“Historical” Document

Or that which has been released from it.
6 August 2001 President’s Daily Brief:
Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a — — service.
An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told – – service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin’s first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.

Ressam says Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation.

Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.
Al-Qa’ida members–including some who are US citizens–have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa’ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a — service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.
–Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

Another Wardrobe Malfunction Casualty

No Victoria’s Secret television fashion show this year:

Victoria’s Secret is dropping its nationally televised fashion show this year, at least partly because of criticism following Janet Jackson’s breast-baring faux pas at the Super Bowl.
Ed Razek, chief creative officer for the Columbus-based lingerie chain, said Saturday the main reason for the decision was so the company can look at new ways to promote the brand.
Still, he said, “We had to make the decision probably six to eight weeks ago when the heat was on the television networks.”
The announcement came less than three months after the Jackson uproar and a week after federal regulators proposed $495,000 in fines against Clear Channel Communications for sexual material on the Howard Stern show.

We don’t know exactly what lead to Victoria’s Secret’s decision. The implication of this report (and my suspicion) is that political rather than business considerations prompted the cancellation. If so, this is more evidence that our nanny state is getting out of hand.
The Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl display was rightly condemned because it (1) subjected an unsuspecting family audience to (2) public nudity.
Is that a risk with here?
I’ve only seen clips from prior Victoria’s Secret broadcasts. While they did generate controversy from interest groups, I’m not aware of prior FCC indecency complaints over the show’s content. And as far as audience expectations go, can viewers reasonably complain that they didn’t know what they were going to see when they a Victoria’s Secret show?
The government regulatory pendulum is swinging too far to the right. We’ve heard a lot of chatter about freedom in Iraq recently. How about our freedoms in America?

Jews v. Mormons

I’m not sure which is the odder part of this story:
(a) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints promising to stop posthumously baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims, then continuing to do it, or
(b) A Jewish group threatening “legal steps” to get them to stop.
The dispute is so significant that last month a Jewish group got Senator Hillary Clinton to meet with Senator Orrin Hatch.

Destroying the Record

“You may wonder what makes our Constitution so special. I am here to persuade you that our Constitution is something extraordinary, something to revere.”

So waxed our great defender of the Constitution, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, even as a federal marshal was seizing reporters’ tape recordings of the speech. The marshal claims that Scalia didn’t want the event recorded, but according to the story that announcement was never made at the event.
The incident raises a couple questions: First, why does Scalia refuse to allow his remarks to be recorded? Is he that prone to make comments which would come back to haunt him? And second, why are marshals, who are supposed to be providing protection doing Scalia’s dirty work and seizing tapes?
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is protesting the incident as a violation of the Privacy Protection Act.

233 Days

WendellGee points out this coincidence.
One of Rice’s repeated excuses in her testimony before the 9/11 commission (emphasis added):

“The restructuring of the F.B.I. was not going to be done in the 233 days in which we were in office,” she said. Nor, she said, was the country about to make its aircraft cockpits more secure, or threaten to invade Afghanistan, or conduct any other kind of preemptive military strike in the name of counterterrorism.

And from Dana Milbank and Robin Wright’s column in the Washington Post:

This is Bush’s 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency.

I wonder if Milbank and Wright slipped that in ironically.
A president may not be able to reconstruct the FBI in 233 days, but it sure makes for some great down time, eh?