washington, D.C., how he was going to do it. There was only one thing missing, which was exactly when he was going to do it, which turns out to be September 11.”
“Talk about a lie by omission (yes, I’m presuming intent — though I think that’s an easy leap to make).”
While I of course deplore the practice of automatically assuming mendacity in any individual or group, doing so for press secretaries does, alas, have a certain body of supporting evidence associated with it.
But if you don’t like Schneider, try Pandagon!
Harley — the memo will probably be politically damaging, no doubt. But, had it come out last year, it barely would have made a ripple. It only sounds like a bombshell because the Bush administration has staked out extreme and unbelievable positions.
(Really, they should put me on staff. I could win Bush this election — and win my bet with you.*)
von
*The sad thing is, I’m about 90% likely to vote against my self-interest. But, being that I’m in Indiana, it probably won’t count.
Harley, the document does not actually state how we were attacked; if I were to take its advice I would have been guarding against airplane hijackings for the purpose of hostage takings and guarding against the destruction of buildings via explosives (such as the first WTC bombing or OK City). The destruction of buildings via hijacked airplanes is a third and independent scenario, and one not addressed in the PDB. Hindsight tells us that it should have been in there, but hindsight’s cruel like that.
In short, Pandagon’s characterization of this as predicting the 9/11 attacks quite perfectly is… not correct, despite his comments to the contrary.
Oh, all right. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. (How’s that for splitting the difference!?) Condi is wrong to simply dismiss it as historical. Others are wrong to suggest it is a smoking gun of some kind.
But Von, dear Von, is right. It is politically damaging in the short term. The long term? I have no idea.
I’m most intrigued by the battle between FBI and CIA here.
Who will win?
“Oh, all right. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. (How’s that for splitting the difference!?)”
Oh, as a representation of what’s been wrong with our intelligence gathering system since the mid-eighties it’s perfect – perfectly damning, that is. More HUMINT and more people who speak the languages in-house – and less caring about who the hell they go to bed with.
Praktike — they both will.
MoeVon: Take a look at this.
You know what the sad thing about all this is?
A lot of people are going to be haunted about what could have been done for the rest of their lives.
As I said, Harley, hindsight is cruel.
Moe
PS: It’s only sad in the cases of people who couldn’t have done anything about it anyway, praktike. People who could have, and didn’t… if they’re haunted, I call that ‘just’.
I guess I’m really thinking about the families of the victims.
In other news, Weird Al’s parents found dead
No, not that Al.
MoeVon: Take a look at this.
Again, I’m with Moe: It’s all so obvious — now.
The damage here is political. From now on, the term “Rovian” is a pejorative in my book: it stands for a boneheaded political move to win the battle, but lose the war (and oft-times, the battle gets lost as well).
Moe-
if I were to take its advice I would have been guarding against airplane hijackings for ….
If you had guarded against hijackings, then you’d have done better than Bush.
“If you had guarded against hijackings, then you’d have done better than Bush.”
No, not really; I too would have been looking for explosives and firearms being smuggled onboard, because there’s no way you can keep a plane full of passengers hostage for three days with only hand weapons, and people hijacked airplanes for the hostage value, not to convert them into guided bombs (that latter scenario only happened in Tom Clancy novels).
Moe
Moe, sorry to drag this out….but ‘not to convert them into guided bombs’ is flat-out wrong, tho’ a nice Condi echo. We had intel suggesting plans to do exactly that. (G-7 meeting in Genoa, etc.) Condi’s ‘jets as missiles’ statement has been refuted numerous times, so many that she simply admitted ignorance re the intel to the panel.
But let’s not pretend it didn’t exist. Or did so only in Clancy novels.
I will concede the point that the G-8 precautions were explicitly in reference to an attack via air (Buzzflash went to the trouble of collecting some contemporary articles from that period, although I do not endorse his conclusions). I do not agree, however, that the significance of this data was equally obvious at the time as it is in hindsight. Previous experience had shown that terrorists blew up buildings with ground based explosives and hijacked planes to get hostages. A specific rumor that something to the contrary was planned wrt a specific incident was apparently deemed not germane to our wider problem; speaking dispassionately, I can even see why.
Again, should an attack using an airplane been included in the PDB? In hindsight, yes. Was it explicitly included? No. Was it implicitly included? Reviewing it yet again… no. That document did not include information needed to prevent 9/11, Ben-Veniste and Pandagon to the contrary; I have seen their arguments and am not convinced. Its political significance is something that I couldn’t begin to guess at right now.
I think that we can both agree that our intelligence services need serious revamping?
Bob Kerrey: mensch or a**hole?
All —
Try to catch Fox News Sunday. Opening act: Slade Gorton (search) and Richard Ben-Veniste. Analysis: Senator Lugar (R-Ind.). Lugar’s the one to watch.* If you are the Coolhunter,** you know that what he says, happens — in three-to-four weeks. It’s not the first time: He shaped our policy toward South Africa (fan though I was of Reagan, it was Lugar who put things right) and the Phillipines in the 1980s.
von
*It intrigues me to no end that Indiana — a state where I’m now living, again, after seven wonderful years in Chicago — so shapes foreign policy. Don’t believe me? Who’s the vice chair of the 9-11 committee? Where’d Tim Roemer, another member, once represent (that’s 20%)? How many times has Sen. Lugar announced this administration’s foreign policy in advance? When’s the last time you remember Sen. Bayh being wrong? Face it: you want a moderate [Democrat or Republican], your choices are Indiana or Maine. And Mainers talk funny.
** A William Gibson book, about (among other things) a woman who’s job is to anticipate the next trend.
that latter scenario only happened in Tom Clancy novels
If Tom f’ing Clancy can imagine it, why do we need a classified briefing to make people think about how to counter it?
Better question: Even if we’re to charitably give Rice and Bush a pass because they weren’t told the exact hour, day and airspeed the jets would hit the towers, can someone please tell me what they did in response to the threat they did believe in?
funny thing is, on the morning/afternoon of 9/11, I remember watching Tom Clancy as an analyst on CNN
ok, so lets pretend that they knew that a group of terrorist were planning to hijack an airliner sometime soon and crash it somewhere on the eastern seaboard.
With the state of checking that was going on pre 911, there would have missed these guys. Back it would have happened.
Ok, so they grounded airliners on and off for the next few months tryong to pre empt something. At that time, all the airlines were headed into a massive downsizing of business travel. There would have been a tremendous outcry from all quarters demanding that this “arbitrary” action cease and desist. The airline industry would have gone completely ballistic a nd blamed their downturn on the Bush admin.
Now, what if they started pushing some of the activities going on now. Like for example a massive increase in security. The democratic party would have made hay with this as a egregious invasion of traveller privacy. Same thing with the CIA and FBI collaboration. Lots of complaint about abuse.
Without real actionable intelligence, the Bush admin would have been potrayed as chicken littles.
You should read Greg Easterbrook’s essay on an alternate timeline. Wishes and horses, gentlemen, wishes and horses.
This is just gotcha politics. People are looking for anyreason to blame the current admin no matter what. Hey, maybe someone, anyone, needs to take the fall for all of us to get our pound of flesh.
“the Bush admin would have been potrayed as chicken littles.”
Yes, that certainly would have been worse than the alternative.
Moe: Check out Phase II of Operation Bojinka, as well as the 1994 plot against the Eiffel Tower. While you’re correct both that that specific tactic wasn’t mentioned in the PDB and that hindsight’s a bitch, it does seem remiss that this possibility was apparently neither mentioned nor considered in the run-up to 9/11.
[Links provided by Stratagem, who’s doing a yeoman job over in the comments at the erstwhile Calpundit.]
On a personal note, one of the airports targeted by Phase I of Operation Bojinka was my home airport and I think I actually flew on one of the flights listed on (or around) the dates in question. Got a *serious* chill down my spine when I put that together…
“…it does seem remiss that this possibility was apparently neither mentioned nor considered in the run-up to 9/11.”
Thank you for the links, Anarch. I’ll have to check them out, but at first glance they do indeed talk about the sort of attacks that we suffered on 9/11; I would thus agree that your statement above is a legitimate take on the situation.
BTW, I’m not trying to weasel; I honestly am not certain how large the existing evidence would stand out amongst the noise to those lacking foreknowledge of the eventual attack. All I know for sure is that our system of intelligence gathering and analysis needs serious work done to it…
sidereal, you’re missing the point.
I spend much of my time on an airplane. This has been so for the last 10 years as part of my job. Previously to 911, airport security was a joke. Cockpit security was a joke, the whole FAA handling of things was a joke.
Lets say you know that there will be an attempt to hijack planes and turn them into guided missles. Its july, what do you do?
Do you pre-emptively attack Bin Laden in Afghanistan? No way, you could ever get enough political capital or justification for that. No way, no how. So that is one option off the table.
Another option is to change the essential nature of FBI and CIA relationships, i.e. they start sharing information. How long before a hue and cry from civil liberties groups about the danger of this. The history of this is founded on events going back to the Church commission. So you try to explain without tipping the collective terrorist hand why you need this. Not going to happen. So the FBI and CIA run their ops and compartmentalize their info and 911 happens because no one puts it together.
Last option is to massively crack down on security. So you put tons of very onerous requirements on the airports and airlines. You may remember that the airlines were coming off the edge of the bubble. Many of them were going broke before this. To the airlines, this is the last straw. How much tooth and nail are they going to fight.
So basically with the crystalizing event of 911, none of this will reach the consciousness of everyday americans. 911 was going to happen anyway. Show me what could have been done different from what I laid out.
“…not to convert them into guided bombs (that latter scenario only happened in Tom Clancy novels).”
That’s not true, Moe. See here.
Captain Joe: Lets say you know that there will be an attempt to hijack planes and turn them into guided missles. Its july, what do you do?
You make a list of possible targets. It will probably be a long list, but not an infinite one. You check out the disaster-response setup at those targets, and find some excuse for getting the people at those targets to rehearse mass evacuation.
You also set up a fast reaction/response to news that a plane has been hijacked. If word comes through that a plane has been hijacked, alert a responsible person at each of the list of potential targets that they may have to begin mass evacuation.
This would most likely not have saved many lives in North Tower. But it might well have saved many lives in South Tower and at the Pentagon.
Was any of the information or (almost) identical information in the PDF not available to Clinton before Bush was elected? I just ask because surely its important to know how the Democrats reacted to the same or similar information to understand the Republicans reaction.
70 full field FBI investigations and not one dot connected prior to 9/11. Wow. What the hell was the FBI investigating, anyway? Donuts?
By the way, the memo is small news. All it does is confirm to more and more people that Ben Veniste is a fool.
Michael, if all of the information in the PDF file was available to Clinton, it was presumably passed along to the Bush administration in January. Sure, ask “how did the Clinton administration react?” but also “Why was this information ignored by the Bush administration for over six months?”