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In reply to the discussion: What should have been done in response to the briefing that Bin Laden planned to attack the US? [View all]zinnisking
(405 posts)I've been reading the Sept.11 commission report. You should start here. It'll give you an idea of why the neocons didn't respond (even after months of monumental threats, they weren't buying it). And the report gives examples of ways this might have been stopped if we had an executive branch that wasn't careless.
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch8.htm
In the spring of 2001, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks increased dramatically to its highest level since the millennium alert.
Tenet told us that in his world "the system was blinking red." By late July, Tenet said, it could not "get any worse."
Threat reports surged in June and July, reaching an even higher peak of urgency.
Most of the intelligence community recognized in the summer of 2001 that the number and severity of threat reports were unprecedented.
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The neo-cons weren't buying it. Ashcroft did. Given specific warnings about aircraft he took actions to protect himself. More from the report:
Clarke wrote that this was all too sophisticated to be merely a psychological operation to keep the United States on edge, and the CIA agreed. The intelligence reporting consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a calamitous level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil and that they would consist of possible multiple-but not necessarily simultaneous-attacks.
More:
Tenet told us that in his world "the system was blinking red." By late July, Tenet said, it could not "get any worse."30 Not everyone was convinced. Some asked whether all these threats might just be deception. On June 30, the SEIB contained an article titled "Bin Ladin Threats Are Real." Yet Hadley told Tenet in July that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz questioned the reporting. Perhaps Bin Ladin was trying to study U.S. reactions. Tenet replied that he had already addressed the Defense Department's questions on this point; the reporting was convincing. To give a sense of his anxiety at the time, one senior official in the Counterterrorist Center told us that he and a colleague were considering resigning in order to go public with their concerns.
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So far after monumental warnings, scary titled memos, and counter terrorist officials running around with their hair on fire trying to get their superiors to listen, the only person taking action is John Ashcroft, heeding advice to protect himself by staying away from commercial aircraft. If only the rest of Americans were as privileged as him. Maybe things would have been different if those counter terrorist officials had gone public. We couldn't count on the neo-cons to respond when they acted like the threats weren't real.
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