Bush denies he ignored warning
Posted on 05/18/2002 11:32:42 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Bush denies he ignored warning
Bush, supporters assail critics; Democrats press for disclosure
05/18/2002
WASHINGTON - President Bush lashed out Friday at critics who suggest that he ignored early warnings before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, declaring that if he had known about the suicide hijackings, he would have done anything to thwart them.
"I take my job as the commander in chief very seriously, that my most important job is to protect America and to protect our homeland," Mr. Bush said at a Rose Garden ceremony honoring the U.S. Air Force Academy football team.
It was the first time the president publicly addressed the disclosure that the CIA had alerted him Aug. 6 to the possibility of terrorist airline hijackings. But others fanned out to defend him and his administration Friday, including first lady Laura Bush, who issued a statement of support while traveling in Hungary.
AP President Bush makes remarks about the attacks on Sept. 11 while addressing cadets and Air Force officers from the U.S. Air Force Academy. |
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appearing on NBC's Today Show, said a "great many" terrorist plots had been broken up around the world. But he provided no details, other than a planned attack on U.S. naval facilities in Singapore.
"The advantage a terrorist has is a terrorist can attack at any time at any place using any conceivable technique," he said, "and it is not physically possible to defend in every place, at every moment of the day or night."
And Vice President Dick Cheney, who had warned Democrats against politicizing the issue Thursday night, planned to appear on several Sunday morning news shows to press the administration's case.
But political fallout over the question of what warning signs were available before the attacks continued, with Democrats, in particular, raising questions.
Gephardt critical
"Our nation is not well served when the charge of partisan politics is leveled at those who simply seek information that the American people need and deserve to know," said House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo.
"The American people deserve a full accounting and explanation of intelligence warnings to the Bush administration in the days leading up to Sept. 11 and what was done to act on that information."
While Mr. Bush addressed the controversy in the Rose Garden, he did not take any reporters' questions, nor has he for several days.
He insisted that he had done all he could to secure the nation from attack, given what he knew but portrayed the nation's capital as a "place where second-guessing has become second nature."
"The American people know this about me and my national security team and my administration: Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people," the president said.
Looking ahead, he reiterated his long-standing warning that the country faces a long tough war against terrorism.
"This is an enemy that's not going to quit," he said.
On Capitol Hill, though, many Democrats and some Republicans are increasingly looking back to determine how the CIA, FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies could have better connected the various "dots" of information to foresee and prevent the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
"The intelligence world is full of dots," quipped White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, trying to deflect the criticism.
In a series of briefings over the last two days, Mr. Fleischer and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have been adamant that there was nothing in the Aug. 6 CIA briefing that would have led the president, or any of his top aides, to believe that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack airliners and slam them into buildings.
Ms. Rice also said that neither she nor the president recalls knowing before Sept. 11 about a July memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix, warning that bin Laden followers might be training in U.S. flight schools.
But she said aides in various agencies were still searching records to determine "whether or not it's possible that it somehow came to him."
"I personally became aware of it just recently," she said.
Administration officials have said that the Aug. 6 information indicated that any hijackings would be "traditional" and did not suggest that planes could be used as missiles.
Phoenix memo
But some critics have questioned whether that briefing could have been combined with information such as the Phoenix memo to indicate that suicide hijackings could have been in the works.
Another of the "dots" that some say could have shed light on the plot was revealed Friday: a 1999 report suggesting that al-Qaeda suicide bombers could crash an explosives-packed airplane into the White House, the Pentagon or the headquarters of the CIA.
The report, titled, "The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why," was prepared for CIA use by a research division of the Library of Congress. It also noted that at least one Islamic religious leader had declared "the time is not far off" when the White House would be destroyed by a nuclear bomb.
Mr. Fleischer said that the report "is not a piece of intelligence information suggesting that we have information about a specific plan. It describes their evil, their thinking."
A former senior official in the Clinton administration, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that administration had been aware of the report but that it "certainly was not a piece of intelligence."
Mr. Fleischer also confirmed Friday that the National Security Council had outlined a strategy to attack the al-Qaeda network, which was awaiting Ms. Rice's final approval to send to the president when the terrorists attacked on Sept. 11.
"The direction to the Pentagon was to develop military options for the purpose of dismantling al-Qaeda, not for the purpose of, as the president put it, swatting at flies," Mr. Fleischer said.
After the attacks, he said, the strategy became the basis for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and other counter-terrorist missions.
Damaging leak
Mr. Fleischer also acknowledged that the leak of the classified Aug. 6 briefing had been damaging and had sent a "terrible signal at a time when we should be united as a nation."
He chastised Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., for a speech on the Senate floor, seeking information about what Mr. Bush had known before Sept. 11.
She "did not call the White House," Mr. Fleischer said, complaining that the senator has been divisive in her comments.
Taking the Senate floor on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton had pointedly pressed the president.
"The president knew what?" she asked. "My constituents would like to know the answer to that and many other questions not to blame to president, or any other American, but just to know."
E-mail bhillman@dallasnews.com
Something like that.
Maybe she just was cranky because....oh, never mind.
That's the $64 M question, isn't it?
Everybody knows it's all politics. The democrats are extremely worried about the fall elections. Daschle is awfully concerned he won't control the senate come January. Then Bush will get hearings for his judicial appointments. They're scared to death of that.
And what I don't understand is why Mr. Bush cuts the Demos so much slack. They are out to get him, and he treats them like they were ladies and gentlemen. Obviously, he is a gentleman, but enough is enough. Time to get tough.
What was "not a piece of intelligence" -- the report or the Clinton administration? I'm confused.
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