PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH Message Board

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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

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To: Fred Levine who wrote (562956)	4/11/2004 11:36:15 AM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (1) of 769670

MEMO PUTS SPY AGENCY, NOT BUSH ON THE SPOT April 11, 2004 -- ANALYSIS The CIA's Aug. 6, 2001 memo for President Bush should pose serious new credibility problems for the nation's spy agency, not for Bush. Democrats such as 9/11 commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste have sought to paint the memo as a CIA warning that Bush ignored a month before the terror attacks - but it turns out to be nothing of the sort. Far from sounding the alarm about an imminent risk that al Qaeda would hijack airplanes, the CIA pooh-poohed the idea as a "sensational" claim that couldn't be verified. "We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting such as that from a [foreign intelligence] service in 1998 saying that [Osama] bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheik" [Omar Abdel-Rahman] and other U.S. extremists," the CIA wrote. That foreign intelligence report came in while Bill Clinton was president, but three years later the CIA had found nothing to back it up and thus seemed to downplay it - the very opposite of issuing a red-alert to Bush. In cataloging potential risks from al Qaeda at Bush's request, the CIA made no mention at all of the threat that planes could be turned into flying bombs, although we now know that idea wasn't a total novelty. The CIA also reassured Bush that the FBI was conducting "70 full field investigations" across America into al Qaeda and that the CIA and FBI were checking out two recent warnings. The CIA's bottom-line message to Bush was that yes, bin Laden was out to get America as he'd been for years but all known threats were being checked out and the FBI and CIA were on the case. The CIA didn't urge further action. Particularly after the CIA's intelligence failures on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, this memo should spark very tough questions from the 9/11 commission to both the CIA and the FBI. nypost.com

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