Condi's Cover-up Caves In
by David Corn
April 13, 2004
The Nation
A small but significant White House cover-up fell apart
this past weekend.
When the White House finally released the August 6, 2001
President's Daily Brief, it marked the end of a two-year
effort on the part of the Bush administration to prevent the
public from learning that a month before the 9/11 attacks--and
weeks after the U.S. government had collected "chatter"
indicating Osama bin Laden was planning a major strike--Bush
received information indicating that al Qaeda was intent on
mounting attacks within the United States.
Condoleezza Rice was instrumental in the attempt to keep
the contents of this PDB--which was entitled "Bin Ladin
Determined To Strike in US" and which noted that al Qaeda
"apparently maintains a support structure [in the United
States] that could aid attacks" and that the FBI had detected
"suspicious activity...consistent with preparations for
hijackings or other types of attacks"--from becoming known.
And it is obvious why it was so important for her and the
White House to smother this PDB.
The existence of the August 6 PDB was first revealed by CBS
News' David Martin on May 15, 2002. But Martin's report only
referred to the PDB in one sentence that noted the PDB had
warned that an attack by bin Laden could involve hijacking
U.S. aircraft. CBS did not report the title of the briefing or
any other material it contained. A media furor erupted after
the White House acknowledged Bush had received this PDB. The
day after the CBS News report, The New York Times carried a
front-page story with a headline declaring, "Bush Was Warned
Bin Laden Wanted To Hijack Planes."
The disclosure of the PDB came at an especially awkward
time for the White House. Two weeks earlier, news reports
revealed that an FBI agent in Phoenix in July 2001 had written
a classified memo suggesting that a group of Middle Eastern
aviation students might be linked to terrorists (including bin
Laden) and that the FBI had not taken any action in response
to this agent's investigation. The "Phoenix memo" received a
flood of media coverage, and the Bush administration--which
heretofore had not had to field any tough questions about the
government's pre-9/11 performance-- was confronted with
queries about the negligent handling of the agent's prescient
report. At the same time, the case of Zacarias Moussaoui was
in the news. On May 15, the Times reported that before 9/11 an
FBI agent had speculated that Moussaoui, the suspicious
aviation student arrested by the FBI on immigration charges in
the summer of 2001, might have been planning to fly a plane
into the World Trade Center. News reports had previously
indicated that the FBI had not pursued the Moussaoui case
vigorously prior to September 11.
The Phoenix memo, the Moussaoui case--all of this placed
the administration on the defensive for the first time since
9/11, as the White House fended off suggestions (and
accusations) that the federal government, on Bush's watch, had
missed crucial tips and opportunities to thwart the horrific
attacks. Then came news of the August 6 PDB.
The White House reaction was predictable: stonewall. The
Bush crew clearly did not want American citizens to discover
that he had been told that bin Laden was aiming to conduct
attacks in the United States, and they did not want to have to
answer the inevitable questions (such as, what did the
president do in response to this briefing?). So Team Bush
started spinning, and its lead twirler was Rice.
On May 16, she held a briefing for reporters and described
the PDB as "not a warning" and no more than an "analytic
report that talked about [bin Laden's] methods of operations,
talked about what he had done historically, in 1997, 1998. It
mentioned hijacking, but hijacking in the traditional sense,
and in a sense said that the most important and likely thing
was they would take over an airliner holding passengers and
demand the release of one of their operatives." She did not
refer to the title or the other elements of the PDB unrelated
to hijacking, including the report that al Qaeda members had
apparently set up a support network in the United States. She
did her best to make the PDB seem rather dull:
"This was generalized information that put together the
fact that there were terrorist groups who were unhappy [with]
things that were going on in the Middle East as well as al
Qaeda operatives, which we'd been watching for a long time,
that there was more chatter than usual, and that we knew that
they were people who might try a hijacking. But, you know,
again, that terrorism and hijacking might be associated is not
rocket science."
That ho-hum description hardly matches the actual memo. And
several days after the PDB story broke, Ari Fleischer, then
Bush's press secretary, told reporters that the headline on
the document was "Bin Laden Determined To Strike the United
States." That is, he had changed an "in" to a "the"--an
alteration of significance, since the White House line has
been that the pre-9/11 chatter had the administration looking
for attacks on targets outside the United States. A May 19 ,
2002, front-page Washington Post story did report the correct
title of the PDB and did state that the briefing had noted
that al Qaeda members were living or traveling to the United
States. But such reporting was overwhelmed by a White House,
PR blitz that maintained the PDB was no big deal.
Rice, Fleischer and their colleagues succeeded more or
less. The issue of the August 6, 2001, PDB went away. But
there was another front to worry about. In 2002, the House and
Senate intelligence committees were conducting a joint 9/11
inquiry. When the committees requested access to PDBs received
by Bush and Bill Clinton, the Bush White House said no. As the
final report of the joint inquiry noted, "Ultimately, this bar
was extended to the point where CIA personnel were not allowed
to be interviewed regarding the simple process by which the
PDB is prepared."
The joint inquiry did interview intelligence community
officials aware of the contents of the August 6 PDB. And the
final report of the committees, which was released last
summer, strongly hinted at what had been in the PDB. The
committees got it right, noting that intelligence material
gathered in early August 2001 had informed "senior government
officials" that bin Laden had wanted to conduct attacks in the
United States and that al Qaeda had a support structure in the
United States. But the committees were unable to portray the
PDB definitively or to provide the title. Only a few reporters
picked up on the obvious hints placed in the final report. For
the most part, the cover-up was still holding.
The independent 9/11 commission finally forced the August 6
PDB out of Bush's clutches. But first the White House put up a
fight, refusing to allow the full commission to see this and
other PDBs. The commission and the White House negotiated an
agreement under which one commissioner, Jamie Gorelick (a
Democrat), and the panel's executive director, Philip Zelikow
(a Republican), were able to review the PDBs and report back
to the other commissioners, after the White House vetted the
notes they had taken. September 11 family members complained
about the arrangement. They believed the full commission
should have access to the PDBs, and they worried about
Zelikow's credibility. (He served with Rice in the first Bush
administration, co-wrote a book with her, worked on the Bush
II transition team with her, and was appointed by George W.
Bush to be on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board.) This deal did seem to provide the White House the
opportunity to continue to suppress specifics about the PDB.
But Richard Clarke got in the way. His book and his
testimony to the 9/11 commission brought far more attention to
the panel and to the issue of whether the Bush administration
had not regarded the al Qaeda threat seriously before
September 11. His dramatic appearance also highlighted the
White House's refusal to permit Rice to testify. With the
White House trying to limit the commission's actions, its
attempt to sit on the August 6 PDB became one more example of
the administration's reluctance to cooperate fully. (Earlier
this year, the White House had opposed the commission's
request to add two months to its end-of-May deadline and had
said Bush would not consent to an interview with all of the
panel's commissioners; it then retreated on each point.)
When Rice did appear, Democratic commission
members--particularly Richard Ben-Veniste--grilled her on the
PDB, disclosing information from the PDB and forcing her to
reveal its title. But she tried to stick to her previous
characterization of the PDB, noting it presented "historical
information based on old reporting." That depends on what the
definition of "historical" is. The PDB did run through
material dating back several years to show that "bin Laden
since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the
U.S." But it also noted that al Qaeda was currently
maintaining a "support structure" in the United States. And it
cited information obtained in May 2001 that suggested "that a
group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks
with explosives." (The White House said it reacted
aggressively to this tip-off and it was unrelated to 9/11.)
Rice repeatedly referred to the PDB as a "historical" document
and did not accept Ben-Veniste's invitation to call for its
declassification. When Ben-Veniste asked Rice if she had ever
told Bush before August 6, 2001, of the existence of al Qaeda
cells within the United States, she did not answer the
question.
With so much attention focused on the PDB, it became
inevitable that the Bush White House would have to release it.
The administration has established a rather clear pattern.
When it comes to sharing information with the public about
controversial matters, it holds the line as long as it
can--until politics dictate otherwise. This is the SOP for
elected officials. But Bush does seem to dig in his heels more
than most. After two years of hiding the PDB, the
administration let it out on a Saturday night--a rather
convenient time to make inconvenient information available.
When the White House released the document, it held a
background briefing with reporters on a conference call.
During this sessions, one White House official said, "The
release of this PDB should clear up the myth that's out there
that somehow the President was warned about September 11th."
But the point of the PDB was not that Bush had been warned
specifically about 9/11. At issue was what he had been told
about the prospect of a bin Laden strike inside the United
States, as well as what, if anything, he did in response.
Under questioning from Commissioner Timothy Roemer, a former
Democratic congressman, Rice had said the PDB was "most
certainly an historical document that says, 'Here's how you
might think about al Qaeda.'" But there are no public
indications that after he received this briefing that Bush
thought at all about the possibility of an al Qaeda attack in
the United States. Maybe he did. But during the background
briefing, a White House official declined to discuss how Bush
reacted to the August 6 briefing: "That's a confidential
relationship between the briefer who briefs the President each
morning and the President. So not only do we not know, but
it's not the sort of thing that we would discuss."
The day after the PDB was released, Bush held a short media
availability at Fort Hood, Texas, and insisted that the August
6 briefing "said nothing about an attack on America. It talked
about intentions, about somebody who hated America. Well, we
knew that." When asked if he was "satisfied" that every agency
had done all it should have prior to 9/11, Bush redefined the
question: "I'm satisfied that I never saw any intelligence
that indicated there was going to be an attack on America at a
time and a place of an attack." It was a non sequitur. No one
has suggested he saw such intelligence.
The PDB controversy is not about whether Bush received a
specific warning a month before 9/11. It concerns his
administration's attitude toward al Qaeda and the possibility
of domestic attacks prior to September 11 and whether the
White House has truly been willing to see the full 9/11 tale
uncovered and told. The evidence is mounting that al Qaeda was
not the priority it should have been in the first seven months
of Bush's presidency. Yet the White House is unable to
acknowledge that it made a misjudgment. Much of the public
might even believe that it was a natural mistake for a new
administration to underestimate the abilities and reach of a
madman hunkered down in faraway Afghanistan. In a way, such a
screw-up may be more forgivable than Bush and his lieutenants'
efforts to cover up information and prevent the 9/11
commission from completing a thorough examination.
Bush lost the PDB battle, but the war is not over. The 9/11
commission is working hurriedly to finish its report by the
congressionally mandated date of July 28. No doubt, the
commission will have to tussle with the White House over the
declassification of other material. Will the administration
once more attempt to censor significant information? Could
this delay the release of the report? Declassification fights
tied up the congressional intelligence committees' 9/11 report
for eight months. A repeat would push the unveiling of the
9/11 commission's report until after the election, but
commission officials say they are determined to avoid such a
fate.
The 9/11 commission has not constantly inspired confidence,
but thanks to the panel, Rice's PDB cover-up, after two years,
caved in. Still, suspicious minds would be right to wonder:
Are there other cover-ups, which are not yet publicly known,
that will end up more to Bush and Rice's liking?
DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK, The Lies of George W.
Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers).
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The Washington Post says, "This
is a fierce polemic, but it is based on an immense amount of
research....t does present a serious case for the
president's partisans to answer....Readers can hardly avoid
drawing...troubling conclusions from Corn's painstaking
indictment." The Los Angeles Times says, "David Corn's The
Lies of George W. Bush is as hard-hitting an attack as has
been leveled against the current president. He compares what
Bush said with the known facts of a given situation and ends
up making a persuasive case." The Library Journal says, "Corn
chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and
misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill
of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it
is thorough."
Copyright © 2004 The Nation
###
Nine years. Nine
years of tweaking the nose of authority. Nine years of alternative news.
In January 2004 Infoshop.org celebrated its ninth birthday. In January of
1995, this project started as a collection of web pages called the
Mid-Atlantic Infoshop. Now Infoshop.org has become an important and
popular resource for activists, as well as people interested in
alternatives to the corporate media. Infoshop.org currently averages over
7 million hits per month and had close to one million unique visitors in
2003. Many of you have told us how important Infoshop.org is to your
lives. We are ready to take Infoshop/AMP to the next level, but we need
your help this year to make that vision a reality. Click 