Since the Presidential Daily Briefing was released, the Bush administration has tried to dismiss its importance because it didn’t lay out the time, place, and manner of the September 11 attacks. Which indeed it did not. But it did warn of hijackings. Thus the question naturally follows: how did the president respond to a threat of hijackings? After all, measures to prevent hijacking might have inadvertently thwarted the 9/11 plot.
Last night at the press conference someone posed this to Bush. See if you can locate the affirmative step(s) he took:
Q. You’ve talked � I’d like to ask you about the Aug. 6 P.D.B.
A. Sure.
Q. You mentioned it at Fort Hood on Sunday. You pointed out that it did not warn of a hijacking of airplanes to crash into buildings, but that it warned of hijackings to obviously take hostages and to secure the release of extremists being held by the U.S. Did that trigger some specific actions on your part and the administration since it dealt with potentially hundreds of lives and a blackmail attempt on the United States government?
A. I asked for the briefing. And the reason I did is because there had been a lot of threat intelligence from overseas. And part of it had to do with the Genoa G8 conference that I was going to attend. And I asked at that point in time, let’s make sure we are paying attention here at home as well. And that’s what triggered the report.
The report itself, I’ve characterized it as mainly history. And I think when you look at it you’ll see that it was talking about a ’97 and ’98 and ’99. It was also an indication as you mentioned that that bin Laden might want to hijack an airplane, but as you said, not to fly into a building but perhaps to release a person in jail. In other words, serving as a blackmail. And of course that concerns me. All those reports concern me.
As a matter of fact, I was dealing with terrorism a lot as the president when George Tenet came in to brief me. I mean that’s where I got my information. I changed the way, the relationship, between the president and the C.I.A. director. And I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time. And we had briefings about terrorist threats. This was a summary.
Now in the, what’s called the P.D.B. there was a warning about bin Laden’s desires on America. Frankly, I didn’t think that was anything new. I mean major newspapers had talked about bin Laden’s desires on hurting America. What was interesting in there was that there was a report that the F.B.I. was conducting field investigations. And that was good news that they were doing their job.
The way my administration worked was that I met with Tenet all the time. I obviously met with my principals a lot. We talked about threats that emerged. We had a counterterrorism group meeting on a regular basis to analyze the threats that came in. Had there been a threat that required action by anybody in the government, I would have dealt with it. In other words, had they come up and said this is where we see something happening, you can rest assured that the people of this government would have responded and responded in a forceful way.
I mean one of the things about Elizabeth’s question was I stepped back and I’ve asked myself a lot, Is there anything we could have done to stop the attacks? Of course, I’ve asked that question as have many people of my government. Nobody wants this to happen to America. And the answer is that had I had any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings we would have moved heaven and earth to save the country. Just like we’re working hard to prevent a further attack.
No, I see a step taken against hijackings in that answer, either. It’s nice to know Bush was “concerned” when hearing reports entitled “Bin Laden planning multiple operations,” “Bin Laden network’s plans advancing,” “Bin Laden threats are real,” and, of course, “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” But what did he do? Obviously, if he had taken some sort of aviation-related precautions, we would have heard of them by now.
What did Bush do following the August 6th P.D.B? Dana Milbank and Mike Allen take us back in time:
President Bush was in an expansive mood on Aug. 7, 2001, when he ran into reporters while playing golf at the Ridgewood Country Club in Waco, Tex.
The day before, the president had received an intelligence briefing — the contents of which were declassified by the White House Saturday night — warning “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.” But Bush seemed carefree as he spoke about the books he was reading, the work he was doing on his nearby ranch, his love of hot-weather jogging, his golf game and his 55th birthday.
“No mulligans, except on the first tee,” he said to laughter. “That’s just to loosen up. You see, most people get to hit practice balls, but as you know, I’m walking out here, I’m fixing to go hit. Tight back, older guy — I hit the speed limit on July 6th.”
Fore!
One last note on this question and answer. It’s ironic that Bush made reference to the G8 conference in Genoa, since the threat feared at that event was . . . a terrorist attack using suicide-piloted airplanes.
No one could have imagined. . . .
