:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 4.11.2004 ::

:: The August 6 PDB ::

Pre 9/11 memo warned Bush
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
From correspondents in Crawford, Texas

A SECURITY memo sent to President George W Bush about one month before the September 11 attacks warned that al-Qaeda had penetrated the United States and of possible plane hijackings, the White House said today.

The Bush administration released the memorandum under pressure from the official inquiry into the 2001 strikes by Osama bin Laden's group as the president's counter-terrorism strategy before September 11 faces growing scrutiny.

The memo, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US", said that in mid-2001 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents suspected al-Qaeda was preparing air hijackings and had been studying federal buildings in New York.

The memo was declassified and released virtually intact, with only the names of three intelligence sources blacked out.

Bush is spending the Easter holiday weekend at his Texas ranch. He was also on holiday at the ranch when the memorandum was sent.

F U L L T E X T :

The following is the text of the August 6, 2001, memo sent to President Bush and marked "For the President Only".

Three names have been replaced by XXXXXX for security reasons.

Osama bin Laden Determined To Strike in US

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Osama bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. bin Laden implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Centre bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington according to a XXXXXX service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an XXXXXX service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.

Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation.

Although bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. bin Laden associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al-Qaeda members - including some who are US citizens - have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1900s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a XXXXXX service in 1998 saying that bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."

ALSO
From TIME.com:
Probing the Memo

But the report, which was presented to Bush while he was on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, seemed to be written by a CIA eager to sound an alarm. Citing clandestine and foreign-government sources, it asserts that the terrorist network had set up shop in the U.S., was carrying out suspicious activity, hoped to strike Washington, might even be planning to hijack airliners and was the focus of 70 FBI field investigations. The PDB also contains two new pieces of specific information that are likely to prompt more questions. One was a mention of "recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." The Administration said last week it had followed up on that report and found that the suspicious characters turned out to be Yemeni tourists. Another item described a threat phoned in to the U.S. embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 in which the caller said a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives. The caller gave no more specifics, and federal investigators never found a link between the tip and 9/11, the White House said.

Still, what commissioners will no doubt ask is why, given the memo's strong assertions that bin Laden was bound and determined to strike inside the U.S., the warning didn't spur more action from the President. Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democrat, told TIME that he and like-minded panelists intend to press ahead with questions on "what occurred [inside the White House] between Aug. 6 and Sept. 11." Panel members will probably ask why the President didn't cut his vacation short or order emergency meetings with Robert Mueller, then the new FBI director. "Once you see the PDB, given what you already know," says Ben-Veniste, "you'll have to make a determination of whether it was exclusively historical or whether there was information there ... indicating an attack."

posted by me

:: 9:52:00 AM [+] ::
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