PDB: Agents Were Probing Possible Plot Inside U.S.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
WASHINGTON - President Bush's August 2001 briefing on terror threats
included information that federal agents were investigating reports three
months earlier about a possible plot on U.S. soil.
And, it said, Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden's (search) desire to strike
inside America surfaced as long as four years before Bush took office,
according to several people who have seen the memo. The document has emerged
as a key point of interest to the commission investigating the Sept. 11,
2001, airborne attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the
Pentagon .
Some of the most current information in the so-called presidential daily
briefing, or PDB, delivered to Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, came from reports U.S.
intelligence had received in May 2001 about a possible plot for an
explosives attack inside the United States, the sources told The Associated
Press this week.
Also in August 2001, U.S. intelligence officials received two uncorroborated
reports suggesting that terrorists might use airplanes, including one that
suggested Al Qaeda (search) operatives were considering flying a plane into
a U.S. embassy, current and former government officials said.
Those reports - among thousands of varied and uncorroborated threats
received by the government each month - weren't deemed credible enough to
tell Bush or his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice (search), the
officials said.
None of the information in the president's briefing or the August reports
involved the eventual Sept. 11 plot.
But former Indiana Rep. Timothy Roemer (search), a Democratic member of the
Sept. 11 commission, has said: "Something was going to happen very soon and
be potentially catastrophic. I don't understand, given the big threat, why
the big (national security) principals (officials) don't get together."
The sources who read the presidential memo would speak only on condition of
anonymity because the White House has yet to declassify the highly sensitive
document, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States."
On Saturday, there was no word from the Bush administration on the progress
of declassification process that will make the document public in a historic
disclosure of presidential intelligence briefing materials.
The sources said the memo included a series of items that brought Bush
through a history of mostly uncorroborated intelligence that cited Al
Qaeda's interest in hijacking planes to win the release of Islamic
extremists who had been arrested in 1998 and 1999.
It also included the trips of suspected Al Qaeda operatives, including some
U.S. citizens, in and out of the United States. It suggested Al Qaeda might
have a support system in place on U.S. soil, the sources said.
The document also included FBI analytical judgments that some Al Qaeda
activities were consistent with preparation for airline hijackings or other
types of attacks, some members of the commission looking into the Sept. 11
attacks said this week.
The second-to-last item told Bush there were numerous - at least 70 -
terror-related investigations under way by the FBI in 2001 involving matters
or people on U.S. soil, the sources said.
And the final notation, they said, was based on a May 2001 intelligence
report indicating Al Qaeda operatives were trying to get inside the United
States from Canada to carry out an attack with explosives. There were no
specifics about the timing or target of the attack, but the memo said the
FBI and other agencies were investigating.
A joint congressional inquiry report into Sept. 11 intelligence failures
disclosed the May 2001 threat report last year but did not reveal it was
included in Bush's briefing. The congressional inquiry described the
intelligence this way:
"In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained information that
supporters of Usama bin Laden were reportedly planning to infiltrate the
United States via Canada in order to carry out a terrorist operation using
high explosives."
In her testimony Thursday to the Sept. 11 commission, Rice described Bush's
Aug. 6 daily briefing as including mostly "historical information" and said
most threat information in the summer of 2001 involved overseas targets.
Rice also said she did not recall seeing any warnings before Sept. 11 that a
plane might be used a terrorist weapon, though it was possible others in the
White House did.
Current and former government officials told the AP that in the same month
Bush received his briefing, U.S. intelligence received two uncorroborated
reports - among hundreds - suggesting terrorist might use planes but that
neither reached the president or Rice.
The officials said one report in August 2001 said there was uncorroborated
information that two bin Laden operatives had met in October 2000 to discuss
a plot to attack the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi with an airplane.
That report said the operative would either use the plane to bomb the
embassy or crash into it, according to information provided congressional
investigators and cited in their report released last year.
Separately, the CIA asked the Federal Aviation Administration (search) in
August 2001 to advise commercial airlines that six Pakistanis in Latin
America, not connected to Al Qaeda, were considering a hijacking, bombing or
sabotage of an airliner.
That warning did not have specifics on a time or location but said it could
involve Britain, Canada, Mexico, Malaysia or Cuba, among others, according
to information made public by the congressional inquiry.
Rice said emphatically Thursday she did not see any such reports about Al
Qaeda using a plane as a weapon until after Sept. 11, suggesting the
intelligence may have reached someone lower in the White House.
"To the best of my knowledge ... this kind of analysis about the use of
airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us," she told the Sept.
11 commission. "I cannot tell you that there might not have been a report
here or a report there that reached somebody in our midst."
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