A small but significant White House cover-up fell apart this past
weekend.
When the White House finally released the August 6, 2001 President's
Daily Brief, it marked the end of a two-year effort on the part of the
Bush administration to prevent the public from learning that a month
before the 9/11 attacks--and weeks after the U.S. government had
collected "chatter" indicating Osama bin Laden was planning a major
strike--Bush received information indicating that al Qaeda was intent
on mounting attacks within the United States.
Condoleezza Rice was instrumental in the attempt to keep the contents
of this PDB--which was entitled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US"
and which noted that al Qaeda "apparently maintains a support
structure [in the United States] that could aid attacks" and that the
FBI had detected "suspicious activity...consistent with preparations
for hijackings or other types of attacks"--from becoming known. And it
is obvious why it was so important for her and the White House to
smother this PDB.
The existence of the August 6 PDB was first revealed by CBS News'
David Martin on May 15, 2002. But Martin's report only referred to the
PDB in one sentence that noted the PDB had warned that an attack by
bin Laden could involve hijacking U.S. aircraft. CBS did not report
the title of the briefing or any other material it contained. A media
furor erupted after the White House acknowledged Bush had received
this PDB. The day after the CBS News report, The New York Times
carried a front-page story with a headline declaring, "Bush Was Warned
Bin Laden Wanted To Hijack Planes."
The disclosure of the PDB came at an especially awkward time for the
White House. Two weeks earlier, news reports revealed that an FBI
agent in Phoenix in July 2001 had written a classified memo suggesting
that a group of Middle Eastern aviation students might be linked to
terrorists (including bin Laden) and that the FBI had not taken any
action in response to this agent's investigation. The "Phoenix memo"
received a flood of media coverage, and the Bush administration--which
heretofore had not had to field any tough questions about the
government's pre-9/11 performance-- was confronted with queries about
the negligent handling of the agent's prescient report. At the same
time, the case of Zacarias Moussaoui was in the news. On May 15, the
Times reported that before 9/11 an FBI agent had speculated that
Moussaoui, the suspicious aviation student arrested by the FBI on
immigration charges in the summer of 2001, might have been planning to
fly a plane into the World Trade Center. News reports had previously
indicated that the FBI had not pursued the Moussaoui case vigorously
prior to September 11.
The Phoenix memo, the Moussaoui case--all of this placed the
administration on the defensive for the first time since 9/11, as the
White House fended off suggestions (and accusations) that the federal
government, on Bush's watch, had missed crucial tips and opportunities
to thwart the horrific attacks. Then came news of the August 6 PDB.
The White House reaction was predictable: stonewall. The Bush crew
clearly did not want American citizens to discover that he had been
told that bin Laden was aiming to conduct attacks in the United
States, and they did not want to have to answer the inevitable
questions (such as, what did the president do in response to this
briefing?). So Team Bush started spinning, and its lead twirler was
Rice.
On May 16, she held a briefing for reporters and described the PDB as
"not a warning" and no more than an "analytic report that talked about
[bin Laden's] methods of operations, talked about what he had done
historically, in 1997, 1998. It mentioned hijacking, but hijacking in
the traditional sense, and in a sense said that the most important and
likely thing was they would take over an airliner holding passengers
and demand the release of one of their operatives." She did not refer
to the title or the other elements of the PDB unrelated to hijacking,
including the report that al Qaeda members had apparently set up a
support network in the United States. She did her best to make the PDB
seem rather dull:
"This was generalized information that put together the fact that
there were terrorist groups who were unhappy [with] things that were
going on in the Middle East as well as al Qaeda operatives, which we'd
been watching for a long time, that there was more chatter than usual,
and that we knew that they were people who might try a hijacking. But,
you know, again, that terrorism and hijacking might be associated is
not rocket science."
That ho-hum description hardly matches the actual memo. And several
days after the PDB story broke, Ari Fleischer, then Bush's press
secretary, told reporters that the headline on the document was "Bin
Laden Determined To Strike the United States." That is, he had changed
an "in" to a "the"--an alteration of significance, since the White
House line has been that the pre-9/11 chatter had the administration
looking for attacks on targets outside the United States. A May 19 ,
2002, front-page Washington Post story did report the correct title of
the PDB and did state that the briefing had noted that al Qaeda
members were living or traveling to the United States. But such
reporting was overwhelmed by a White House, PR blitz that maintained
the PDB was no big deal.
Rice, Fleischer and their colleagues succeeded more or less. The issue
of the August 6, 2001, PDB went away. But there was another front to
worry about. In 2002, the House and Senate intelligence committees
were conducting a joint 9/11 inquiry. When the committees requested
access to PDBs received by Bush and Bill Clinton, the Bush White House
said no. As the final report of the joint inquiry noted, "Ultimately,
this bar was extended to the point where CIA personnel were not
allowed to be interviewed regarding the simple process by which the
PDB is prepared."
The joint inquiry did interview intelligence community officials aware
of the contents of the August 6 PDB. And the final report of the
committees, which was released last summer, strongly hinted at what
had been in the PDB. The committees got it right, noting that
intelligence material gathered in early August 2001 had informed
"senior government officials" that bin Laden had wanted to conduct
attacks in the United States and that al Qaeda had a support structure
in the United States. But the committees were unable to portray the
PDB definitively or to provide the title. Only a few reporters picked
up on the obvious hints placed in the final report. For the most part,
the cover-up was still holding.
The independent 9/11 commission finally forced the August 6 PDB out of
Bush's clutches. But first the White House put up a fight, refusing to
allow the full commission to see this and other PDBs. The commission
and the White House negotiated an agreement under which one
commissioner, Jamie Gorelick (a Democrat), and the panel's executive
director, Philip Zelikow (a Republican), were able to review the PDBs
and report back to the other commissioners, after the White House
vetted the notes they had taken. September 11 family members
complained about the arrangement. They believed the full commission
should have access to the PDBs, and they worried about Zelikow's
credibility. (He served with Rice in the first Bush administration,
co-wrote a book with her, worked on the Bush II transition team with
her, and was appointed by George W. Bush to be on the President's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.) This deal did seem to provide
the White House the opportunity to continue to suppress specifics
about the PDB.
But Richard Clarke got in the way. His book and his testimony to the
9/11 commission brought far more attention to the panel and to the
issue of whether the Bush administration had not regarded the al Qaeda
threat seriously before September 11. His dramatic appearance also
highlighted the White House's refusal to permit Rice to testify. With
the White House trying to limit the commission's actions, its attempt
to sit on the August 6 PDB became one more example of the
administration's reluctance to cooperate fully. (Earlier this year,
the White House had opposed the commission's request to add two months
to its end-of-May deadline and had said Bush would not consent to an
interview with all of the panel's commissioners; it then retreated on
each point.)
When Rice did appear, Democratic commission members--particularly
Richard Ben-Veniste--grilled her on the PDB, disclosing information
from the PDB and forcing her to reveal its title. But she tried to
stick to her previous characterization of the PDB, noting it presented
"historical information based on old reporting." That depends on what
the definition of "historical" is. The PDB did run through material
dating back several years to show that "bin Laden since 1997 has
wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S." But it also noted
that al Qaeda was currently maintaining a "support structure" in the
United States. And it cited information obtained in May 2001 that
suggested "that a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S.
planning attacks with explosives." (The White House said it reacted
aggressively to this tip-off and it was unrelated to 9/11.) Rice
repeatedly referred to the PDB as a "historical" document and did not
accept Ben-Veniste's invitation to call for its declassification. When
Ben-Veniste asked Rice if she had ever told Bush before August 6,
2001, of the existence of al Qaeda cells within the United States, she
did not answer the question.
With so much attention focused on the PDB, it became inevitable that
the Bush White House would have to release it. The administration has
established a rather clear pattern. When it comes to sharing
information with the public about controversial matters, it holds the
line as long as it can--until politics dictate otherwise. This is the
SOP for elected officials. But Bush does seem to dig in his heels more
than most. After two years of hiding the PDB, the administration let
it out on a Saturday night--a rather convenient time to make
inconvenient information available.
When the White House released the document, it held a background
briefing with reporters on a conference call. During this sessions,
one White House official said, "The release of this PDB should clear
up the myth that's out there that
somehow the President was warned about September 11th." But the point
of the PDB was not that Bush had been warned specifically about 9/11.
At issue was what he had been told about the prospect of a bin Laden
strike inside the United States, as well as what, if anything, he did
in response. Under questioning from Commissioner Timothy Roemer, a
former Democratic congressman, Rice had said the PDB was "most
certainly an historical document that says, 'Here's how you might
think about al Qaeda.'" But there are no public indications that after
he received this briefing that Bush thought at all about the
possibility of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. Maybe he did.
But during the background briefing, a White House official declined to
discuss how Bush reacted to the August 6 briefing: "That's a
confidential relationship between the briefer who briefs the President
each morning and the President. So not only do we not know, but it's
not the sort of thing that we would discuss."
The day after the PDB was released, Bush held a short media
availability at Fort Hood, Texas, and insisted that the August 6
briefing "said nothing about an attack on America. It talked about
intentions, about somebody who hated America. Well, we knew that."
When asked if he was "satisfied" that every agency had done all it
should have prior to 9/11, Bush redefined the question: "I'm satisfied
that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be
an attack on America at a time and a place of an attack." It was a non
sequitur. No one has suggested he saw such intelligence.
The PDB controversy is not about whether Bush received a specific
warning a month before 9/11. It concerns his administration's attitude
toward al Qaeda and the possibility of domestic attacks prior to
September 11 and whether the White House has truly been willing to see
the full 9/11 tale uncovered and told. The evidence is mounting that
al Qaeda was not the priority it should have been in the first seven
months of Bush's presidency. Yet the White House is unable to
acknowledge that it made a misjudgment. Much of the public might even
believe that it was a natural mistake for a new administration to
underestimate the abilities and reach of a madman hunkered down in
faraway Afghanistan. In a way, such a screw-up may be more forgivable
than Bush and his lieutenants' efforts to cover up information and
prevent the 9/11 commission from completing a thorough examination.
Bush lost the PDB battle, but the war is not over. The 9/11 commission
is working hurriedly to finish its report by the congressionally
mandated date of July 28. No doubt, the commission will have to tussle
with the White House over the declassification of other material. Will
the administration once more attempt to censor significant
information? Could this delay the release of the report?
Declassification fights tied up the congressional intelligence
committees' 9/11 report for eight months. A repeat would push the
unveiling of the 9/11 commission's report until after the election,
but commission officials say they are determined to avoid such a fate.
The 9/11 commission has not constantly inspired confidence, but thanks
to the panel, Rice's PDB cover-up, after two years, caved in. Still,
suspicious minds would be right to wonder: Are there other cover-ups,
which are not yet publicly known, that will end up more to Bush and
Rice's liking?
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