"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." The CIA's famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. But months earlier, starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and urgently began to warn the White House that an attack was coming.
By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIA's counterterrorism center, "it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die." "There were real plots being manifested," Cofer's former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years. "The world felt like it was on the edge of eruption. In this time period of June and July, the threat continues to rise. Terrorists were disappearing [as if in hiding, in preparation for an attack]. Camps were closing. Threat reportings on the rise." The crisis came to a head on July 10. The critical meeting that took place that day was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006. Tenet also wrote about it in general terms in his 2007 memoir At the Center of the Storm.
The drama of failed warnings began when Tenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called "the Blue Sky paper" to Bush's new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threat—"getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan." "And the word back," says Tenet, "'was 'we're not quite ready to consider this. We don't want the clock to start ticking.'" (Translation: they did not want a paper trail to show that they'd been warned.) Black, a charismatic ex-operative who had helped the French arrest the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, says the Bush team just didn't get the new threat: "I think they were mentally stuck back eight years [before]. They were used to terrorists being Euro-lefties—they drink champagne by night, blow things up during the day, how bad can this be? And it was a very difficult sell to communicate the urgency to this."
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353
Tenet vividly recalls the White House meeting with Rice and her team. (George W. Bush was on a trip to Boston.) "Rich [Blee] started by saying, 'There will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months. The attacks will be spectacular. They may be multiple. Al Qaeda's intention is the destruction of the United States.'" [Condi said:] 'What do you think we need to do?' Black responded by slamming his fist on the table, and saying, 'We need to go on a wartime footing now!'"
"What happened?" I ask Cofer Black. "Yeah. What did happen?" he replies. "To me it remains incomprehensible still. I mean, how is it that you could warn senior people so many times and nothing actually happened? It's kind of like The Twilight Zone."
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353
Here's the problem, without knowing WHAT was going to happen, what do you do to stop it? What information is here that would have enabled anyone to do anything about anything?
Quote from: fsquid on November 20, 2015, 11:33:50 AM
Here's the problem, without knowing WHAT was going to happen, what do you do to stop it? What information is here that would have enabled anyone to do anything about anything?
Did you not read it?
QuoteTenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called "the Blue Sky paper" to Bush's new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threat—"getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan."
Quote from: finehoe on November 20, 2015, 12:55:43 PM
Quote from: fsquid on November 20, 2015, 11:33:50 AM
Here's the problem, without knowing WHAT was going to happen, what do you do to stop it? What information is here that would have enabled anyone to do anything about anything?
Did you not read it?
QuoteTenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called "the Blue Sky paper" to Bush's new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threat—"getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan."
Rush Limcheese blames Bill Clinton for 9/11?
^^^ Yeah, IMO Clinton had some fault with 911 as did Bush. Hell, even Clinton himself said that he regret not doing more to kill OBL, so nevermind what "Rush Limcheese" said...Many forget, Bush haven't even been in there a full eight months before the attack. I remember a documentary on 10 failed assassination attempt on Bin Laden; Clinton had many chances, he literally had him in the crosshairs; Bush's most notable failed attempt was when OBL escaped in the mountains at Tora Bora.