Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice hidden

Plain and simple -- Inside job!

Tenet Warned Congress in February 2001 About al-Qaeda
Tenet Warned Congress in February 2001 About al-Qaeda
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Monday 02 October 2006

In February 2001, seven months before 9/11, George Tenet, then the director of the CIA, testified before Congress and told lawmakers that the single greatest threat to the United States was Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, according to a little known copy of Tenet's Congressional testimony.

During his report to Congress, Tenet eerily described a scenario that seven months later would become a grim reality.

"Terrorists are also becoming more operationally adept and more technically sophisticated in order to defeat counter-terrorism measures. For example, as we have increased security around government and military facilities, terrorists are seeking out "softer" targets that provide opportunities for mass casualties," Tenet said, according to a transcript of his testimony. "Employing increasingly advanced devices and using strategies such as simultaneous attacks, the number of people killed ... Usama bin Ladin and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat. Since 1998, Bin Ladin has declared all U.S. citizens legitimate targets of attack. As shown by the bombing of our embassies in Africa in 1998 and his Millennium plots last year, he is capable of planning multiple attacks with little or no warning."

But instead of heeding the CIA's warnings about al-Qaeda, the Bush administration brushed it off, and instead turned its attention toward Iraq, claiming Saddam Hussein was stockpiling a cache of weapons of mass destruction that threatened the security of the United States and Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East, and urged Tenet's CIA to find the evidence to support the administration's agenda.

With Monday's publication of Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial," questions about what the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 threats and when they knew it have once again resurfaced.

In February 2001, while Tenet was building a case against bin Laden and al-Qaeda, Colin Powell, then secretary of state, was trying to steer the White House away from taking action against Iraq, which administration officials immediately began to focus on just one month after Bush was sworn into office.

Behind the scenes that month, hardliners in the Bush administration were privately discussing ways to remove Saddam Hussein from power, virtually ignoring credible intelligence about the pending threat posed by al-Qaeda.

Privately, Powell disagreed with the administration's stance on Iraq. In interviews, Powell said that the US had successfully "contained" Iraq in the years since the first Gulf War and that, because of economic sanctions placed on the country, Iraq was unable to obtain WMD.

"We have been able to keep weapons from going into Iraq," Powell said during a February 11, 2001, interview with "Face the Nation." "We have been able to keep the sanctions in place to the extent that items that might support weapons of mass destruction development have had some controls on them ... it's been quite a success for ten years ..."

Moreover, during a meeting with Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, in February 2001 - the same month Tenet testified before Congress about bin Laden and al-Qaeda - Powell said the UN, the US and its allies "have succeeded in containing Saddam Hussein and his ambitions."

Saddam's "forces are about one-third their original size. They don't really possess the capability to attack their neighbors the way they did ten years ago," Powell said during the meeting with Fischer, a transcript of which can be found here.

"Containment has been a successful policy, and I think we should make sure that we continue it until such time as Saddam Hussein comes into compliance with the agreements he made at the end of the (Gulf) war."

Powell, who a year later would publicly support the administration's case for war, added that Iraq is "not threatening America."

Indeed, a day after Powell's "Face the Nation" interview, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in an interview with Fox News that "Iraq is probably not a nuclear threat at the present time," according to a copy of the transcript of Rumsfeld's February 12, 2001, interview with the cable news channel.

By mid-February 2001, the sudden shift in policy toward Iraq was apparent. Bush administration officials went from describing Iraq as being a threat only to its own people to now posing an imminent threat to the world. By focusing heavily on regime change in Iraq, the White House ignored documented warnings about the al-Qaeda terrorist organization from career intelligence officers.

Even after 9/11, the administration still could not shake off its obsession with launching a war against Iraq. Immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, CIA intelligence reports on Iraq radically changed from previous months, which said Iraq posed no immediate threat to the US, to suddenly showing that Iraq was stockpiling chemical and biological weapons and was in hot pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration, linking Iraq to 9/11, seized upon the reports to build public support for the war and used the information to eventually justify a pre-emptive strike against the country in March 2003.

Intelligence reports released by the CIA in 2001 and 2002 and more than 100 interviews with top officials in the Bush administration, including Powell, Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, given to various Senate and Congressional committees and media outlets prior to 9/11 show that the US had never believed Saddam Hussein to be an imminent threat other than to his own people. Moreover, the CIA reported in February 2001 that Iraq was "probably" pursuing chemical and biological weapons programs, but that it had no direct evidence that Iraq had actually obtained such weapons.

"We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since (Operation) Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs, although given its past behavior, this type of activity must be regarded as likely," CIA director Tenet said in a agency report to Congress on February 7, 2001.

"We assess that since the suspension of [United Nations] inspections in December of 1998, Baghdad has had the capability to reinitiate both its [chemical and biological weapons] programs ... without an inspection monitoring program, however, it is more difficult to determine if Iraq has done so," Tenet added. "Moreover, the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN at known and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating, according to the 2001 CIA report. Having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the UN or the US to accurately assess the current state of Iraq's WMD programs."

In October 2002, when the CIA issued another report, it told a dramatically different story, that this time included details of Iraq's alleged vast chemical and biological weapons.

The October 2002 CIA report into Iraq's WMD identifies sarin, mustard gas, VX and numerous other chemical weapons that the CIA claimed Iraq had been stockpiling over the years, in stark contrast to earlier reports by Tenet that said the agency had no evidence to support such claims. And unlike testimony Tenet gave a year earlier, in which he said the CIA had no direct evidence of Iraq's WMD programs, the intelligence information in the 2002 report, Tenet said, was rock solid.

"This information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence," Tenet said during a CIA briefing in February, a transcript of which can be found here.

"It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources," Tenet said, in statements and intelligence that would later be proven false.

Rumsfeld's attitude toward Iraq also changed. Rumsfeld testified before the House Armed Services Committee on September 18, 2002 - 19 months after he said Iraq was not a nuclear threat - that Iraq was close to acquiring the materials needed to build a nuclear bomb.

"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons," Rumsfeld testified before the committee.

"I would not be so certain," Rumsfeld said. "He has, at this moment, stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and is pursuing nuclear weapons."

Rumsfeld never offered any evidence to support his claims, but his dire warning of a looming nuclear catastrophe was enough to convince most lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, to take swift action against Iraq. Shortly after his remarks before the House Armed Services Committee, Congress passed a resolution authorizing President Bush to use "all appropriate means" to remove Saddam from power.
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Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.

BBB, I wish you would give LINKS to these stories.

I know the first is from the Washington Post, but where are the others from?


Did the original say what sources it is based on?

Deb, I just read one from the NYTimes....The WaPost is silent for now. WHOOOEEEE! I think Condi is a liar as the rest of the administration is lying about what they knew. I would give you a link but I am off to bed after an exhausting day. Hopefully BBB will give you one or two. The admin has been in trouble for sometime...this is the icing on the cake.

News reports today point to the meeting actually having occurred.

The new defense is Condi did take it seriously and requested Tenet talk to Rumsfeld and Ashcroft after this meeting she doesn't remember.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/washington/03rivals.html?hp&ex=1159934400&en=a8d116e7a90c4c5f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

BBB
The good ole "I don't recall" excuse is not going to work any more for these liars. They all are toast, including the liars in chief.

Hey Wabbit, the link you want is:

http://www.truthout.org/index.htm

A great and reliable site.

BBB

Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received al Qaida warning prior to 9/11
Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY, WARREN P. STROBEL and JOHN WALCOTT
McClatchy Newspapers
10/3/06

WASHINGTON - 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.

Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel's executive director and the principal author of its report, who's now Rice's top adviser.

A new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post alleges that Rice failed to take the July 2001 warning seriously when it was delivered at a White House meeting by Tenet, Cofer Black, then the agency's chief of top counterterrorism, and a third CIA official whose identity remains protected.

Rice's deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, who became national security adviser after she became secretary of state, and Rice's top counterterrorism aide, Richard Clarke, also were present.

Woodward wrote that Tenet and Black considered the briefing the "starkest warning they had given the White House" on the threat posed by Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. But, he wrote, the pair felt as if Rice gave them "the brush-off."

Speaking to reporters late Sunday en route to the Middle East, Rice said she had no recollection of what she called "the supposed meeting."

"What I'm quite certain of, is that it was not a meeting in which I was told that there was an impending attack and I refused to respond," she said.

Ashcroft, who resigned as attorney general on Nov. 9, 2004, told the Associated Press on Monday that it was "disappointing" that he never received the briefing, either.

But on Monday evening, Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack issued a statement confirming that she'd received the CIA briefing "on or around July 10" and had asked that it be given to Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.

"The information presented in this meeting was not new, rather it was a good summary from the threat reporting from the previous several weeks," McCormack said. "After this meeting, Dr. Rice asked that this same information be briefed to Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Ashcroft. That briefing took place by July 17."

Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman, said he had no information "about what may or may not have been briefed" to Rumsfeld at Rice's request.

David Ayres, who was Ashcroft's chief of staff at the Justice Department, said that the former attorney general also has no recollection of a July 17, 2001, terrorist threat briefing. Later, Ayres said that Ashcroft could recall only a July 5 briefing on threats to U.S. interests abroad.

He said Ashcroft doesn't remember any briefing that summer that indicated that al-Qaida was planning to attack within the United States.

The CIA briefing didn't provide the exact timing or nature of a possible attack, nor did it predict whether it was likely to take place in the United States or overseas, said three former senior intelligence officials.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because the report remains highly classified.

The briefing "didn't say within the United States," said one former senior intelligence official. "It said on the United States, which could mean a ship, an embassy or inside the United States."

In the briefing, Tenet warned in very strong terms that intelligence from a variety of sources indicated that bin Laden's terrorist network was planning an attack on a U.S. target in the near future, said one of the officials.

"The briefing was intended to `connect the dots' contained in other intelligence reports and paint a very clear picture of the threat posed by bin Laden," said the official, who described the tone of the report as "scary."

It isn't clear what action, if any, the administration took in response, but officials said Rumsfeld was focused mostly on his plans to remake the Army into a smaller, high-tech force and deploy a national ballistic missile defense system.

Nor is it clear why the 9/11 commission never reported the briefing, which the intelligence officials said Tenet outlined to commission members Ben-Veniste and Zelikow in secret testimony at CIA headquarters. The State Department confirmed that the briefing materials were "made available to the 9/11 Commission, and Director Tenet was asked about this meeting when interviewed by the 9/11 Commission."

The three former senior intelligence officials, however, said Tenet raised the matter with the panel himself, displayed slides from the PowerPoint presentation and offered to testify on the matter in public.

Ben-Veniste confirmed to McClatchy Newspapers that Tenet outlined for the 9/11 commission the July 10 briefing to Rice in secret testimony in January 2004. He referred questions about why the commission omitted any mention of the briefing in its report to Zelikow, the report's main author. Zelikow didn't respond to e-mail and telephone queries from McClatchy Newspapers.

Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Ben-Veniste and the former senior intelligence officials all challenged some aspects of Woodward's account of the briefing given to Rice, including assertions that she failed to react to the warning and that it concerned an imminent attack inside the United States.

Clarke told McClatchy Newspapers that Rice focused in particular on the possible threat to President Bush at an upcoming summit meeting in Genoa, Italy, and promised to quickly schedule a high-level White House meeting on al-Qaida. That meeting took place on September 4, 2001.

Ben-Veniste said the commission was never told that Rice had brushed off the warning. According to Tenet, he said, Rice "understood the level of urgency he was communicating."

McClatchy Newspapers correspondents Matt Stearns and Drew Brown contributed to this report.

Records Show Tenet Briefed Rice on Al Qaeda Threat
Poor Condi, her "I don't remember" can't protect her lies from being exposed. ---BBB