Pacific Views

What did Bush Know and When Did He Know It?

John Dean asks some relevant questions about what did Bush know and when did he know it. Although the National Security briefing that Bush gets from Condi every day is considered too sensitive to share with Congress, as John points out, Bush has no problems sharing these briefings with his foreign visitors:

Troublingly, it seems that President Bush trusts foreign heads of state with the information in this daily CIA briefing, but not the United States Congress. It has become part of his routine, when hosting foreign dignitaries at his Crawford, Texas ranch, to invite them to attend his CIA briefing.

Yet he refuses to give Congress any information whatsoever about these briefings, and he has apparently invoked Executive Privilege to suppress the August 6, 2001 Daily Brief. It can only be hoped that the 9/11 Commission, which has picked up where the Congressional Inquiry ended, will get the answers to these questions.

Rest assured that they will be aware of the questions, for I will pass them along. (Emphasis added.)

Good.

According to Jane Meyer, on September 4, 2001, terrorism and Osama bin Laden were a topic for a number of Bush's senior officials including Tenet, Wolfowitz, Colin Powell and Condi Rice.

But Clarke said, “Every time we were ready to use [the Predator], the C.I.A. would change its mind. The real motivation within the C.I.A., I think, is that some senior people below Tenet were saying, ‘It’s fine to kill bin Laden, but we want to do it in a way that leaves no fingerprints. Otherwise, C.I.A. agents all over the world will be subject to assassination themselves.’ They also worried that something would go wrong—they’d blow up a convent and get blamed.”

On September 4, 2001, all sides agree, the issue reached a head, at a meeting of the Principal’s Committee of Bush’s national-security advisers, a Cabinet-level group that includes the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the director of the C.I.A., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Attorney General, and the national-security adviser. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz also attended that day. As Clarke, who was there, recalled, “Tenet said he opposed using the armed Predator, because it wasn’t the C.I.A.’s job to fly airplanes that shot missiles. The Air Force said it wasn’t their job to fly planes to collect intelligence. No one around the table seemed to have a can-do attitude. Everyone seemed to have an excuse.”

“There was a discussion,” the senior intelligence official confirmed. “The C.I.A. said, ‘Who’s got more experience flying aircraft that shoot missiles?’ But the Air Force liked planes with pilots.”

In looking back at the deadlock, Roger Cressey, Clarke’s deputy for counter-terrorism at the N.S.C., told me, “It sounds terrible, but we used to say to each other that some people didn’t get it—it was going to take body bags.”

What else did they know and ignore? And if Bush was unaware of the threat, he should be impeached for incompetence.