By Andy Sher, Washington BureauWASHINGTON -- Nearly three years before terrorists flew hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., was urging Clinton administration officials to prepare Americans for the potential attacks by Osama bin Laden here in the United States.
"If we are going to be in or expecting more of these kinds of attacks, both domestically and with regard to our embassies abroad and our other targets abroad, we need to know that," the senator told then-FBI Director Louis Freeh.
"And the American people need to get ready for that," Sen. Thompson said. "And they need to be convinced that we need to do the things necessary to confront that."
Sen. Thompson's comments were made during a Sept. 3, 1998, Senate Judiciary Committee meeting. Days before, the Clinton administration ordered missiles fired into Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for suspected al-Qaida-sponsored bombings of U.S embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Today, there is a furor over what President Bush and his administration knew before Sept. 11, 2001, about potential terror attacks.
Sen. Thompson, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it isn't fair to blame President Bush for a system he "inherited." The senators said not enough was done previously.
"That's one of the unfortunate things about what's happening right now," Sen. Thompson said. "We're focusing in on a single matter when we've ignored the elephant in the living room for some years. We've had public hearings. We've had public statements by public officials of all kinds, describing threats and potential terrorist vulnerabilities.
"It's hard to get people's attention until something actually happens," Sen. Thompson said.
Sen. Thompson said the latest flap is "a tempest in a teapot."
"I've seen a dozen reports of serious kinds of threats, not specific in terms of time and place," he said. "Most of the time nothing ever happens, and they're so general you can't take any specific action on them. The real issue here is why didn't we have more information and why didn't we have people connecting dots?"
The problems include inadequate funding for intelligence operations, insufficient use of "human intelligence" and an intelligence culture that at times has been "too satisfied" with itself, he said.
The intelligence committees will delve into the matter, but it should not be a "witch hunt," he said.
"I think individual members will continue to make irresponsible statements," Sen. Thompson said. "You can't stop dogs from chasing cars."