Justice's Blind Spot (August 6 memo was kept Secret from Ashcroft!) [View All]

[mobuto]

April 19 issue - The FBI was on the case—or was it? According to the newly declassified Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) for Aug. 6, 2001, the FBI was conducting 70 "full field investigations" into Al Qaeda cells in the United States a month before the 9/11 attacks. That does not mean, however, that the FBI agents were capable of finding much suspicious activity or, if they did, that the information would ever make its way up the chain of command.

It is well known by now, for instance, that at least one FBI agent in Phoenix reported in July 2001 that an unusually large number of Middle Easterners, some with Al Qaeda ties, had enrolled in flight schools. And that the next month, the FBI started looking for two Al Qaeda suspects who turned out to be 9/11 hijackers.

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Ashcroft never saw that Aug. 6, 2001, PDB warning of an Al Qaeda attack inside the United States. Why? Because President George W. Bush, with his penchant for secrecy, had restricted the distribution of the PDB to just seven national-security officials. The A.G. didn't make the cut. On July 12, it is true, Ashcroft had been briefed by Pickard about the rising number of Al Qaeda threats abroad. But when Ashcroft inquired, "Do you have any information indicating a threat to the continental United States?" Pickard responded no.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4711886/

The President receives an urgent memo warning of imminent Al Qaeda attacks within the United States, and he doesn't bother to tell the Attorney General of the United States?