New details of what President Bush and his National Security Advisor knew before 9/11 about al-Qaeda cells inside the U.S. are unravelling. Today we learn from the consummate White House insider, Bob Woodward, that Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and CIA Counter-terrorism Center head Cofer Black had an emergency meeting with Condi Rice on July 10, 2001 at which they had an intense, detailed conversations about the threat of looming al-Qaeda attacks.
That meeting coincided with a meeting attended by the heads of national security agencies which was previously described by then National Counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke.
What is particularly sigbificant about the private meeting of Rice with Tenet and Black was the fact that the Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) unit that Black commanded had been aware of the entry of the Flt. 77 hijackers when they entered the U.S. on January 15, 2000. The CIA and NSA had tracked the pair as they met with others at an al-Qaeda planning summit in Kuala Lumpur in early January. After they entered the U.S. at LA International Airport, the FBI liaison officer drafted a cable to the Bureau's national security office in NY, but that FBI agent was ordered to withhold that information, and the cable wasn't sent. Director Tenet was personally briefed on several occasions about the pair, and he and the CTC Director met on July 10, 2001 with Ms. Rice, who was Bush's National Security Advisor.
During sworn testimony, Rice, Tenet and Black omitted mention of this meeting to Congressional investigators and the 9/11 Commission, a lapse that rises to the level of perjury. The AP reports today,
Rice: No Memory of CIA Warning of Attack By ANNE GEARAN
AP Diplomatic Writer
SHANNON, Ireland (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she cannot recall then-CIA chief George Tenet warning her of an impending al-Qaida attack in the United States, as a new book claims he did two months before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible," Rice said.
Rice was President Bush's national security adviser in 2001, when Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial" outlines a July 10 meeting among Rice, Tenet and the CIA's top counterterror officer.
"I don't know that this meeting took place, but what I really don't know, what I'm quite certain of, is that it was not a meeting in which I was told there was an impending attack and I refused to respond," Rice said.(snip/...)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/RICE?SITE=AZYUM&...****
However, what's been lost in this latest revelation from Woodward is the fact that Tenet had at least 8 meetings w/Bush in the 3 weeks before 9/11, some on key dates for the hijackers, and later lied to the 9/11 Commission that his meetings with the President never happened. See,
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0406/S00098.htm UQ Wire: Tenet Lied Under Oath To 9/11 Commission Wednesday, 9 June 2004, 1:37 pm
Press Release: www.UnansweredQuestions.org
Distribution via the Unanswered Questions Wire
TENET LIED UNDER OATH TO 9/11 COMMISSION ABOUT 8/24/01 MEETING WITH PRESIDENT - AGENCY COMPOUNDS MISREPRESENTATION
* CIA Statement Omits Key Date From List of Bush-DCI Meetings in Weeks Before 9/11
* What Did Bush, Tenet, Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers Talk About in Crawford, TX Three Weeks Before the Attacks - One Day After the Flt. 77 Hijackers Were Watchlisted by the CIA?
From Mark G. Levey
Washington, DC, June 7, 2004 - Former CIA Director George Tenet committed perjury in his April 14 testimony before the 9/11 Commission when he claimed he had not met with President Bush in the month before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. That misrepresentation in Tenet's testimony was noted within hours by Agence France-Presse.
The following day, AP reported the CIA issued what was described as a correction after the Director "misspoke." The Agency asserted that its records showed Tenet meeting with Bush on August 17 and 31, and then on at least six occasions in September prior to Tuesday, the 11th.
However, that CIA announcement omits mention of the visit that then DCI Tenet apparently made to the President's Crawford, Texas ranch on August 24. The White House website on August 25 quotes a remark made by George W. Bush that he met with Tenet the previous day.
In a verbatim transcript, the President is quoted during an impromptu walking tour of Bush's Crawford, TX ranch that he had met the day before with CIA Director and newly appointed members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Rice were also present at a Presidential press conference in Crawford on the 24th, according to the White House press notice issued that day. In the August 25 transcript, the President Bush states to reporters and visitors:
SNIP****
CIA Counterterror Center Director Cofer Black was also present at meeting w/Rice two months before the attack. Cofer Black is an extremely important, central figure in the chain of events leading up to the 9/11 attack. Black had been acquainted with Osama bin Laden since at least 1995, when Black was CIA Chief of Station in Sudan, where bin Laden had made his headquarters after being expelled from Saudi Arabia.
In early 1995, Black and bin Laden had an armed confrontation, after which bin Laden moved to Afghanistan and Black was reassigned. Shortly after their parting of the ways, bin laden made a public pronouncement of war against the U.S. and George Tenet established CTC, which Black headed until 9/11. After the attack, Black was reassigned to head the State Department Bureau of Counter-terrorism, and given the diplomatic rank of Ambassador and diplomatic immunity, before he retired to found Blackwater Associates, a private security company with massive federal contracts in Iraq and inside the U.S. See,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/10/105125/910 Perjury by CIA Counterterrorism Center Director - the Blocked Memo by leveymg
Fri Jun 10, 2005 at 07:51:25 AM PDT
June 10, 2005. The LA Times reports that in early 2000, the CIA intentionally withheld a memo from the FBI that reported the entry of key 9/11 hijackers into the US. See: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-te ...
In his testimony before the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee in September 2002, former head of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) stated under oath that his office had inadvertently neglected to inform the FBI when it became known in early 2000 that Flight 77 hijacker, Nawaf al-Midhar, had entered the U.S. However, it was revealed yesterday that a memo informing the FBI had actually been drafted at CTC, but an order was issued blocking transmission of that information.
leveymg's diary :: ::
In this sworn testimony, Cofer Black stated that he and Agency staff had simply missed the importance of reports that know al-Qaeda terrorists had entered the US after attending an al-Qaeda planning summit. According to Black, then CTC director -- who after 9/11 was promoted by President Bush to head State Department Counterterrorism -- the CIA Center failed to pass this information on to the FBI in early 2000 because staff were distracted and overworked. For more information see:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/03/01_ ...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/09/p/2 ...
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00257.htm
However, as we learned yesterday, Black's testimony to Congress was a material misrepresentation of what is the most important question that Congress had for the CIA. Why wasn't the FBI informed in a timely way of this obviously critical development in tracking known al-Qaeda terrorists?
As ranking officer at CTC, Cofer Black was in a position to know about the Center's memo that had been prepared for transmittal to the FBI at the time. He was also clearly in the chain of command that would decide to block the memo's transmission to the FBI. Nonetheless, Black told Congressional investigators something quite different, and his testimony under oath before the Joint Committee was patently false, in light of the facts that were released yesterday.
US intelligence first became aware of Nawaf Al-Midhar in 1995, when he was referenced in a telephone call from a major al-Qaeda communications center in Yemen intercepted by the NSA. That communications post was run by Nawaf's uncle. The Al-Midhar family has long been prominent within the militant Yemeni Islamic opposition. Osama bin Laden's family is originally from Yemen, which has been the center of armed opposition to westerners for many decades since the British occupied the key port city of Aden and built a huge naval base there, which in the late 1990s was again visited by US naval forces after a long absence. This was viewed as a serious provocation by local Islamic radicals. The USS Cole was blown up in Aden harbour in October, 2000 during a "refueling stop".
In January 2000, The Agency had trailed the al-Midhar and his partner, Khalid al-Hazmi, as they traveled to a meeting with top al-Qaeda planners in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That meeting. at which 9/11 and the bombing of the USS Cole were planned, was surveilled by multiple US and allied intelligence agencies. Al-Hazmi and Al-Midhar reentered the US on the same flight from Bangkok on January 15, 2000.
Somehow -- and this has been a major gap in the record -- the CIA neglected to notify FBI of the entry.
Now we know that this failure to notify the FBI was no oversight. A command decision was taken by the CIA -- Director Tenet had been briefed on multiple occasions about al-Midhar and al-Hazmi and the Kuala Lumpur meeting. The only question that remains is, why did the CIA allow known al-Qaeda terrorists to run free across the US, and complete their mission on 9/11?
SNIP ________________________________________
2006, Mark G. Levey
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