Who in their right mind would have thought that people would hijack planes and fly them into buildings - deliberately? Until it happened, it was incomprehensible to any sane person.
Yeah. Who would have thought?
Oh, just the FBI, CIA, National Security Council, and Bush's CIA Director and Chief Counter-Terrorism Adviser.
Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S.
The following is a transcript of the August 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing entitled Bin Laden determined to strike in US. Parts of the original document were not made public by the White House for security reasons.
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. 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 U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden 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 Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.
The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S.
Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that in ---, Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.
Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed 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 Qaeda members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.
Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.
A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden 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 Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-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 U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.
On July 10, 2001 CIA Director George Tenet held an "emergency meeting" with Condoleeza Rice to warn her of an impending attack by Al Qaeda. She suggested he brief Rumsfeld and Ashcroft. Ashcroft brought up the concern at a National Security Council meeting (because the Cabinet-level position of counter-terrorism chief had been stripped), where according to Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff to the Secretary of State, it was dismissed because "the Bush team thought the Clintonites had become obsessed with terrorism." There really could not have been more writing on the wall, more dire warnings, more notice that this Bin Laden guy was "determined to strike in the U.S." soon, in a plan modeled after the '93 WTC bombing, likely using "hijacked airplanes." But it was completely ignored by anyone with the authority to actually act on it.
As for Clinton, he could have done more there's no doubt and also not have blown up a vaccination factory in Sudan that led to widespread hatred of America there and hundreds of thousands of deaths, as well as a primary spark in the fire that became the Darfur genocide. But he focused more on terrorism than any previous president.
On
December 24, 2000, The Washington Post did a story on the Clinton Administration's focus on counter-terrorism. He created a Cabinet-level counter-terrorism position (which Bush then removed upon taking office) and successfully thwarted the Jan 2000 "Millenium Attack" plots by Al Qaeda to attack LAX airport., Jordan, and an American warship near-simultaneously. The Post asked the Reagan Adinistration's top two counter-terrorism officials how they would rate Clinton's performance. "Overall, I give them very high marks," Robert Oakley said, "The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama." Oakley's successor as ambassador for counter-terrorism in the Reagan admin, L. Paul Bremer, disagreed slightly. He believed the Clinton administration "correctly focused on Bin Laden." Clinton tripled the counter-terrorism budget and thwarted over a dozen major terrorist plots (against the UN, the pope, 12 commercial airliners, the American embassy in Albania, etc.) The Post's report concluded, "By any measure available, Clinton left office having given greater priority to terrorism than any president before him." His administration was the "first administration to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort."
The past four former presidents all played a role in allowing 9/11 to happen. Reagan armed, funded, gave CIA training and support to Osama bin Laden's muhajadeen and supporting the Taliban militarily, monetarily, and diplomatically while they killed all the moderate Afghani civilians and poured acid in the faces of women who dared to go outside without a male family member accompanying them. Cause it was more important to have a proxy war with the crumbling USSR and that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" business always works out. GHW Bush, after he funded and armed the violent Muslim extremists and Taliban, decided that once the Cold War was over our agreements with Afghanistan didn't matter anymore. We abandoned Afghanistan, cut off more than 80% of our humanitarian aid (200,000 children died in Afghanistan over the next ten years from starvation, lack of clean water, and preventable diseases we were preventing while they were fighting the Soviets), and just let it fester. Hey the Russians were gone, how much trouble could Afghanistan really cause us, right? Clinton's counter-terrorism failures were the first WTC bombing, which if we want to talk inherited, happened 38 days into his presidency and the homegrown attack by two right-wing anti-government extremists in Oklahoma City. He also issued a presidential directive ordering the assassination of Bin Laden following the embassy bombing in Kenya, but obviously that was never carried out. The Bush Administration's failing on the subject are well-documented and while there is some blame to go around, it's pretty clear it falls far heaviest upon his shoulders.
