Pre-9/11 memo shows al Qaeda’s intentions

CRAWFORD, Texas – President Bush was told more than a month before the September 11 attacks that al Qaeda had reached America’s shores, had a support system in place for its operatives and that the FBI had detected suspicious activity that might involve a hijacking plot.

Since 1998, the FBI had observed “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks”, according to a memo prepared for Bush and declassified on Saturday. White House aides and outside experts said they could not recall a sitting president ever publicly releasing the highly sensitive document, known as a PDB, for presidential daily briefing.The August 6 2001 PDB referred to evidence of buildings in New York possibly being cased by terrorists.The document also said the CIA and FBI were investigating a call to the US embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 “saying that a group of (Osama) bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives”.The commission investigating the Sept 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3 000 people in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania, asked the White House to declassify the document at its meeting on Thursday.It is significant because Bush read it, so it offers a window on what Bush and his top aides knew about the threat of a terrorist strike.The PDB made it plain that Bin Laden had been scheming to strike the United States for at least six years.It warned of indications from a broad array of sources, spanning several years.Democratic and Republican members of the 9-11 commission saw the document differently.Democratic commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former senator from Nebraska, said the memo’s details should have given Bush enough warning to push for more intelligence information about possible domestic hijackings.”The whole argument the government used that we were focusing overseas, that we thought the attack was coming from outside the United States – this memo said an attack could come in the United States.And we didn’t scramble our agencies to that,” he said.Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic commissioner and former Watergate prosecutor, said the memo calls into question national security adviser Condoleezza Rice’s assertion on Thursday that the memo was purely an “historical” document.Senior administration officials said Bush saw more than 40 mentions of al Qaeda in his daily intelligence updates during the first eight months of his presidency.The CIA prepared the document “in response to questions asked by the president about the possibility of attacks by al Qaeda inside the US,” one said.But the senior officials refused to say what Bush’s response to the memo was.After President Clinton launched missile strikes on Bin Laden’s base in Afghanistan in 1998 in retaliation for bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 231 people, “Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington”, the memo said.The memo cited intelligence from other countries in three instances, but the White House blacked out the names of the nations.Efforts to launch an attack from Canada around the time of millennium celebrations in 2000 “may have been part of Bin Laden’s first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US”, the document stated.Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam, who was caught trying to cross the Canadian border with explosives about 60 miles north of Seattle in late 1999, told the FBI that he alone conceived an attack on Los Angeles International Airport, but that Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah “encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation”, the document said.Ressam is still awaiting sentencing after agreeing to testify in other terrorism cases.Zubaydah was a senior al Qaeda planner who was captured in Pakistan in March 2002.Al Qaeda members, some of them American citizens, had lived in or travelled to the United States for years, the memo said.”The group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks,” it warned.One item in the memo referred to “recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York”.A White House official speaking on condition of anonymity said that was a reference to two Yemeni men the FBI interviewed and concluded were simply tourists taking photographs.On May 15 2001, a caller to the US embassy in the United Arab Emirates warned of planned Bin Laden attacks with explosives in the United States, but did not say where or when.The CIA reported the incident to other government officials the next day, and a dozen or more steps were taken by the CIA and other agencies “to run down” the information from the phone call, senior administration officials said Saturday evening.One official said references to al Qaeda in prior presidential briefings “would indicate ‘they are here, they are there’ in various countries and the CIA director would tell the president what was being done to address “these different operations”.- Nampa-APWhite House aides and outside experts said they could not recall a sitting president ever publicly releasing the highly sensitive document, known as a PDB, for presidential daily briefing.The August 6 2001 PDB referred to evidence of buildings in New York possibly being cased by terrorists.The document also said the CIA and FBI were investigating a call to the US embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 “saying that a group of (Osama) bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives”.The commission investigating the Sept 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3 000 people in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania, asked the White House to declassify the document at its meeting on Thursday.It is significant because Bush read it, so it offers a window on what Bush and his top aides knew about the threat of a terrorist strike.The PDB made it plain that Bin Laden had been scheming to strike the United States for at least six years.It warned of indications from a broad array of sources, spanning several years.Democratic and Republican members of the 9-11 commission saw the document differently.Democratic commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former senator from Nebraska, said the memo’s details should have given Bush enough warning to push for more intelligence information about possible domestic hijackings.”The whole argument the government used that we were focusing overseas, that we thought the attack was coming from outside the United States – this memo said an attack could come in the United States.And we didn’t scramble our agencies to that,” he said.Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic commissioner and former Watergate prosecutor, said the memo calls into question national security adviser Condoleezza Rice’s assertion on Thursday that the memo was purely an “historical” document.Senior administration officials said Bush saw more than 40 mentions of al Qaeda in his daily intelligence updates during the first eight months of his presidency.The CIA prepared the document “in response to questions asked by the president about the possibility of attacks by al Qaeda inside the US,” one said.But the senior officials refused to say what Bush’s response to the memo was.After President Clinton launched missile strikes on Bin Laden’s base in Afghanistan in 1998 in retaliation for bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 231 people, “Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington”, the memo said.The memo cited intelligence from other countries in three instances, but the White House blacked out the names of the nations.Efforts to launch an attack from Canada around the time of millennium celebrations in 2000 “may have been part of Bin Laden’s first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US”, the document stated.Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam, who was caught trying to cross the Canadian border with explosives about 60 miles north of Seattle in late 1999, told the FBI that he alone conceived an attack on Los Angeles International Airport, but that Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah “encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation”, the document said.Ressam is still awaiting sentencing after agreeing to testify in other terrorism cases.Zubaydah was a senior al Qaeda planner who was captured in Pakistan in March 2002.Al Qaeda members, some of them American citizens, had lived in or travelled to the United States for years, the memo said.”The group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks,” it warned.One item in the memo referred to “recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York”.A White House official speaking on condition of anonymity said that was a reference to two Yemeni men the FBI interviewed and concluded were simply tourists taking photographs.On May 15 2001, a caller to the US embassy in the United Arab Emirates warned of planned Bin Laden attacks with explosives in the United States, but did not say where or when.The CIA reported the incident to other government officials the next day, and a dozen or more steps were taken by the CIA and other agencies “to run down” the information from the phone call, senior administration officials said Saturday evening.One official said references to al Qaeda in prior presidential briefings “would indicate ‘they are here, they are there’ in various countries and the CIA director would tell the president what was being done to address “these different operations”.- Nampa-AP