The Text of the August 6th 2001 PDB

[Bolo Boffin]

Got a CNN link on edit:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/index.html

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.


Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."


After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladentold followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a  service.


An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told service at the same time that Bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.


The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that BinLaden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning hisown U.S. attack.


Ressam says Bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation.


Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he preparesoperations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.


AI Qaeda members — including same who are U.S. citizens — have resided in and traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.


Two Al Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.


A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.


We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.


Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.


The FBI is conducting approximately 70 investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or Bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

[joeybee12]

1. Anyone know what's missing?????

It's obviously edited, supposedly for "security" reaons for classified information. It may take a while for someone to come forward and say that this is bunk, and a really doctored version.

[Zen Democrat]

2. There's enough there ...

Hijacked planes, World Trade Center, New York, Washington, bin Ladin operatives already in the US. What more did we need to "connect the dots." It doesn't matter what they took out. Rice was wrong. This was no "historical document." It was a dire warning with details!

[murphymom]

6. Did you also notice

that there's nothing about Iraq in it?

[JBoris]

3. "redacted text"

Stupid question;
Was anything censored from the original PDB? I want to see a scan of the original document I want to see how much of it was blacked out. This cannot be the whole PDB, they have lied about it waaaaaay too much for this to be the whole thing.

[question everything]

4. Yes, see a photo

http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=US&cat=Terrorism

[Bolo Boffin]

5. Another picture of the whole front page

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?g=events/911/081202sept11&tmpl=sl&e=1

[question everything]

9. Here are the paragraphs with the xxxxx

From the WSJ:

After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to xxxxxxxxxxx service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an xxxxxxxxxx service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.

(snip)

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a xxxxxxxxxx service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" "Umar "Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. The August 6th PDB was supposedly 11 pages long

It seems that the WH is trying to get away with only releasing a page and a half and figures that no one will notice.

Check out the thread in GD where this discrepancy was discovered based on documentation from http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/diezeit100102.html.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1388317&mesg_id=1388317


If this turns out to be true, I think that we have a good case for obstruction of justice?

[Bolo Boffin]

8. The PDB would cover a variety of topics

These two pages are all that the PDB contains on al-Qaeda and bin Laden. We know this because two people from the commission saw the unedited PDB.

Of course, if you think the commission is rigged, too, then this won't convince you at all. But this is a picture of what the United States Government believed to be true about bin Laden on August 6, 2001. This is what they knew. And it's enough for Bush to hang.

[Abe Linkman]

10. I don't just THINK "the commission is rigged"...

I believe that anyone as knowledgeable as you are and who is OBJECTIVE, knows exactly that the 9-11 Commission is as rigged as the Warren Commission was.

[Bolo Boffin]

11. Well, there you have it.

Thanks for playing.

[DoYouEverWonder]

13. 1st of all this PDB happened to have a title

so it is unlikely that it was about anything else except what the title clearly states "bin Ladin determined to strike in the US". Besides, Condi testified that this brief was requested by the president who wanted Tenet to give him more information about the al Qaeda terrorist threats. That was the only purpose of this particular brief, nothing else.

Second, how do you know that the WH gave the 9-11 commission the whole PDB? We have no way to prove or disprove that, yet. They probably got the same Cliff Notes version that the WH released to the public yesterday.

However, if you bother to read the darn thing, you will see that page one starts off by going into great detail abruptly cuts off at 1998. No mention of the Cole even? Then all of a sudden, you're at the end of the summary?

Funny who ever leaked the info about the PDB to Die Zeit in October, 2002, knew the exact title and they claimed the brief was eleven pages long. If they got the title exactly right, I think it would be safe to assume they got the rest of the leak right too.

[Bolo Boffin]

14. Want PDBs? Here's a link to ten of them:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/index.htm

That's right, PDBs have been declassified before. Ten of Johnson's PDBs were declassified recently, and they cover a variety of topics and countries. There's no reason to assume that on August 6th, 2001, the only thing on which Bush needed to be briefed was al-Qaeda.

To compare to a more recent document, at the same webpage, you'll find links to several of Clinton's Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs, another classified briefing that the president recieves from the CIA. As you will see, the various subjects are now given their own section and title.

What's been released is consistent in form and content with other released classified briefings. We've got it all.

[gandalf]

16. I just thought the same, my post below is late... n/t

[Bolo Boffin]

12. Link to .pdf file of the PDB

http://www.cnn.com/2004/images/04/10/whitehouse.pdf

[gandalf]

15. Is that really all?

Does President Bush has not, despite his Yale degree, the ability to follow more than one page and a third without break, or is this only a part of the PDB? It seems really short. Tenet came to Crawford only for these few sentences? Even on normal occasions the PDB comprises two or three pages.

Or are there more pages, as earlier reports indicated? Have we any reason to believe the Administration in this regard? Here is the Thompson-Timeline entry:

August 6, 2001: National Security Advisor Rice gives an inaccurate description of the memo, claiming it is only one and a half pages long (other accounts state it is 11 and a half pages instead of the usual two or three). .

Here is the relevant piece from the respected German weekly Die Zeit:
Crawford, Aug. 6, 2001. U.S. president George W. Bush is on vacation. He wants to spend the whole month at his ranch in Texas. Every morning, however, he still receives his Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB, wherein the CIA informs the president about the country's security situation. On this morning, the report is straight from the CIA director. His PDB runs 11 and one-half printed pages, instead of the usual two to three, and carries the title, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Therein the CIA chief explains that al Qaeda has decided to carry out attacks within the United States, and that presumably members of the terrorist organization have been in the country for some time.