Declassified briefing detailed possible plot

WASHINGTON — The classified briefing about al-Qaida that President Bush received a month before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks reported that the terrorist network had maintained an active presence in the United States for years, could be preparing for domestic hijackings and was suspected of recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. But the briefing did not point to any specific time or place of attack, and did not warn that planes could be used as missiles.

After releasing the "President's Daily Brief" on Saturday night, White House officials said that none of the information given to the president at his ranch on Aug. 6, 2001, was later linked to the attacks. But the page-and-a-quarter-long briefing document showed that Bush was given more specific and contemporary information about terrorist threats than the White House had previously acknowledged. As recently as Thursday, the White House described the brief only as a "historical" account of al-Qaida activity.

The release of the document is bound to fan the already-fierce debate about whether Bush and his team acted aggressively enough to confront the threat posed by al-Qaida in the weeks and months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The president's critics are likely to embrace the specific and unresolved nature of some of the warnings as a further indication that Bush had ample information about the possibility of a terrorist attack in the United States, and should have exhorted his senior advisers toward additional action, something that he did not do. But the White House and its allies will certainly argue, as they did late Saturday, that the document did not warn of the Sept. 11 attacks and that his administration already was acting with sufficient vigilance.

The document, prepared by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, lays out evidence from American and foreign intelligence agencies and media reports to support what it says had been known since 1997: that Osama bin Laden "has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S."

The memo reported that U.S. intelligence officials had not been able to corroborate that bin Laden "wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft" in 1998. "Nevertheless," it continued, "FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

"The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Laden-related," the memo said. "CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives."

After releasing the briefing document Saturday — its title is "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." — senior administration officials attempted to undercut its importance by telling reporters, on condition of anonymity, that the FBI later determined that the suspected surveillance in New York turned out to be "tourist-related activity" by two visitors from Yemen.

The officials also said that the anonymous tip, which came in a May 15, 2001, phone call to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates, did not appear to have any connection to the Sept. 11 attacks.

But President Bush did not know at the time of the briefing how either suspicious incident would evolve. Yet he did not order a top-level national security meeting in response to it. His first Cabinet-level meeting on the al-Qaida threat was on Sept. 4, after the Bush administration had already held 33 other top-level meetings on other national security issues.

White House officials declassified the briefing paper under pressure from the independent commission that is investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. The memo was released in full except for three phrases in the text blacked out. The senior officials said that was necessary to protect the identity of foreign intelligence services that cooperated with U.S. intelligence.

Bush's critics on the panel contend that the government's information on al-Qaida should have prompted more action.

The senior administration officials took issue with suggestions that Bush should have convened a top-level meeting on terrorism to energize the federal bureaucracy.

Two days after the UAE embassy phone tip, the officials said, counter-terrorism adviser Clarke discussed it with a staff-level terrorism task force made up of representatives from the State Department, Justice Department, Defense Department, FBI and CIA.

And the FAA and FBI issued a number of warnings about possible terrorist attacks from June through September, the officials said.

At a contentious hearing Thursday before the investigative panel, commissioner Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, observed sharply that those alerts had failed to catch the attention of either the secretary of transportation, the head of the FAA, or key FBI field offices, according to earlier testimony.

Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, testified Thursday about the Aug. 6 memo that "there was nothing in this memo that suggested an attack was coming on New York or Washington, D.C. There was nothing in this memo as to time, place, how or where. … There was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks," Rice said.

The CIA arranged the Aug. 6 briefing in response to questions from Bush prompted by a dramatic increase in intelligence about a possible terrorist attack. The intelligence reports had spiked in June and July, before tapering off in August.

The Knight Ridder News Service and the New York Times contributed to this report.