Pre-9/11 terrorist threats cause White House chaos
By James Kuhnnenn
and Jackie Koszczuk
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON (KRT) — Law
makers from both parties on
Thursday demanded an independ
ent investigation into whether U.S.
intelligence agencies properly as
sessed terrorist threats before the
Sept. 11 attacks, and whether the
White House responded properly
to those threats.
National Security Adviser Con
doleezza Rice said the White
House received a series of intelli
gence warnings last summer that
Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda
terrorist organization may be plot
ting attacks on U.S. interests. One
analysis that Bush received Aug. 3,
while vacationing at his ranch in
Crawford, Texas, listed airplane hi
jackings as one tactic that bin
Laden might employ.
“It was not a warning,” Rice
said. “There was no specific time
or place mentioned.”
Behind closed doors with Sen
ate Republicans at a private Capi
tol luncheon, Bush rejected any
suggestion that he failed to act on
information that would have pre
vented the Sept. 11 suicide attacks.
“Rest assured,” Bush added,
according to Sen. Pat Roberts, R
Kan., who took notes of the presi
dent’s remarks, “we would have
never sat back, and we would
have attacked any adversary with
all the force and fury of the
American military.”
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz.,
Bush’s opponent in the Republican
presidential primary in 2000, and
Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., the De
mocratic vice presidential candi
date in the general election, an
nounced they would push for
legislation to'create a 14-member
commission to investigate, whose
members would be appointed by
the president and Congress.
Eight other senators are co
sponsors, including Republican
Charles Grassley of Iowa, the
chairman of the powerful Finance
Committee, and Democrat Evan
Bayh of Indiana, a leading moder
ate in his party.
The panel would be similar to
those formed after pivotal events
in the past, such as Japan’s attack
on Pearl Harbor, the assass
ination of President John
Kennedy and the Iran-Contra
arms-for-hostages scandal.
Thomas Patterson Emerald
President Bush, shown here speaking to an audience at Portland’s Parkrose High School in
January, strongly denied any prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Congress had clamored for such
an inquiry directly after Sept. 11,
and the Senate’s Governmental Af
fairs Committee approved a bill in
March. But it never went further,
because Vice President Dick Ch
eney asked lawmakers to help the
country stay focused on the battle
against terrorism.
Congressional leaders then as
signed the task of investigating
the question to the Democratic
and Republican members of the
House and Senate intelligence
committees. That panel is expect
ed to report to Congress sometime
this summer.
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chair
man of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, said another investiga
tion was unnecessary.
Intelligence Committee mem
bers “are not members of or cap
tives of the intelligence commu
nity. We know something about
the intelligence community, and
that was one of the reasons we
were asked to undertake this job,”
he said.
Bush said he detected “the sniff
of politics” as congressional De
mocrats demanded Thursday that
he release details of the CIA’s
Aug. 3 briefing to the congres
sional intelligence committees.
Democrats also called on the ad
ministration to make public a July
FBI memorandum that warned of
Middle Eastern men attending
flight schools.
House Democratic Leader
Richard Gephardt of Missouri said
lawmakers should have been told
about the intelligence reports long
before now.
“What we have to do now is to
find out what the president knew,
what the White House knew about
the events leading up to 9-11, when
they knew it and, most important
ly, what was done about it at that
time,” Gephardt said.
With the nation’s news media
joining Congress in furious atten
tion to such questions all day,
White House officials mobilized to
brief senators privately and re
porters publicly about the threat
assessments that intelligence agen
cies compiled before Sept. 11.
Rice said the administration was
in a heightened state of alert
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throughout last summer, but that
intelligence warned of an attack by
bin Laden on U.S. interests abroad,
not on American soil.
Democrats in Congress pointed
out that the Aug. 3 notice of possi
ble hijackings did not exist in a
vacuum. They noted that a memo
randum from a Phoenix-based FBI
agent last July reportedly warned
of a link between Middle Eastern
aviation students and bin Laden.
They also noted that in August
r
FBI agents in Minnesota were busy
investigating Zacarias Moussaoui,
a French national who had been
arrested after arousing suspicions
at a flight school near St. Paul,
Minn. Moussaoui is now under in
dictment on charges that he was a
conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks.
(Knight Ridder Newspapers cor
respondent Frank Davies con
tributed to this article.)
© 2002, Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
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