Kurt Eichenwald makes the case that the Bush-Cheney administration's intelligence on 9/11 throughout the same year was a lot more than we realize. The White House daily briefings hold the key, he says:
[T]he Aug. 6 document [the only briefing that the Bush administration declassified], for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it. The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.
Frum tries to bat down this argument:
The worst failures of government occurred far away from the White House, and even before the Bush administration took office:
1) The failure of the CIA to share terrorist watch lists with the FBI so as to bar the lead 9/11 conspirators from the country; and
2) The failure of local police to cooperate with national immigration enforcement so as to remove the conspirators when they came into view inside the country.
Please. If the intelligence had been taken at face value, and acted upon, some of the mass murderers – two of whom had been arrested or stopped and released – would have been removed. And David doesn't acknowledge that many of his friends and allies were fixated on Saddam, rather than al Qaeda from the get-go:
An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.
If Romney is elected in November, these same, evidence-blind, war-mongers would be back running US foreign policy.
(Photo by Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)
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