What an Engaged President Would Have Done

What an engaged president would have done
Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The part of the President's Daily Briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, that the White House declassified and made available Saturday included the item titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

It was originally provided to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, presumably that day.

The members of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States had seen the document before and urged strongly that it be made available to the American public. The foundation of that desire was to pursue one of the objectives of the commission: to learn and inform the American people of who in the government knew what when, and whether what was known could have served as a basis for action to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Bush's position is that the briefing in question did not provide him with sufficient specifics to cause him to do anything other than to read and note the information. The report cited as the CIA's sources "clandestine, foreign government and media reports." It includes the statement that the FBI was conducting some 70 bin-Laden-related investigations throughout the United States.

At the same time, the brief included reference to much information that could be described as flashing red lights: a bin Laden desire to retaliate in the United States; planning for a terrorist strike in the United States, including at Los Angeles International Airport; al-Qaida members residing in and traveling to the United States; a bin Laden cell in New York recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks; talk of hijacking a U.S. aircraft; and FBI information indicating "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."

There is nothing in the brief that says, "Al-Qaida members are preparing to hijack four U.S. aircraft Sept. 11 and fly them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon." Fair enough.

But there does seem to be enough to cause an alert, engaged president to convene an urgent meeting of the appropriate members of his Cabinet and the heads of the FBI and the CIA and get right on top of the issue. One immediate response on his part could have been to ask for a briefing on the state of the 70 FBI investigations, including a sense of the level of cooperation between the FBI and CIA, to ensure that decision-makers had the advantage of coordinated analysis of the al-Qaida threat.

Mr. Bush didn't act, however, and the attack took place five weeks later.

One point of picking over the bones of what happened in Crawford, Texas, on Aug. 6, 2001, nearly three years ago, is to measure whether the president was on the ball. From the brief released Saturday and subsequent actions, it appears that he wasn't.

It is possible -- even likely -- that President Clinton before him wasn't on top of the al-Qaida threat either. Drawing that conclusion, however, doesn't resolve the matter.

The other question, obviously relevant to Nov. 2, 2004, is whether Mr. Bush has learned enough since August 2001 to be entrusted with America's security for another four years. The returns are still out on that, as they are on whether Sen. John Kerry would do a better job. It is worth observing at this point that White House secretiveness -- obliging commission members to squeeze both testimony and documentation out of the administration -- plus White House efforts to pass the buck now to the FBI and the CIA on pre-Sept. 11 events, do not build a case for Mr. Bush's promise in terms of assuring future national security.