Tenet vividly recalls the White House meeting with Rice and her team. (George W. Bush was on a trip to Boston.) “Rich [Blee] started by saying, ‘There will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months. The attacks will be spectacular. They may be multiple. Al Qaeda’s intention is the destruction of the United States.’” [Condi said:] ‘What do you think we need to do?’ Black responded by slamming his fist on the table, and saying, ‘We need to go on a wartime footing now!’”
“What happened?” I ask Cofer Black. “Yeah. What did happen?” he replies. “To me it remains incomprehensible still. I mean, how is it that you could warn senior people so many times and nothing actually happened? It’s kind of like The Twilight Zone.”
Within in a months of the spectacular attacks, most of the media and nearly all of the right-wing had proclaimed W the straight-talking cowoby king, “a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius“. They busted out the Lee Greenwood songs to celebrate.
All because of what can only be described as a massive security failure on the part of W’s administration.
Omnes Omnibus
You’re going with Smashmourh?
Doug!
@Omnes Omnibus:
I like that song
? Martin
Well, PNAC was fully established in the White House seeking justification for invading Iraq. It was their white whale – they could see nothing else. On 9/11 they got their justification. Rumsfeld brought up the notion of attacking Iraq on the evening of 9/11. By the 13th they were sketching out a plan.
So, in a sense the White House got what they wanted by ignoring those warnings. I don’t think it was deliberate, but I think the neocons were so hyper-focused on Iraq they could see nothing else.
Cermet
Unbelievable! They weren’t just warned by a single briefing but had red flags waving and still refused to act! This was hidden under President Obama? This is a national disgrace and cheney and bush should have been indited and tried for gross negligence at the least; War crimes for sure!
dubo
Not that I wouldn’t easily believe this, I’ll wait for corroboration from someone with more credibility than George fucking Tenet
raven
@? Martin: Same as Pearl Harbor.
Peale
The 9/11 commissioners really were a bunch of sots and weasels, weren’t they.
Bill
I have zero love for Bush The Lesser’s administration, but I have to view this report with some skepticism. Why – on earth – would it take 14 years for information like this to come out? What exactly are the motives of those saying it now?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
One hates to attribute anything like human feeling to Dick Cheney, but one wonders if there is some deep-seated guilt driving the guy’s insanity. He sat by and let 3,000 be killed, but his mind can’t accept that he could have been at fault in any way, so we had to go out and punish those *other* people who were totally more at fault than he was.
catclub
is someone pushing a book? Vividly recalls a conversation from 14 years ago, with correct quotes included?
Villago Delenda Est
The Village needs to be burned to the ground, the earth salted, and all the children of the Villagers sold into slavery.
Benw
@Villago Delenda Est: I was right with you up to the part about the kids.
Starfish
@Bill: The reasonable people waited to see if everything would turn out okay with the garbage fire that was the GWB administration. Now that they have finally figured it out, everyone is running away as quickly as possible except Jeb!
debbie
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I couldn’t disagree more. I think Cheney has a pathological need to always be right, no matter the evidence, but there’s no guilt anywhere in his body, psyche, or DNA.
JPL
They could have locked the doors of the cockpits. The planes might have gone down, but the towers would still stand.
Most of the information in the article is known. There are just more people saying it.
D58826
But But BUT Benghazi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
agorabum
Is this in the 9-11 commission report or the record somewhere? I mean, is this new info or just Tennant digging up some old but forgotten details?
JPL
@D58826: I read a few of the comments at Politico. They are blaming Clinton. I guess they accept the reality that George W. was impotent.
JPL
@agorabum: Most of it is known info. What struck me though is the guilt that the agents deal with. One felt like it was an episode of the twilight zone where you are screaming about doing something and no one does.
earl
So who are we donating to? I set up 40 ea to Russ and Alan Grayson and 50 to Bernie until the election.
Doug!
I agree with the skepticism about some of Tenet’s claims. Still…it all argues against BUSH KEPT US SAFE
D58826
@agorabum: A Newsweek reporter wrote a book in 2012 laying out the entire case. So it’s not ‘new’ but the fact that it will be a Showtime special; gives it new visibility and added detail. The reporter is Kurt Eichenwald and the book is ‘500 Days:Secrets and lines in the War on Terror’.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Doug!: Sometimes you worry me slightly.
catclub
@Peale:
Bush still could only ‘testify’ [was he even sworn in?] to them with Cheney holding his hand.
dollared
Cofer Black pounding on the table and asking for a state of war NOW!!!!!!!! …..? I almost forgive Condi for just rolling her eyes and showing him out.
All he had to do was threaten to make this threat assessment public through a leaky channel. Instead he tried to bully them, and they – predictably – resisted.
D58826
@catclub: The testimony was unsworn and no transcript was made.
The mind boggles at an 11 hour televised grilling of Bush by a hostile Congressional committee:-)
The Golux
@dubo:
Richard Clarke was trying like hell to get their attention as early as January 25, 2001 (five days into Bush’s term), so there’s that.
D58826
@The Golux: Well we have the August 6th PDB on the record. That alone should have been a light bulb moment even for Bush.
oldgold
Why is Condi continuing to be held in such high esteem? She is President of Stanford, on Masters Board, member of football selection committee, etc.. It seems as though she should be shunned for her incompetence.
Betty Cracker
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I’m gonna defend Doug! here — not a big fan of Smash Mouth in general, but that was a cool song with a catchy retro vibe. Sometimes it takes me a while to place his references, but I got this one immediately!
Cervantes
@oldgold:
The day may come, regrettably, when Stanford elevates Rice to the presidency, but it has not yet.
Cervantes
@D58826:
!
Cervantes
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Not true for everyone always?
moderateindy
While I totally agree that they completely ignored the warnings, and didn’t do crap to try to put the apparatus that they had into action, but the truth is I’m not sure that putting themselves on high alert where Alqeada was concerned would have mattered.
In retrospect they had more than enough info, but in fact, in general they had such an overload of info, that it couldn’t be properly looked at. They had enough pieces of the puzzle to know that some of the hijackers were terrorists, but there simply weren’t enough people to look at all the intel, and do things like track those people. Lots of data isn’t the same as lots of info.
That being said, claiming that you kept America safe is like saying to your wife, I’ve always been faithful to you, outside of that time in Vegas with those three hookers.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
No, one does not wonder any such thing!
Betty Cracker
@moderateindy: True enough. What drives me bat-shit is the suspicion that if the 9/11 attacks had happened on Gore’s watch under the exact same circumstances, he would have been hounded out of office for negligence, and Democrats in general would have been widely considered unfit for office for a generation due to that blunder. And that’s without Gore compounding the damage by starting a pointless, ruinous war. IOKIYR.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@debbie:
I’m picturing the typical narcissist’s self-defense, where the insecurity and self-hatred is so deep that they literally cannot accept any criticism without falling apart. So of course any self-doubting thought gets immediately channeled into blaming someone else. And the more damaging the incident is that causes the instant of self-doubt, the bigger the narcissistic blowback is.
D58826
@Betty Cracker: Don’t really have to speculate on that. We are going on 4 years in the GOP Benghazi witch hunt.
BillinGlendaleCA
@D58826: Sure but our embassies had never been attacked before, especially under Bush. He kept our embassies safe.
[/heavy dose of snark]
D58826
something really bad happening in Paris. Police report at least 18 dead in ‘multiple’ attacks both gunfire and explosions.
AnotherBruce
@catclub: No, he wasn’t sworn in, Bush and Cheney specified that they would not answer any questions under oath.
SFAW
@AnotherBruce:
I think they also demanded that they be allowed to cross their fingers when “testifying,” and be allowed to pinky-swear when appropriate.
SFAW
@oldgold:
GMAFB. What incompetence? EVERYONE KNOWS that it was Jamie Gorelick’s fault that the intel agencies (including the FBI, if they can be called that, these days) were physically unable to communicate with each other. To do so, there would have to have been someone who had some title like “National Security Advisor” — someone whose job it would be to coordinate the intelligence-gathering function across agencies — and we know that no such person existed, all because of Jamie “Santa’s Spawn” Gorelick’s dismantling of the security apparatus in the USofA.
Steeplejack
@Doug!:
Love that song!
Villago Delenda Est
@Benw: Chris Wallace. Luke Russert.
Have to do the kids.
someguy
One would have hoped that upon those warnings, they’d have grounded the planes and started making us take our shoes off, passed the Patriot Act, established a domestic intelligence apparatus and initiated NSA’s vast domestic collection program. instead they waited until after 9/11 to do all that stuff to make us safer. Bastards! They knew!
moderateindy
@Betty Cracker: Nooooo…. the Republicans are perfectly reasonable people, and would never do anything like that. These are people that fairly, and without bias, analyze the facts and discover such truths as: Ronald Reagan’s policies were responsible for Clinton’s economic results, and Barney Frank is the reason for the housing, and financial collapse. And yes, I have heard both of those arguments from cons in the past.