"Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers" as the result of terrorist attacks. -- Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, opening line of a report from the United States Commission on National Security, September 1999

As usual, the Bush administration, its cronies and compatriots, and the corporate media are all doing their level best to redirect America's attention away from the idea that the Bush administration might have had an inkling -- or more -- of what was to come on September 11, 2001. Ari Fleischer warns us to "watch what we say." George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Trent Lott, Robert Mueller, and innumerable others tell us to be quiet, take what we're given, and go away, at risk of being considered "contemptible," "despicable," "unpatriotic," or even worse, "aiding and abetting the cause of terrorism." John Ashcroft intones, "Disagreeing with the President only helps the terrorists," and Cheney thunders, "Such commentary is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy...in a time of war." Dick Morris pens a nasty little article accusing the Clinton administration of being responsible for the country's lack of preparation; he and talk show maven Sean Hannity engage in a barrage of accusations that have Clinton all but flying one of the hijacked planes. (Karl Rove, Mary Matalin, and Donald Rumsfeld all called right-wing talk show hosts and asked for their help in circling the wagons.) First Lady Laura Bush sorrowfully accuses anyone who asks questions as "play[ing] upon the victims' families' emotions." Accusations fly that the Democrats and the liberal wing of political society are using the situation as political cannon fodder; one Democratic representative who states that the administration may have withheld knowledge of the impending attacks is painted as a "loony" who is working "directly against American interests." The Pentagon removes Democrats from a number of advisory boards, ensuring that sensitive information only goes to Republicans who, presumably, will keep their mouths shut. In the last few days, Bush has stated that he will not tolerate any further "second-guessing" of the administration, and Rumsfeld, doing his best Soviet kommisar impression, has threatened that "those who ask questions could face government charges," and said that any government agencies or media outlets who ask the wrong questions could be charged with "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." Believe it or not, the administration has the force of law on its side -- if you agree with their apparent conclusion that their USA PATRIOT bill (and its concurrent expansion of the War Powers Act of 1947) supersedes the Bill of Rights. I guess they're going to love this article.

Meanwhile, the powers-that-be desperately try to keep Congress from investigating the shocking intelligence lapses (in Tom Daschle's own words, "The vice president expressed the concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the effort in the war on terrorism"). They assert the claim of "executive privilege" when questions are asked. They beg for "unity" and "bipartisanship" while simultaneously attacking dissenters as "traitors" and "political agitators." They trot out the usual attempts to pin the blame on the Clinton administration ("Mr. Clinton can be held culpable for not doing enough when he was commander-in-chief to combat the terrorists who wound up attacking the World Trade Center and Pentagon," proclaims Rush Limbaugh in the Wall Street Journal, and Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby tells the New Yorker that the attacks occured because the Clinton administration had made it "easier for someone like Osama bin Laden to rise up and say credibly, 'The Americans don't have the stomach to defend themselves. . . . They are morally weak.'"). And, as expected, the administration lines up one high-ranking official after another -- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and others -- to try to scare us back into line with vague warnings of further terrorist attacks and questionable "alerts." As one bought-and-paid-for journalist put it, "Any argument against any aspect of the conduct of the war against terrorism must begin with those airplanes smashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And then it must stay there and never move from that spot." Wouldn't George W. Bush just love it if we were to all toe that line?

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." -- George W. Bush, December 18, 2000

Note: On Tuesday, May 21, the White House admitted that it had issued some of its "threat alerts" for political reasons and not because the threats were considered to be serious. "As U.S. officials continued to issue warnings yesterday about the possibility of attacks by suicide bombers and terrorists, the White House quietly acknowledged that the threats are not urgent and that they are partly motivated by political objectives," reported the Globe and Mail. "White House officials told reporters that the blunt warnings issued [on May 19 and 20] do not reflect a dramatic increase in threatening information but rather a desire to fend off criticism from the Democrats." The Washington Times, a strong supporter of the Bush administration, reported that "[t]he Bush administration issued a spate of terror alerts in recent days to mute criticism that its national security team sat on intelligence warnings in the weeks before the September 11 attacks. The warnings, including [Tuesday's] uncorroborated FBI report that terrorists might target the Statue of Liberty, quieted some of the lawmakers who said President Bush failed to act on clues of the September 11 attacks...." Now we're finding that some of the "alerts" were sparked by Arab prisoners watching the latest version of Godzilla and having a little fun at our expense. At no time during this barrage of alerts and warnings has the Office of Homeland Security changed the color of its "threat level" from yellow, where it has been since the idea was implemented in March 2002. As an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle puts it, "The evildoers are coming. Again. No, really, they are. This time we really mean it. Those last 17 times we only partially meant it.... Like some horrible clockwork they come, fresh terrorist attack warnings from the Bush administration or possibly a stern-faced government security agency, paced out every month or so just so you don't get too complacent, too wary, too, you know, suspicious. Just so you don't possibly become a little too skeptical and maybe start looking around and noticing you seem to have misplaced a great many of your civil liberties and maybe your healthy cautious patriotism."

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt, Republican

On August 2, 1996, the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, commonly known as the Gore Commission, was appointed by Bill Clinton to analyze America's vulnerability to airborne terrorism and make recommendations for improvement. Unfortunately, the commission's final recommendations, issued in February 1997, were fought by both the airlines, who didn't want to spend the money necessary to make the improvements, and powerful members of the Congressional GOP, particularly folks like Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, and Bob Barr, who accused the Clinton administration of trying to use the entire terrorism issue as a "smokescreen" to obscure the "real" issue of the day, the Whitewater/Lewinsky investigation. The Gore report produced over 50 specific and tangible recommendations for airline flight security. These proposals would have cost the airlines and the U.S. government at least $429 million and possibly as much as $2.5 billion -- a significant amount of money that the airlines did not want to spend. And the airlines knew where their friends were: in the Republican wing of Congress. Eight of nine GOP senators serving on the Senate Aviation Subcommittee received campaign contributions from the airlines, whereas only one of the eight Democrats received money from the same sources. Ten of the twelve members on the House Appropriations subcommittee on transportation -- the committee that funds the FAA -- received campaign funds from the airlines. The airline industry and the right-wing press leaped to attack the Gore Commission reports as "overstepping its bounds" and "a partisan effort to scare the American people into spending money unnecessarily." One particularly interesting article in the March 1997 New Republic reported an amazingly misleading "actuarial breakdown" of the costs of the Gore Commission's recommendations as costing the airlines "a cost per life saved of well over $300 million." It's obvious that the airlines, along with their Republican friends, were far more interested in an (inaccurately calculated) cost-analysis of the potential lives that could be saved by following these recommendations, along with the usual accusations of partisan politics and smokescreening to divert attention from the "far more important" issue of whether or not President Clinton was receiving sexual favors from an intern. In the end, the congressional GOP forced the tabling of most of the Gore Commission's key recommendations, instead sending them back for "further study" -- then, presumably, going home to cash their checks.

Contrary to the spin from the Bush White House, the GOP, and the right-wing media, Bill Clinton worked hard to control terrorism and eradicate the bin Laden/al-Qaeda organization. As early as 1993, the Clinton administration authorized retaliatory strikes against the Iraqi Mukhabarat security forces for their abortive attempt to assassinate former President George Bush. After the August 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa, Clinton ordered massive air strikes against Osama bin Laden's camp in Afghanistan and a Sudanese chemical plant. In both instances, the congressional GOP was harshly critical of Clinton's responses, characterizing them as being "illegitimate" without congressional approval as well as feeble attempts to redirect the American people's collective attention away from the Paula Jones case and the September 1998 impeachment proceedings. The 1998 attacks came within a couple of hours of killing bin Laden, who fled the target site shortly before the missiles hit. After the attacks, Taliban officials stated that Clinton "should be stoned to death" for the attacks. Additionally, Clinton's decision to authorize the assassination of bin Laden came under heavy criticism from the right.

The lapdog media loves to talk about the chances that the Clinton administration had to collar Osama bin Laden that it supposedly "turned down." Not true. In March and April of 1996, the administration brokered an agreement with the government of Sudan to arrest bin Laden and turn him over to Saudi Arabia. For ten weeks, Clinton tried to persuade the Saudis to accept the offer. They refused. With no cooperation from the Saudis, and no case to mount indictments with in the U.S. judicial system, the deal fell apart. (This is characterized by Rush Limbaugh as a blatant refusal by Clinton to take bin Laden from the Sudanese.) Two years later, the CIA was directed by Clinton to train and equip five dozen commandos from Pakistan to enter Afghanistan and capture bin Laden. The efforts failed when a military coup overthrew the Pakistani government and installed a new one. That same year, as noted above, Clinton unleashed a major air strike against bin Laden in Afghanistan and the Sudan, following the terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Of course, Republicans leapt to accuse Clinton of firing missiles just to divert media attention from the Lewinsky hearings. In 1998, Clinton sponsored legislation to freeze the financial assets of international organizations suspected of funneling money to bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. GOP Senator Phil Gramm killed the bill on behalf of the banking industry, who wanted to keep the money flowing. (After 9/11, Bush called for identical legislation.) In August 1998, the United States conducted a bombing run against bin Laden's facilities in Afghanistan and the Sudan.

Most notably, in late 1999, the Clinton administration issued a major alert that al-Qaeda would try to explode a suitcase bomb in the Los Angeles airport. American intelligence agencies and security forces stopped bin Laden's "Millennium plot" cold.

Certainly the Clinton administration's efforts to hunt down bin Laden were not uniformly successful, nor were they always well-thought out or consistent. The attack on the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant came under heavy criticism after questions arose about the plant's real role in producing chemical weapons. A planned December 2000 strike against bin Laden was shelved after top-level review determined that the information used in planning the strike was "stale," may not have done real damage to al-Qaeda or bin Laden, and may have resulted in casualties among innocent civilians. Another possible opportunity to arrest bin Laden was declined when administration officials decided that there were insufficient legal grounds to make the arrest, probably the worst mistake made by the Clinton administration in trying to end the threat of terrorism. Accusations that the Clinton administration didn't focus hard enough and early enough on dealing with bin Laden and global terrorism in general are probably well founded, though the same accusations could be leveled at the previous Bush administration (both of which apparently tried to "straddle the fence" between hounding al-Qaeda and keeping Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan happy). But, as NSC chief Sandy Berger said, "This was a top priority for us over the past several years, and not a day went by when we didn't press as hard as we could." Not so for the second Bush administration.

Comparing the two in the Washington Post, Lt. General Donald Kerrick, who had come from top posts on the Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency to manage Clinton's National Security Council staff and remained at the NSC nearly four months after Bush took office, noticed a big difference on the approach the two administrations took towards terrorism: "Clinton's Cabinet advisers, burning with the urgency of their losses to bin Laden in the African embassy bombings in 1998 and the Cole attack in 2000, had met 'nearly weekly' to direct the fight, Kerrick said. Among Bush's first-line advisers, 'candidly speaking, I didn't detect' that kind of focus, he said. 'That's not being derogatory. It's just a fact.'" The Clinton administration worked hard and long, if not always effectively, to capture bin Laden. In contrast, the Bush administration stood down and let the terrorists work virtually undaunted. The Bush administration halted drone tracking of bin Laden, it ceased the previous administration's covert deployment of missile strike forces that could, if ordered, strike against bin Laden's group almost instantly, it abandoned federal oversight of terrorist money laundering and offshore banking operations, it refused to mount an offensive against bin Laden's forces after determining that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and it ordered federal agencies to "back off" investigating the bin Laden family. (While the Bush administration likes to paint Osama bin Laden as "the black sheep" of the bin Laden family, the FBI has evidence showing that at least two other members of the family, both of whom resided in the U.S. before 9/11, are affiliated with terrorist organizations.) Another damning indictment of the Bush administration's policy towards both the bin Laden family and al-Qaeda comes from a book, "BinLaden: The Forbidden Truth," co-written by a former member of French intelligence, asserts that the Bush administration "went easy" on al-Qaeda in the interest of building an oil pipeline through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia.

1996 also saw the Clinton administration attempted to pass stringent anti-terrorism legislation through the Republican-led Congress, but GOP efforts to dilute and defang the legislation was successful. (After 9/11, Congress passed the same legislation without argument.) Orrin Hatch termed one provision, the study of "taggants," which was opposed by the NRA, "a phony issue," and Trent Lott disparaged the entire bill, preferring to push study of the proposed legislation to a later date. The Gore Commission's recommendations were widely disparaged by the right as wasteful and unnecessary, and few of them were implemented until after 9/11. Similarly, the United States Commission on National Security, chaired by Democrat Gary Hart and Republican Warren Rudman, released in January 2001 a huge report on the state of international terrorism and what steps it thought the Bush administration should take to ensure the safety of this country and its citizenry. The White House pushed aside the report, preferring instead to have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism with a task force of his own. Bush also reassigned responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and promptly proposed cutting FEMA's budget by $200 million. That same day, Bush announced that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and stated, "I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts." Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's ever took place.

According to the Gore Commission's final report, released on February 12, 1997, "[t]he federal government should consider aviation security as a national security issue, and provide substantial funding for capital improvements. The Commission believes that terrorist attacks on civil aviation are directed at the United States, and that there should be an ongoing federal commitment to reducing the threats that they pose." The Bush administration categorically ignored almost every recommendation made by both the Gore and the Hart-Rudman commissions. Interestingly, after 9/11, a group of similar proposals from the National Commission on Terrorism were enacted almost immediately. According to chairman Paul Bremer, "...since Sept. 11 almost every one of our recommendations has either been enacted by the executive branch or been put into law by Congress, which suggests that we probably had a pretty good menu of things to do before Sept. 11." The commission's report was issued in June 2000 and had been largely ignored up until 9/11.

On September 10, less than 24 hours before the attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed major cutbacks in federal monies for state and local anti-terrorism efforts. One proposed $65 million cut was for a program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants for equipment, including radios and decontamination suits and training to localities for counterterrorism preparedness. (Needless to say, after the attacks, the funding was retained.) He also sent a memo to his department heads that stated his seven priorities: counter-terrorism was not on the list. He turned down an FBI request for hundreds more agents to be assigned to tracking terrorist threats. According to a Newsweek report, Ashcroft and outgoing FBI Louis Freeh had a fundamental difference in their priorities, with Freeh wanting to continue the Clinton administration's focus on anti-terrorism and Ashcroft determined to focus on violent crime and drugs. "[W]hen Mr. Freeh began to talk about his concern about the terrorist threat facing the country, [according to a participant in the Freeh-Ashcroft meeting] 'Ashcroft didn't want to hear about it.'" Ashcroft was also curiously defensive about the rights of suspected terrorists to own guns; he blocked the FBI's attempts to investigate gun-purchase records to see if any of them had recently bought weapons. And over at the Defense Department, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wasn't particularly interested in counter-terrorism measures, but rather in getting the "Star Wars" missile shield established. Rumsfeld killed a request to shift $800 million from the missile-defense budget to counterterrorism, as well as ordered the grounding of the Predator drones sent up by the Clinton administration to track and possibly assist in assassinating Osama bin Laden.

In spite of all the Bush administration officials who didn't show a strong interest in dealing with terrorism, according to Joe Conason, "[i]n fact, it was two officials held over from the previous administration -- counterterror chief Richard Clarke and C.I.A. director George Tenet -- who tried to direct the government\rquote s attention to the looming threat from Al Qaeda in the weeks and months before Sept. 11." Not surprisingly, neither Tenet nor Clarke were given much of a hearing by Bush and his officials.

I think this proves without a doubt that before the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration had little interest in fighting terrorism, finding and neutralizing Osama bin Laden and other well-known terrorist figures, or securing the safety of this country and its citizenry. After 9/11, we have seen an apparent 180-degree turn by the Bush administration towards a full-fledged, loudly trumpeted "war against terrorism." And in true Orwellian fashion, the administration insists that it has always been fighting against terrorism, it always will fight against terrorism, and any attempts to say otherwise, no matter what the facts prove, is traitorous and un-American.

"The truth is useless. You can't deposit it in the bank. You can't eat it. It's absolutely useless." -- Oliver North

This brings us to the question of exactly what the Bush administration ignored before 9/11, and what they knew (but claim to be ignorant of). In light of press secretary Ari Fleischer's statement, "The president did not receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers. This was a new type of attack that was not foreseen," and national security advisor Condoleeza Rice's followup statement, "I don't think that anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center," let's look at the following timeline.

Note: In many entries, direct quotes and/or paraphrasings from the source materials are included. See the bottom of this article for sources.

"They were either asleep or inept, or both." -- Senator Richard Shelby on the FBI's failure to correlate information relating to 9/11

• 1993: Yossef Bodansky, director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare in the US House of Representatives and the author of the 1999 book Bin Laden: The Man Who Targeted America, writes in a well-known paper, "The training of suicide pilots started in the Busher air base in Iran in the early 1980s. ...According to a former trainee in Wakilibad (a base for the training of kamikaze pilots), one of the exercises included having an Islamic Jihad detachment seize (or hijack) a transport aircraft. Then trained air crews from among the terrorists would crash the airliner with its passengers into a selected objective."



• February 26, 1993: The World Trade Center is bombed by terrorists closely connected with al-Qaeda and other Islamic militant groups. The bomb is designed to destroy both towers and release a huge cloud of cyanide gas over the site; the bomb does not function as planned, and "only" six people die in the attack.



• June 1994: A Pentagon report warns of possible terrorist attacks using hijacked commercial airliners to be flown into the White House or the Pentagon.



• November 1994: Osama bin Laden plots to kill President Clinton during Clinton's visit to Manila. American authorities get wind of the plan and intensify security. No attempt on Clinton's life is made.



• December 1994: Algerian terrorists hijack an aircraft, stuff it with explosives, and plan to ram it into the Eiffel Tower. French commandos storm the plane and kill the hijackers before they can take off.



• January 1995: An abortive plan to hijack a dozen airplanes and ram them into various American targets is uncovered by Phillippine intelligence. One of the masterminds, Abdul Hakim Murad, had undergone flight training in the U.S. "Murad's idea is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger, then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters," one Filipino police report from 1995 said. Other police reports connect the terrorists to al-Qaeda and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and state that another bombing of the WTC was in the works as part of "Project Boijinka," "which called for the hijacking of US bound commercial airliners from the Philippines, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore and then crash them into key structures in the United States. The World Trade Center, the White House, the Pentagon, the Transamerica Tower, and the Sears Tower were among prominent structures that had been identified in the plans that...had [been] decoded. ...What is strange is that the United States agencies that took possession of the evidence...obviously did not take Project Bojinka seriously."



• February 1995: A second al-Qaeda plot to assassinate Clinton is aborted when Clinton cancels his trip to Pakistan, where the attempt was to take place.



• May 1998: An FBI agent warns that a large number of suspicious Middle Eastern men are taking flight classes in Oklahoma flight schools. His memo "states this is a recent phenomenon and may be related to planned terrorist activity." The agent also speculates that "light planes would be an ideal means of spreading chemical or biological agents." The memo is ignored by senior FBI officials.



• August (?) 1998: After the embassy bombings in Africa, the CIA ignores warnings from case officer Robert Baer that Saudi Arabia was harboring an al-Qaeda cell led by two known terrorists. A more detailed list of known terrorists is offered to Saudi intelligence in August 2001 and refused.



• February 1998: Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda issue a threat to "kill Americans everywhere," and declare a jihad, or holy war, against the United States. Both American civilians and military personnel are specifically named as targets. Another threat from bin Laden was broadcast on American television in June 1998.



• September 1999: A CIA report is released, detailing the possibilities of terrorist attacks using jetliners to target public buildings, in particular envisioning an attack on the Pentagon by a commandeered jetliner stuffed with high explosives. As stated above, in May 2002 Condoleeza Rice claimed that no one could envision such a situation, yet just a few years before, the CIA produced an expansive document detailing just that kind of scenario. The White House claimed to be unfamiliar with the report, though it was made available to members of Congress and has been posted on the Internet for years. Among its pages is the following quote: "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,"' The report urged the government to consider potential new forms of terror strikes, and cited the first World Trade Center blast, which killed six, as an example. According to an AP report, "Until the report became public, the Bush administration has asserted that no one in government had envisioned a suicide hijacking before it happened." A concurrent report is issued by the Library of Congress, detailing the likelihood of suicide hijackers crashing planes into the White House, the Pentagon, and/or CIA headquarters.



• 1999: Veteran DIA analyst Julie Sirrs returns from an undercover assignment in Afghanistan with critical information about Taliban and bin Laden's terrorist activities. Instead of getting a hearing, Sirrs's information is confiscated and she is forced to resign from the DIA. Sirrs was stymied in her attempts to get the administration to understand that bin Laden and the Taliban were so closely connected: "The main thing I -- I would have wanted to tell them was how closely linked bin Laden was with the Taliban. US policy seemed to prefer to treat them as two separate issues and didn't seem to realize that bin Laden was vulnerable through the Taliban."



• January 2000: The CIA tracked two known terrorists to an al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia, and let surveillance of the two lapse. Both were on airliner that was crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.



• October 12, 2000: Terrorists ram a rubber boat packed with explosives into the side of the U.S.S. Cole while it is docked in Aden, Yemen, killing five sailors and wounding thirty-nine. Candidate Bush promises dire retributions against the attackers. In January 26, 2001, Bush is presented with evidence proving that bin Laden and al-Qaeda were behind the attacks. No further action is taken by the Bush adminstration.



• November 2000: A mock terrorist attack was staged at the Pentagon, using models, to simulate the damage that could be caused by a hijacked plane being flown into the Pentagon. Again, contrary to administration claims, people in the intelligence and military communities were envisioning just these kinds of scenarios.



• January-September 2001: The FAA issues 15 separate threat warnings of imminent hijackings; two of those warnings specifically mention Osama bin Laden.



• January, 2001: The Bush administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, VA, right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996, frustrating efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. According to a highly-placed source in U.S. intelligence, there have always been "constraints" on investigating members of the bin Laden family, but "under President Bush it had become much worse." The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, Michael Springarn, told BBC2's Newsnight that "In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants [including suspected terrorists]. People who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained there. I complained here in Washington to Main State, to the inspector-general and to Diplomatic Security and I was ignored."



• January 20: Clinton NSC chief Sandy Berger gave incoming NSC head Condoleeza Rice an extensive briefing on the current state of world terrorism, and told her that she would be spending more of her time on this issue than any other. At or about the same time, outgoing Defense Department head William Cohen was doing the same thing with Donald Rumsfeld.



• January 31: The United States Commission on National Security issues its final report after three years of effort. The Commission report, in the words of the Columbia Journalism Review, "was a devastating indictment of the 'fragmented and inadequate' structures and strategies already in place to prevent, and then respond to, the attacks on U.S. cities, which the commissioners predicted. [Co-author] Hart specifically mentioned the lack of preparation for 'a weapon of mass destruction in a high-rise building.'" The report gave a blueprint of how the U.S. should revamp its efforts to ensure its safety from terrorist attacks, including the creation of a National Homeland Security Agency, the resurrection of frontline public services, and the consolidation of the forty or so discrete official bodies with responsibility for national security. "We need orders-of-magnitude improvements in planning, coordination, and exercise," the report concluded. "Any reorganization must be mindful of the scale of the scenarios we envisage and the enormity of their consequences." Both the mainstream media and the Bush Administration ignore the report; though Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and some members of Congress try to get Congressional hearings scheduled on the report, the White House stops any such hearings, and announces its intention to form its own task force on terrorism to be headed by Dick Cheney. That task force only met once, on September 4, 2001, and did not produce any documents.



• March 9, 2001: Russia's permanent mission to the United Nations provides a report to the UN Security Council on the close links between al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Pakistani military, and the Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI).



• April-May 2001: The CIA warns the White House of a possible al-Qaeda attack. By this point, the administration is well aware of the deep connections between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but continues to treat them as separate entities -- in August 2001, a senior State Department official made the incredibly naive request that the Taliban actually extradite bin Laden.



• May: The Bush administration gives the Taliban $43 million, supposedly for its efforts to eradicate the opium poppy from Afghanistan. Speculation is strong that the money was really targeted to facilitate the American oil industry's attempts to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan. Specualtion is equally strong that the 9/11 attacks were a direct result of the administration's attempts to bully the Taliban into acquiescing to having the pipeline built to their specifications.



• May-June: During the trial of the "millennium bombers," Condoleeza Rice announces that participants in the millennium plot said al Qaeda deputy Abu Zubaydah stated "there might be interest in attacking the United States." After two bombers were convicted, a number of threats were issued by various terrorist organizations. Most of these threats received very little media attention.



• May-July: CIA Director George Tenet, one of the few holdovers from the Clinton administration, is "frantic" about the huge amount of credible intelligence concerning an impending attack on American soil. He fails to get the attention of Vice-President Cheney, whose anti-terrorism task force held only a single meeting (on September 4). His concerns led to the July 5 briefing of members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. According to Tenet, the threat assessment is the most severe his office had received in decades.



• May 5, 2001: A task force on terrorism is formed under the aegis of Vice President Cheney, and including FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh. The task force only meets once, on September 4, and produces no documents nor recommendations.



• Summer 2001: According to German police, an Iranian deportee phoned American police and intelligence agencies several times to warn of the planned attack on the World Trade Center, to take place "during the week of September 9." German police confirm the calls but state that the U.S. Secret Service would not reveal any further information. The information was provided by the Jordanian intelligence agency GID, which also sent the warning directly to the CIA station in Amman. After September 11, when Bush officials let it be known that they intended to deny any such warnings, the GID backed off on corroborating its earlier confirmations.



• Early June 2001: The Arabic television station Al-Jazeera airs a tape by bin Laden which threatens attacks on Western targets.



• June 12: Robert Wright, a veteran FBI agent, warns in a memo that Americans would die if attempts to investigate terrorism aren't heightened. Wright, who went public with his predictions in late May 2002, claims that "corruption within the FBI" hampered its ability to investigate terrorist activities, and said that the FBI was in possession of evidence showing that the WTC was a prime target for al-Qaeda hijackers. He also claims that FBI Director Mueller threatened him with prosecution if he made his allegations public.



• June 22: The State Department issues a "worldwide caution" regarding unspecified terrorist threats. U.S. military forces are put on the highest alert status, Condition Delta. As noted above, CIA Director Tenet is described as "nearly frantic" over the possibility of attack.



• June 23: Reuters news agency distributes a report headlined "Bin Laden Fighters Plan anti-US attack." The lead paragraph begins: "Followers of exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden are planning a major attack on U.S. and Israeli interests." The article gets virtually no media play in the U.S. American response to the report, which was based on an Arabic journalist's meeting with bin Laden, was to put Gulf-based forces "on threat condition delta based on a non-specific but credible threat linked to Bin Laden."



• June 25: UPI informs its subscribers that "Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden is planning a terrorist attack against the United States." Again, the article is virtually ignored by the American media.



• June 28: Condoleeza Rice receives an intelligence summary warning that a major al-Qaeda attack is "highly likely."



• July 2001: Senior U.S. officials (Tom Simmons, former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Karl Inderfurth, former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs, and Lee Coldren, former State Department expert on South Asia) tell the Pakistani Foreign Secretary that that military actions against Afghanistan would begin by October 2001. This threat, which was triggered in part by the Taliban's refusal to accept the Bush administration's terms for a trans-Afghan oil pipeline, is made directly to the Taliban during a meeting in Berlin, attended by the Taliban, officials of Russia, Iran, Pakistan and the Northern Alliance. New memos reveal that Bush had an Afghanistan war plan on his desk on September 9.



• July: The FAA rescinds its rule about allowing pilots of airliners to be armed, a rule that had been in place since 1961. Allegedly the rescind order was mandated by the White House, but no one in the media can get any information from the FAA as to who issued the order or why, after 40 years, it was suddenly issued.



• July 2: The FBI issues a warning of terrorist threats overseas; domestic attacks are not ruled out.



• July 3: CIA Director Tenet sends a special request to 30 foreign intelligence agencies asking that they arrest al-Qaeda figures.



• July 5: A group of senators is briefed on a possibility of a "spectacular attack" against a U.S. target, from a memo written on July 5 by Richard Clarke, the administration's top anti-terrorism official, and input from CIA Director Tenet, NSC director Condoleeza Rice, and Bush chief of staff Andrew Card. Rice and press secretary Ari Fleischer originally tried to say that the attack warnings were specifically directed against overseas targets, but were forced to admit that the warnings were actually against domestic targets when the facts came out. Interestingly, while this group of senators were briefed in July, the President claims he heard nothing about the possibility of an impending terrorist attack until August 6. Perhaps his month-long vacation in Texas during August had something to do with getting him out of danger, just as Cheney spent the month "lost" in the wilds of Wyoming. Later Clarke meets with the Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG) and members of the FAA, the FBI, and the INS.



• July 5: A memo from the FBI's Phoenix office urges the agency to investigate Middle Eastern men attending flight schools. The memo is largely ignored, even after intelligence from German and Russian sources had been received confirming that Arabic terrorists were training for suicide flights against American and Israeli targets. Subsequent reports still being issued as I write this indicate that the "Phoenix memo," as it is now being termed, was a great deal more specific than first characterized by the White House. The author, veteran field agent Kenneth Williams, reported that at least eight Middle Eastern men were interested in airplane engineering and airport security, and warns of a possible "effort by Usama bin Laden to send students to the U.S. to attend civil aviation universities and colleges." According to an L.A. Times report, "[h]is review also determined that one of the Arizona flight school students appeared to have communicated through a middleman with one of Bin Laden's top aides, Abu Zubeida, and that several of the students under suspicion had links to a radical group called Al-Muhajiroun. The Britain-based group is dedicated to the establishment of a global Muslim state and has vocally supported Bin Laden and other terrorists. ...The memo 'was very specific. It named names,' [a Congressional source] said." According to a New York Times article, "The White House has refused to produce the document, and administration officials have said that the information was too vague to act on." Note: One source dates the Williams memo as being delivered to FBI headquarters on July 10.



• July 6: The CSG learns that attacks are imminent in Paris, Rome, and/or Turkey.



• July 14 or 15: Osama bin Laden, in a Dubai hospital for kidney treatment, meets with a top CIA official, Larry Mitchell. Later, he is allowed to leave Dubai on a private jet without being bothered by U.S. security. Bin Laden was and is considered an enemy of this country, subject to immediate arrest and/or execution if apprehended by American authorities. Why he was allowed to meet with a CIA representative and leave unmolested is a serious question as yet unanswered.



• Mid-July: The CIA successfully disrupts terrorist attacks in Paris, Rome, and Turkey.



• July 18: The FAA warns airlines to exercise the highest level of caution.



• July 20: Senators Dianne Feinstein and Jon Kyl send a copy of draft legislation on counter-terrorism to Cheney's office along with a memo that, in Feinstein's words, "urge[d] that he restructure our counter-terrorism and homeland defense programs to ensure better accountability and prevent important intelligence information from slipping through the cracks." The response? "Despite repeated efforts by myself and staff, the White House did not address my request. I followed this up last September 2001 before the attacks and was told by [Cheney chief of staff] 'Scooter' Libby that it might be another six months before he would be able to review the material. I told him I did not believe we had six months to wait."



• July 20-23: During the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini reveals that Egyptian and Italian intelligence sources had uncovered a plot to crash a hijacked commercial airliner into either Air Force One or one of the buildings used for the summit. This jetliner kamikaze plot may have been directed at Bush himself. Security precautions at the summit were extraordinary, and were specifically focused on preventing hijacked planes from striking targets. According to an L.A. Times report from September 27, "the reports suggest that Western governments were aware that terrorists might one day use a hijacked airplane as a suicide weapon -- as they did Sept. 11 in attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."



• July 31: The FAA issues another warning to airlines that terrorists are actively planning and training for hijackings.



• Late July/August 2001: Due to an FBI "threat assessment," the White House instructs John Ashcroft to stop flying on commercial airplanes. No reason for this is ever made public. As CBS reported, "Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department...would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it. A senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats against any Cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself, in a speech in California, seemed unsure of the nature of the threat."



• Late July/August: An unconfirmed story from veteran foreign correspondant John Cooley reports that a Moroccan secret agent named Hassan Dabou, who had previously infiltrated al-Qaeda, provided his superiors with hard information that bin Laden's group was readying "large-scale operations in New York in the summer or autumn of 2001." If the story is accurate, Moroccan intelligence passed the story on to Washington; Dabou, meanwhile, is currently residing in the U.S., presumably under protection, and is said to be assisting the U.S. anti-terror efforts.



• August: Russian intelligence warned the U.S. last summer that as many as 25 suicide pilots were training for suicide missions involving the crashing of airliners into important targets. Premier Vladimir Putin told MSNBC that he had ordered Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings before the attacks on Sept. 11.



• August: The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in Boston. French intelligence sources confirm that the man is a key member of bin Laden's network and the FBI learns that he has been taking flying lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals.



• August: Israeli intelligence warns the CIA that "large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent," possibly involving over 200 terrorist. The CIA ignores the reports. An unidentified Bush administration member says after the attacks, "If this is true then the refusal to take it seriously will mean heads will roll. It is quite credible that the CIA might not heed a Mossad warning: it has a history of being overcautious about Israeli information."



• August 1: Actor James Woods flies from Boston to Los Angeles and notices a group of four Middle Eastern men who do nothing for the entire flight except talk together in low tones. Woods believes they are acting as if they might be hijackers, and when the plane lands, reports his concerns to the FAA. No follow-up on Woods's concerns is performed; the suspicious passengers are later identified as four of the 9/11 hijackers.



• August 6: The CIA warns the White House that al-Qaeda may hijack jets. The memo indicated that hijacked planes were to be used as missiles against targets in U.S. In May 2002, the White House tried to characterize the information in this report as pertaining strictly to overseas targets, but the report itself proves that the White House information is a pack of lies. And contrary to the White House's characterizations of the adminstration receiving only "vague" reports of nonspecific "chatter," the CIA report was extremely detailed and specific: the attacks would be on prominent domestic targets, and they would be through hijacked airliners to be used as missiles. The report included hard information from British intelligence that multiple airline hijackings by al-Qaeda were imminent. Bush is given the briefing by CIA Director Tenet while on vacation in Crawford, Texas; reports indicate that Bush cut the briefing short and went fishing for the afternoon.



• August 11 or 12: U.S. Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer in U.S. Naval Intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope which he gives to Canadian authorities. The note can be viewed at http://www.rise4news.net/Vreeland.jpg. The note contains the ominous line, "Let one happen. Stop the rest." Vreeland claims to have come by his foreknowledge as a result of information given to him by Russian intelligence officials in December 2000; according to his story, he has tried repeatedly to transmit his information through Canadian channels since that time, without being believed.



• August 17: A Minnesota flight school reports Zaccarias Moussaoui to local FBI after he asks to learn how to fly a jet but not how to land. He's arrested by the INS, but his computer isn't searched. French intelligence reports identified Moussaoui as a known al-Qaeda terrorist who had been on their watch list for three years, but the FBI did little to identify Moussaoui's terrorist connections. A routine FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) request filed by the FBI in early September to investigate Moussaoui was turned down, as were most FISA requests between the inauguration of George W. Bush and the 9/11 attacks. (The Clinton administration never turned down a FISA request.) The FBI was warned that Moussauoi, the notorious "20th pilot" who attended Airman Flight School in Oklahoma, was only interested in steering a plane, but not taking off or landing. He also specifically asked about New York City air space. According to the FBI field office in Miami, that office has never seen a July memo sent from an Arizona field office to FBI headquarters that warned of a number of Arabs seeking aviation training at a U.S. flight school. The memo urged that all flight schools be checked to identify more possible Middle Eastern students. "'That Arizona memo would have been invaluable. With all the flight schools in Florida, we would have sat on these guys,' said one federal investigator assigned to the hijacker detail after Sept. 11. ''Right after the hijackings we knew the [U.S.] government had a problem. Within hours of the attack we had names of the hijackers and that we needed to focus on flight schools,' the investigator said. 'It was clear how the information quickly flowed down that someone in Washington must have had previous knowledge. They sat on this and they blew it and it's finally coming out.'" Tthe FBI agents requested a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal computer, but were denied by the U.S. Justice Department. Hours after the 9/11 attacks, the computer was seized and found to contain information directly related to the World Trade Center attacks.


Note: On Friday, May 24, an FBI source claimed that someone in FBI headquarters rewrote the Moussaoui memo to remove important information before rejecting it for further investigation. Concurrently, in a letter to FBI director Robert Mueller, "Agent Colleen Rowley wrote that the Minnesota agents became so frustrated by roadblocks erected by terrorism supervisors in Washington that they began to joke that FBI headquarters was becoming an 'unwitting accomplice' to Osama bin Laden's efforts to attack the United States, the officials said." Agent Rowley stated that FBI officials in Washington had "skewed facts" and were trying to "circle the wagons" to prevent the FBI from embarrassing disclosures. She complained that the Minneapolis office had never received the information from the "Phoenix memo" that might have led them to connect the two cases. Although the FBI has asserted that the Minneapolis office was forwarded the "Phoenix memo" almost immediately, the Minneapolis unit chief denies ever seeing the memo. Rowley also claims that Minneapolis agents were so frustrated with the lack of response from FBI headquarters that they tried to pass their information along to the CIA, and were reprimanded for the attempt. Senator Charles Grassley accused the FBI of "sabotaging" the memo by downplaying the importance of the information and removing key elements of the memo that should have put the FBI on high alert.


• August 21: the FBI asked that two known al-Qaeda terrorists be put on a border-watch list, only to find that they were already in the country. No effort is known to have been made to locate the terrorists.



• Late August: John O'Neill, Deputy Director of the FBI and the agency's prime expert on bin Laden, quits the FBI in disgust over the administration's refusal to investigate Islamic terrorism. He is quoted as saying, "The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it." Reportedly O'Neill was convinced that the Bush administration had stonewalled FBI investigations into the Taliban/al-Qaeda connections because of the White House's desire to establish an oil pipeline across Afghanistan. O'Neill died in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.



• August 31: Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak warns the Bush administration that "something would happen" very soon. "We expected that something was going to happen and informed the Americans. We told them," Mubarak said. He did not mention a U.S. response.



• September 3-10, 2001: MSNBC reports on September 16 that a caller to a Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent attack on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week prior to 9/11.



• September 4: The FBI informs the FAA of Moussaoui's arrest. The FAA does not issue an alert.



• September 6-10: 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options -- 90 times (not 90 percent, as erronerously reported elsewhere) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than average on Sept. 6. Numbers for other affected stocks were equally alarming. It is established that only United and American stocks had this level of put buying before the attacks. No other airlines were affected. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. On September 10, 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be poised to take off." Highly abnormal levels of put options are also purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re (insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the September 11 attacks. It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time in order to alert national intelligence services of impending attacks. "This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you've ever seen in your entire life. This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence," said Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News.



• September 10: U.S. intelligence intercepts two messages that indicate an event was planned the following day, but the communications were not translated until Sept. 12. The National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on communications worldwide, intercepted messages saying, "tomorrow is zero day" and "the match begins tomorrow."



• September 10: Condoleeza Rice receives a high-priority report detailing a variety of options that can be used to counter, and possibly eliminate, bin Laden and al-Qaeda.



• September 10: Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco receives a warning to be cautious about traveling by air on September 11 from what he describes as his security people at San Francisco International Airport. The assistant deputy director of the airport confirms that he received no warnings, routine or otherwise, about problems with air travel safety from the FAA for September 11.



• September 10: A group of top-level Pentagon officials suddenly cancel their travel plans for the next day, "apparently because of security concerns."



• September 11: Either before the hijackings took place or shortly thereafter, senior administration officials were administered Cipro, an anti-anthrax drug. The first anthrax mailing did not take place for weeks after the terrorist attacks on the WTC. Administration officials refuse to comment on why Cipro was adminstered or to exactly who, and deny knowing that any anthrax attacks from any sources were imminent.



• September 11: Employees of Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the world's largest instant messaging companies, with offices in New York, receive threat warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hits the WTC. Law enforcement authorities have remained silent about any investigation of this. The Odigo Research and Development offices in Israel are located in the city of Herzliyya, a ritzy suburb of Tel Aviv which is the same location as the Institute for Counter Terrorism, which broke early details of insider trading on 9-11.



• September 11: Only eight aircraft are assigned "ready" duty for air patrol for the entire continental United States. The eight are not regular military, but Air National Guard planes. None of the eight were in the air the morning of 9/11, but rather on the ground.



• September 11: For 50 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, with it widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, supposedly no one notifies the President of the United States. (This has now been shown to be false.) It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is far too late. This means that the National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred -- an event that has never happened in history.



• September 11: George H.W. Bush and members of the bin Laden family watch the events of the day unfold together during an investors' meeting of the Carlyle Group, along with James Baker III, Frank Carlucci, and others, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C. The Carlyle Group is a compendium of businessmen, politicians, and defense contractors who have made millions off the post-9/11 "war on terrorism."



• September 11: Instead of trying to immediately return to the White House, as had been previously asserted by the White House, George W. Bush admitted on Tuesday, May 21, 2002, that he was primarily concerned with getting himself "out of harm's way." As reported in the L.A. Times, "Bush's initial conduct on Sept. 11 came under scrutiny because he did not immediately return to Washington. When the first airliner crashed into the World Trade Center, he was in Sarasota, Fla., to speak on education reform. Bush and his entourage flew to two highly secure Air Force bases -- one in Louisiana, the other in Nebraska -- before arriving in Washington that evening. 'I mean, I was trying to get out of harm's way,' Bush said."



• September 12: The White House tells a staggering set of lies about Air Force One being targeted for attack by "shadowy figures" who had gotten hold of the aircraft's coded cell phone number. Later, the administration backs off of the allegations, admitting that the entire tale was fabricated.



• September 14: FBI Director Mueller categorically states that the FBI had absolutely no information that would have led the bureau to believe that any kind of terrorist attacks were being planned. Three days later, he states even more bluntly: "There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country." On May 29, 2002, Mueller admitted that he was mistaken in making the statements. Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein suggested that Mueller may have been more interested in defending the administration than telling the truth about what the FBI did and didn't know.



• September 14: Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto and see that it describes the attacks against the WTC and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in intelligence. On January 10, 2002, Vreeland's attorneys call the Pentagon's switchboard operator in open court, who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a Naval Lieutenant on active duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in the Pentagon.



• Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Condoleeza Rice claimed that the FAA had warned both American and United Airlines of a potential terrorist threat as part of a general alert issued to U.S. air carriers. However, both airlines deny that they ever received any warnings. "American Airlines received no specific information from the U.S. government advising the carrier of a potential terrorist hijacking in the United States in the months prior to Sept. 11, 2001," said a spokesman for the airline. "American receives FAA security information bulletins periodically, but the bulletins were extremely general in nature and did not identify a specific threat or recommend any specific security enhancements." Ditto for United, whose spokesperson stated, "In 2001 there were no alerts or cautions that indicated a Sept. 11 scenario was credible or possible."



• Just after 9/11, the Bush administration exercised special dispensation for a number of relatives of Osama bin Laden to fly out of the United States and back to their Saudi Arabian homes.



• On September 17, FBI Director Robert Mueller said during a Justice Department briefing, "There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country." There is no other way to categorize this statement as anything else except a baldfaced lie.



• Shortly after the 9/11 attacks: Bush had repeatedly assured voters that he would not raid the Social Security fund except in cases of war, recession or national emergency. Shortly after 9/11 it was reported that Bush commented to Budget Director Mitch Daniels, "Lucky me, I hit the trifecta." Not the reaction of a man horrified and angered by an unexpected and heinous attack on American soil, resulting in over 3000 deaths. Since then he's repeated the "joke" at numerous Republican fundraisers and other events.

"If lying about an act of consensual sex is an impeachable offense, than lying about foreknowledge of terrorist acts certainly ought to be." -- Scot A. Griffin

So what are we looking at? To my eyes, it looks like a string of lies, evasions, and scurrilous accusations from an administration who, at the very least, dodged and ignored its duty to protect the citizens of this country. It's way past time for an impartial investigation into just what this administration did and didn't know before the events of September 11. Depending on the kind of information that comes out about this administration's demonstrated incompetence and willful ignorance, then at the minimum, highly placed administration heads should roll, and George W. Bush should think long and hard about his ability to continue running this country. He should also think twice about running for re-election. If information comes out about this administration knowingly allowing the attack to take place, or even worse, members of this administration being in any way complicit in the attacks...well, George W. won't be the first president to be impeached. But he might be the first to be convicted of treason.

Q: Is the war against terrorism about something other than what the people of the world are being told?
A: What war against terrorism? -- from an interview with Mike Vreeland, U.S. Naval Intelligence officer

• Agent: FBI Could Have Prevented 9-11
  http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/30/161204.shtml



• Agent: FBI Rewrote Moussaoui Request
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20020525/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/attacks_moussaoui_23



• Airlines in Sept. 11 attacks got no specific warnings
  http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/nation/3282968.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp



• All the desperate lies and spin don't change the fact that the Bush administration had foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks
  http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin051902/chin051902.html



• Answers, Not Scapegoats
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47968-2002May20.html



• Ashcroft drawn into row over September 11
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,719231,00.html



• Ashcroft Flying High
  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtml



• Ashcroft Learned of Agent's Alert Just After 9/11 but Bush Was Not Told
  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/national/21INQU.html



• Alerts tied to memo flap
  http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020522-217139.htm



• Are the Feds at Sea?
  http://www.msnbc.com/news/757300.asp?cp1=1



• Aug. Memo Focused On Attacks in U.S.
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35744-2002May17.html



• Avoiding the Real Questions
  http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid020528_1_n.shtml



• Bin Laden fighters plan anti-US attack
  http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/01june25/inter.htm#1



• Bombings in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania -- August 7, 1998
  http://www.state.gov/www/regions/africa/kenya_tanzania.html



• Britain warned U.S. to expect September 11 al-Qaeda hijackings
  http://www.sundayherald.com/24822



• Bush asks Daschle to limit Sept. 11 probes
  http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/29/inv.terror.probe/index.html



• Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban
  http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/01_columns/052201.htm



• Bush Fled 'Harm's Way' With 9/11 Flights
  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000036064may22.story?coll=



• Bush knew of terrorist plot to hijack US planes
  http://www.observer.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,1373,718310,00.html



• Bush told in August of specific threat to US
  http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=296628



• Bush: 'We're at War'
  http://www.msnbc.com/news/629606.asp?cp1=1



• Carlyle's Way
  http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue108/947.html



• Clinton/Gore and Terrorism
  http://www.rememberjohn.com/clintongore.html



• Clinton rejected military strike on bin Laden
  http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/sept01/2001-09-13-clinton-binladen.htm



• Cole Wounded Come Home
  http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2000/n10162000_200010162.html



• Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Contingency_Planning.html



• Did George W. Know?
  http://globalresearch.ca/articles/LEB112A.html



• Don't ask what went wrong, it's unpatriotic!
  http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/05/21/column.billpress/index.html



• The Empire Isn't in Afghanistan For the Oil!
  http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/oil-1.htm



• Evildoers in the Hood
  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2002/05/24/notes052402.DTL&nl=fix



• Executive Summary, National Commission on Terrorism Report
  http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/00060501.htm



• Fact Sheet: The List of Most Wanted Terrorists
  http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011010-1.html



• FBI Flaws Alleged by Field Staff
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A531-2002May23.html



• FBI 'Phoenix' Memo Unmasked
  http://www.fortune.com/articles/phoenix_memo.html



• Genoa's Bizarre Fortress Summit
  http://www.jrnyquist.com/july23/gordon_frisch.htm



• German police confirm Iranian deportee phoned warnings
  http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp?article=1512332



• The Gore Commission Demanded Tougher Airline Security, But Airlines And Conservatives Said No http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=4532



• Gore Commission Final Report
  http://www.airportnet.org/depts/regulatory/goreini.htm



• HeadBlast
  http://www.davidcogswell.com/



• Hijackers Targeted Pentagon, Data Show
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A1171-2001Sep20



• The Hijackers We Let Escape
  http://www.msnbc.com/news/760647.asp?0nw=n2d



• Homeland Insecurity
  http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27647



• How Sept. 11 Changed Goals of Justice Dept
  http://www.rememberjohn.com/ashcroft.html



• Imperial Schlemiels
  http://www.buzzflash.com/fifthcolumnist/2002/05/28_fifth.html



• Israeli Security Issued Urgent Warning to CIA of Large-Scale Terror Attacks
  http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/16/wcia16.xml



• Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit
  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-092701genoa.story



• Journalism's failure to track Osama bin Laden
  http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/01/12/WTC_Asleep.html



• Lawmakers Say Misstatements Cloud F.B.I. Chief's Credibility
  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/31/politics/31MUEL.html?ex=1023816515&ei=1&en=9b6b0d9348d1e09b



• Liars, Morons, or Both?
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&ncid=742&e=7&u=/020523/7/1l66c.html



• The Lie Won't Stand
  http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/051602_liewontstand.html



• Lt. Vreeland Defense Fund
  http://members.freespeech.org/ltvreeland/



• The Man Behind the Hot Memo
  http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,238574,00.html



• More Pre-Attack Warning Memos Turn Up
  http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/49163.htm



• New Terror Task Force
  http://www.cbs.com/stories/05/08/national/main290081.shtml



• The New York Times Does Some More P.R. Work For the White House
  http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/05/20_NYTPR.html



• Oh Lucy! You Gotta Lotta 'Splainin To Do
  http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy.html



• Osama bin Laden: FAQ
  http://www.msnbc.com/news/627355.asp?cp1=1



• Partisan Defense?
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A4547-2002Apr17



• Perspectives
  Newsweek, May 27, 2002, pg. 27



• Plots to Kill the President
  http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/binladen980825.html



• Poppies for Planes
  http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemId=13365&CFID=1605988&CFTOKEN=31751387



• Pre-9.11 And The BushAdmin. It's All Clinton's Fault, Right?
  http://www.bushwatch.net/bush.htm#comment



• President wants Senate to hurry with new anti-terrorism laws
  http://www.cnn.com/US/9607/30/clinton.terrorism/



• Prior hints of September 11-type attack
  http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/05/17/bush.sept.11/index.html



• Report for CIA Foresaw an Al Qaeda Plane Attack
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&ncid=584&e=7&u=/nm/20020518/pl_nm/attack_bush_report_dc_3



• Scams Away: The Boom is Falling
  http://www.almartinraw.com/column58.html



• Seeds of terror
  http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneweb/mb_011002.htm



• The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?
  http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Sociology-Psychology%20of%20Terrorism.htm



• Suicide scenario was nothing new
  http://www.msnbc.com/news/753668.asp



• Summary/Review of Reports Concerning Threats by Osama Bin Laden to Conduct Terrorist Operations Against the United States and/or her Allies
  http://www.emergency.com/bladen98.htm



• Statement By U.S. Senator Feinstein On Concerns Raised About Possible Terrorist Attacks on Our Nation
  http://www.senate.gov/~feinstein/Releases02/attacks.htm



• Terrorist Ties Cited in Memo
  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-052302agent.story



• Thanks for the HeadsUp
  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/25/opinion/25RICH.html



• Tracking a Counterterrorism Breakdown
  http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/may/timeline/index.html



• U.S. Agents Told: Back Off bin Ladens
  http://old.smh.com.au/news/0111/07/world/world100.html



• US Heard 'Tomorrow Is Zero Day' on Eve of Attacks
  story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=716&e=9&cid=578&u=/nm/20020619/ts_nm/attack_messages_dc_1



• The U.S. Ignored Foreign Warnings, Too
  http://www.iht.com/articles/58269.html



• U.S. Interests: An Analysis: Much riding on push for calm,
  http://www.freep.com/news/nw/us12_20020412.htm



• U.S. issues new warnings on terror
  http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?tf=tgam%2Fsearch%2Ftgam%2FSearchFullStory2.html&cf=tgam%2Fsearch%2Ftgam%2FSearchFullStory.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam%2Fconfig&encoded_keywords=doug%2Bsaunders&option=&start_row=2&current_row=2&start_row_offset1=0&search_results_start=1&num_rows=1



• U.S. Was Warned that Moussaoui Had Close Ties to al-Qaeda, Analyst Says
  http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/05/23/warning/index_np.html



• VikingPhoenix.com Quotes
  http://vikingphoenix.com/news/quotes.htm#terrorism



• What Bush knew before Sept. 11 could affect November election
  http://www.iht.com/articles/58197.html



• What Clinton Knew
  http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/48426.htm



• What Did They Know?
  http://makethemaccountable.com/whatwhen/index.htm



• What We Knew: Warning Given...Story Missed
  http://www.cjr.org/year/01/6/evans.asp



• What Went Wrong?
  Newsweek, May 27, 2002, pgs. 30-35



• White House Defends Threat Response
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20020516/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_hijackings_45



• White House Defends Pre-9/11 Actions
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&ncid=716&e=2&u=/ap/20020518/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_hijackings_86



• White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security: Final Report
  http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/212fin~1.html



• White House Faces Disclosure Suit
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15269-2002Jun7.html



• White House Tries To Evade Questions
  http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=5897



• Whopper of the Week: Robert Mueller
  http://slate.msn.com/?id=2065954



• Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel
  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/12/MN229389.DTL



• The World Trade Center Bomb: Who is Ramzi Yousef? And Why It Matters
  http://www.fas.org/irp/world/iraq/956-tni.htm



• WTC Plot Known Since 1995
  http://twa800.com/news/wtc-9-20-01.htm