There has been much recent discussion about the presidential briefing and relating to 20/20 hindsight regarding 9/11. See for example Edward, Matthew Yglesias , and Kevin Drum.
Kevin almost gets it right with, “Look, I know there’s a perfectly good case to be made that the PDB merely states generalities and doesn’t warn of a specific, impending attack. That’s fine as far as it goes, and it’s the spin I’d expect the White House to put on it.” This would be ok except for the fact that such an explanation wouldn’t be spin. It would be the simple truth.
All of the talk about PDB misses a crucial fact about intelligence gathering. It is absolutely trivial to go back into the past, after a major event has taken place, and find all the evidence that would have suggested that the event was going to take place. The problem with such an exercise is that you already know what you are looking for. Before such an event occurs you have to sort out evidence from all the other ‘useless’ tips and leads that you have available to you. If you could go through all of the PDBs in the past ten years, you would certainly find dozens of terror warnings that didn’t pan out and hundreds of general warnings that never turned into anything. You would find investigations that didn’t turn anything up, and investigations that stopped problems from taking place. We aren’t focusing any time on how we can make the sorting process better, instead we are playing stupid finger pointing games. Bush didn’t know that Al Qaeda was about to attack. Not in any normal definition of the word know. If Bush had been Al Gore, he still wouldn’t have known. Get over it.
If you want to do something useful, we should tackle what kind of intelligence gathering would get the kind of results we are looking for–while being fully aware that no intelligence system is going to catch all bad actors.
If you could go through all of the PDBs in the past ten years, you would certainly find dozens of terror warnings that didn’t pan out and hundreds of general warnings that never turned into anything.
Presumably, even a Bush partisan must admit the PDB is not an academic exercise. The President does not read it and then say, “Too bad we don’t know which threats are real, if any. Since we don’t, we can’t do anything about any of them.” The PDB is a summary of the situation as best as the intelligence services can determine. That information, specific or not, is collected in order to be acted upon.
The question is not what percentage of warnings panned out in the past. The question is what steps the President took in response to these specific warnings.
Sebastian,
Well said Sebastian.
The question is what steps the President took in response to these specific warnings.
Specific warnings? Have you read the memo? It’s history lesson and warns bin Laden “wanted to retaliate…!” Geeze, that’s obviously specific enough to warrant, um, what exactly?
“Geeze, that’s obviously specific enough to warrant, um, what exactly?”
Asked and answered.
Agree that it wasn’t possible to prevent 9/11 in advance.
But Mithras is right: the appropriate reaction to a warning is not “Well, we couldn’t figure out what to do first so we did nothing” – what exactly did Bush & Co do in response to the warning?
As I pointed out in the thread Gary Farber linked to, there were life-saving plans they could have set up if it had occurred to them to do so.
“And so in the end he did nothing at all,
But basked on the shingle wrapped up in a shawl.
And I think it was dreadful the way he behaved —
He did nothing but basking until he was saved!” full lyrics
This would be ok except for the fact that such an explanation wouldn’t be spin. It would be the simple truth.
Translation:
“Warning: spin ahead!”
If you keep hearing “It’s going to rain. It’s going to rain.” and then a monsoon hits. You won’t be faulted for carrying an umbrella.
But if you don’t even have an umbrella…well, it begins to look like negligence.
I would agree that the Aug 6 PDB is not a smoking gun in relation to intelligence on OBL/Al Qeada or the 9/11 plot, but did anyone seriously think it would be ? This seems to be the R line right now, that the PDB does not contain the “actionable intelligence” those trying to pin blame for 9/11 on Bush would have us believe. But this simply isn’t the case at all. Few, if any, people believed the PDB would be a smoking gun or that any real blame for 9/11 could be pinned on GWB.
The real significance of the PDB is that it is politicaly embarassing to the president. I’m sure there will be political embarassement all around when the commission releases it’s findings, but that embarassement is most keenly felt by an administration running for re-election. That is why surrogates and background WH briefings have sought to shift blame to the 8 years of the Clinton administration while simultaneously attempting to paint the picture of a president engaged on the subject of terrorism and focused on fashioning a comprehensive solution to the problem prior to 9/11.
The PDB threatens to contradict the R line in the very fact that it contains no “actionable intelligence” since logically the only damage that could be inflicted by it’s release would be political. There is absolutely no reason why the PDB could not be released earlier than now other than to protect the presidents carefully protected image of being forcefully engaged on the anti-terrorism issue pre and post 9/11. Remember also that Bob Woodward was allowed access to the PDB for a pro-bush book earlier in his presidency, so why was access by the commission so carefully controlled until now ?
We also have the claim by the president that he in fact requested the PDB which seems to be disputed by the CIA. As commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed, “the CIA informed the panel that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA.” – Washington Post, 3/25/04