Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The State Department’s disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don’t remember the warning.
One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10” that “connected the dots” in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.
Rice’s deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, who became national security adviser after she became secretary of state, and Rice’s top counterterrorism aide, Richard Clarke, also were present.
Speaking to reporters late Sunday en route to the Middle East, Rice said she had no recollection of what she called “the supposed meeting.”
Ashcroft, who resigned as attorney general on Nov. 9, 2004, told the Associated Press on Monday that it was “disappointing” that he never received the briefing, either.
But on Monday evening, Rice’s spokesman Sean McCormack issued a statement confirming that she’d received the CIA briefing “on or around July 10” and had asked that it be given to Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.

Two possible explanations for the mass murders of 9/11 going forward are supported by the facts : incompetence or, in the neocon phrase, “benign neglect”.
Either explanation can account for the facts in the public domain.
An independent investigation by disinterested parties, as after the Challenger tragedy, must discover just what did happen.
An argument might be made for “burying the hatchet”, to allow the nation to go forward after the global tragedy that has been the Cheney administration as was done in South Africa, but not in this case with its horrific results still piling up in its wake.
There is a real possibility that the cabal in Washington knowingly allowed the murder of nearly 3000 innocent Americans in order to trigger their long standing plans for aggressive war in the Middle East.
If that is the case the depravity of the regime must not only be made known but taken to heart.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Oct 3 2006 5:48 utc | 1