Rumsfeld, Ashcroft said to have received warning of attack

[Octafish]

The spaghetti has hit the fan.

Rumsfeld, Ashcroft said to have received warning of attack

By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
McClatchy Newspapers Posted on Mon, Oct. 02, 2006

(MCT) WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.

Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel's executive director and the principal author of its report, who's now Rice's top adviser.

CONTINUED...

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15663391.htm

Time to prepare the tribunals.

[Botany]

1. And Ashcroft quit flying commerical airlines?

:tinfoilhat:

[Octafish]

6. Bush and 9-11: Compelling Evidence for Complicity

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=780909

Like lots of DUers, we've been saying it for years: "They knew."

[Mountainman]

12. They needed their second Pearl Harbor, just as PNAC states.

[Richard Steele]

16. And B*sh started traveling with a portable Surface-to-Air Missile battery.

There was mention of it being set up on the roof
of his hotel the evening of Sept. 10th...
And then it went down the memory hole.

[LonelyLRLiberal]

2. Will this be covered by the talking heads?

A?: More likely to be covered as follow-up to Woodward's new book. Let's hope so.

[Octafish]

7. The Covered-Up Meeting

Hope so, LonelyLRLiberal. Even the WaPo is starting to tell the truth, which means the elites have tired of the Bush Crime Family.

The Covered-Up Meeting

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, October 2, 2006; 1:12 PM

The "State of Denial" in the title of Bob Woodward's new book describes President Bush's ongoing refusal to see the true consequences of the war he launched in Iraq.

But one of the book's most notable revelations suggests that the Bush White House was in another state of denial more than five years ago, this one about the threat of terrorism before September 11, 2001.

If the omniscient narrator of Woodward's book is to be believed, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice waved off warnings that should by any reasonable standard have put the government on high alert for an al-Qaeda attack.

And in what looks like a potential administration cover-up, Rice and the other participants in that meeting apparently never mentioned it to anyone, including investigators for the 9/11 Commission.

In a short excerpt from his book in Sunday's Washington Post, Woodward writes: "On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.

CONTINUED w/loads on Corporate McPravda's roles in all this...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/10/02/BL2006100200537.html

We got these NAZI bastards on the run. Let's keep at 'em until they're ALL in jail.

[LonelyLRLiberal]

8. Amen, Octafish - preaching to the choir! nt

[DoYouEverWonder]

18. Remember when everyone said we were crazy?

Here's to keeping the faith. :toast:

[hedgehog]

3. I wish memory was more reliable.

I remember being disgusted with Ashcroft before 9/11 because I thought he was being an imperialist dictator by insisting on flying in a private jet because of unnamed threats. I thought he was defending himself from personal attacks (and contact with the hoi polloi). It never occurred to me then that he was worried about a big attack.

[Octafish]

10. The 9/11 Story That Got Away

In an interview, I remember Ashcan even lied in Poland about it, where he was on official duties.

What's worse is that Corporate McPravda helped him get away with it. Well, almost...

The 9/11 Story That Got Away

By Rory O'Connor and William Scott Malone, AlterNet
Posted on May 18, 2006, Printed on October 3, 2006


On Oct. 12, 2000, the guided missile destroyer USS Cole pulled into harbor for refueling in Aden, Yemen. Less than two hours later, suicide bombers Ibrahim al-Thawr and Abdullah al-Misawa approached the ship's port side in a small inflatable craft laden with explosives and blew a 40-by-40-foot gash in it, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others. The attack on the Cole, organized and carried out by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida terrorist group, was a seminal but still murky and largely misunderstood event in America's ongoing "Long War."

Two weeks prior, military analysts associated with an experimental intelligence program known as ABLE DANGER had warned top officials of the existence of an active Al Qaida cell in Aden, Yemen. And two days before the attack, they had conveyed "actionable intelligence" of possible terrorist activity in and around the port of Aden to Gen. Pete Schoomaker, then commander in chief of the U.S. Special Operation Command (SOCOM).

The same information was also conveyed to a top intelligence officer at the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), headed by the newly appointed Gen. Tommy Franks. As CENTCOM commander, Franks oversaw all U.S. armed forces operations in a 25-country region that included Yemen, as well as the Fifth Fleet, to which the Cole was tasked. It remains unclear what action, if any, top officials at SOCOM and CENTCOM took in response to the ABLE DANGER warnings about planned Al Qaida activities in Aden harbor.

None of the officials involved has ever spoken about the pre-attack warnings, and a post-attack forensic analysis of the episode remains highly classified and off-limits within the bowels of the Pentagon. Subsequent investigations exonerated the Cole's commander, Kirk Lippold, but Lippold's career has been ruined nonetheless. He remains in legal and professional limbo, with a recommended promotion and new command held up for the past four years by political concerns and maneuvering.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/36388/

Of course, Ashcrap lied his eyes out to the 9-11 Ommission. "My wife and I were always doing what we were told...yada yada yada blah blah blah."

[Felinity]

4. I just read on another thread

That Ashcroft denied, yesterday or today, that he was briefed.

How do you forget a Power Point Presentation?

It seems that senile dementia strikes early for the criminally prone Republican leadership. Could it be it is transmitted based upon a special recessive gene? Possibly some genetically related brain defect causes neo-con thinking, along with temporary blackouts when presented with unwanted information?

[grasswire]

5. infuriating and damning

"Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report."

COVERUP.

The cabinet members "don't remember" the briefing of July 10, so any mention of it was excluded from the report of the commission. THAT IS A COVERUP.

WORSE THAN WATERGATE!!

[Spazito]

9. A key question that has to be asked, imo, is this....

Did Tenet testify about the July 10th meeting at the public Commission hearing OR at the secret hearing attended only by Ben Veniste and Condi's guy? From what I have read in recent days, it was at the secret meeting where the full Commission was NOT in attendance.

If the July 10th meeting was raised only at the secret meeting, was that Tenet's testimony about that meeting ever forwarded to the full Commission? If not, why not? If so, why are the other Commission members so adamant they did NOT know about that meeting?

Ben Veniste is the one to answer this one, imo. What power and authority did Condi's guy have to determine: What info went to the full Commission and what info was to be put into the final report?

[bobthedrummer]

11. k&r

[burythehatchet]

13. drip .. drippy .. drip.drip.drip...

WHOOSH

[robertpaulsen]

14. Kicked, recommended and bookmarked!

I remember the reports on Ashcroft, but not Rumsfeld. Thanks for the link!

[opihimoimoi]

15. At the time: Bush had failing/falling numbers::: They needed a boost..

Best way was to let some attack on America Happen...to kinda galvanize the Citizenry. I don't think they knew 3000 peeps were going to die...they just wanted some kinda attack to use as a tool to boost Bushies numbers.

However, it seems this backfired...too much to chew at same time...all requiring BS Lies....

5 years later...the BS starting to go soft....not selling so much.....Peeps are nervous and want to BLAME....Pubs in crosshairs.

A shift results....Blue looking better than Red.....GOP wants to cry....

[bobthedrummer]

17. kick

[brettdale]

19. kick

kick

[Supersedeas]

20. Zelikow has his fingers all over this!!!

[mod mom]

21. That would be digested spaghetti, Octafish!

;)

Seriously, this coupled with Leahy's comments on 911 means we are in for some dangerous days ahead. :scared:

[BuyingThyme]

22. Why did they allow it to happen?

http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2006/sept/audio/dn20060929.ra&proto=rtsp&start=19:15&end=20:03