Yesterday I asked what would motivate Tenet to lie the the 9/11 Commission about something as obviously exculpatory as a hair-on-fire briefing to top White House officials just months before the September attacks. It appears that Woodward’s book was telling the truth:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The State Department’s disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don’t remember the warning.
One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10” that “connected the dots” in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.
To nobody’s surprise it turns out that Condi lied through her teeth about being briefed on the threat. And Rumsfeld and Ashcroft to boot, which paints George Tenet in a much more resopnsible and thorough light than before. So why did Tenet hide this information from the 9/11 Commission? He didn’t:
One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10” that “connected the dots” in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.
Somehow this minor bit of information never made it into the final 9/11 Commission Report. Somebody needs to ask the two commissioners most responsible, Philip Zelikow and Richard Ben-Veniste, why that is.
***Update***
More. Go read.
capelza
So Ashcroft did know ?….it has always struck me as odd that it hadn’t received more attention that Ashcroft quit flying commercial air carriers in July 2001…
Pb
BooMan has a long and detailed post about all of this on Daily Kos.
capelza
Thanks Pb…that is a great post.
And he does go into good detail and questions Ashcroft’s official explanation. That has bugged me for years.
sglover
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I always had the impression that Kofer Black describes, that for all they hype, the vaunted 9/11 wasn’t really too keen to look into all aspects of the matter all that deeply.
One consequence: There are all sorts of nutjob 9/11 conspiracy theories that are gaining traction. I fear that eventually, these will make Oliver Stone look like a voice of sober reason. My favorite “evidence” is that the planes that hit the WTC didn’t have windows, ergo, they weren’t really airliners. Evidently the guiding geniuses at Mossad/CIA/Mason HQ overlooked this minor detail, when they were hatching their schemes….
sglover
Oops, damn… “vaunted 9/11 commission“, I meant.
Vladi G
On Olberman last night, the intelligence analyst they had on seems to think it was just an oversight. He couldn’t think of any other explanation.
Dreggas
Vladi,
Perhaps he should start thinking the unthinkable
Keith
Wonder if this’ll show up in the Phase 2(B/.5) report that we’ve all been hearing so much about.
Not…bloody…likely.
Tsulagi
Of course Condi lied. From the woman who has given you “there is no other purpose for these aluminum tubes,” “nobody could have thought of using airplanes as weapons,” “we were tired of swatting flies,” and you could go on.
I was hoping after the 60 Minutes Woodward segment Condi would have been there for a little rebuttal. Had to laugh when I saw neither she nor even a stooge was there for that.
Maybe they remembered the Richard Clarke interview on 60 Minutes in 04 when he said right after 9/11 the president pulled him aside and told him to find a link to Iraq. Clarke told him there wasn’t one, but Bushy said find the connection. Of course, not that he was implying to make shit up. Not the honor and integrity president.
Anyway, after Stahl’s interview with Clarke, an admin stooge said the meeting never took place. Clarke was simply a liar promoting a book. When Stahl said she had two people who were present at the meeting verify what Clarke said, the stooge just sputtered “I stand by what I was told.” Priceless.
Condi may be a liar, but she’s not stupid. Instead, she’s given indignant “I don’t recall” answers; her out. Wait to see if anyone pops up to verify she was told. Now that they have, if she’s called on it she’ll just say the 9/11 commission was told but nobody thought it was important, just like that PDB with the yawn title of BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S.
Anderson
I’m still favoring Rice over Tenet here (holding my nose). Clarke says nothing about this meeting in his book, and is pro-Tenet/anti-Rice. Tenet has ample reason to rehab himself any way he can (one word: “slam-dunk”).
What does Cofer Black say?
BlogReeder
It’s stuff like this that’s infuriating. The way this is written, it looks like Tenet had the time, place, method of the attack. No way. This is just pre-election sensationalism. The commission has already been over this.
Notice the 30 overseas targets?
MMM
It’s Christmas time in Washington….
time for a hero, or at least a revolution