Today in a speech in New Hampshire, President Bush
defended his administration's actions before 9/11, saying:
"Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to
strike America, to attack us, I would have used every
resource, every asset, every power of this government to
protect the American people."

But CAP quickly found previous reports that the president
was told of the possibility that al-Qaida was exploring the
use of airliners as terror weapons, including against U.S.
targets:

FACT: On August 6, 2001, President Bush personally "received
a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin
Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that
the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane."
-- Dateline NBC, 9/10/02 (Transcript in Nexis)

FACT: U.S. and Italian officials were warned in July 2001
that Islamic terrorists had considered "crashing an airliner
into the Genoa summit of industrialized nations."
-- LA Times, 9/27/01.

FACT: A 1999 report prepared by the Library of Congress for
the National Intelligence Council "warned that Osama bin
Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into
government buildings like the Pentagon." The report
specifically said, "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to
al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft
packed with high explosives … into the Pentagon, the
headquarters of the CIA, or the White House."
-- CBS News, 5/17/02.

CAP also found this nugget, showing that the State
Department under Bush downplayed the importance of the
threat of Osama bin Laden in its annual terrorism report in
early 2001.

"The State Department officially released its annual
terrorism report just a little more than an hour ago, but
unlike last year, there's no extensive mention of alleged
terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. A senior State
Department official tells CNN the U.S. government made a
mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden and
'personalizing terrorism.'"
-- CNN, 4/30/2001.