April 10, 2004
Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and DAVID E. SANGER
NY Times


wASHINGTON, April 9 — President Bush was told more than a month before
the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden
planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to
hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.

The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his
ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint
Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held
intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al
Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on
Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's
briefing in Crawford.

The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated
assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda
threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little
reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders.

Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks
have asked the White House to make the Aug. 6 briefing memorandum
public. The A.P. account of it was attributed to "several people who
have seen the memo." The White House has said that nothing in it pointed
specifically to the kind of attacks that actually took place a month later.

The Congressional report last year, citing efforts by Al Qaeda
operatives beginning in 1997 to attack American soil, said that
operatives appeared to have a support structure in the United States and
that intelligence officials had "uncorroborated information" that Mr.
bin Laden "wanted to hijack airplanes" to gain the release of imprisoned
extremists. It also said that intelligence officials received
information in May 2001, three months earlier, that indicated "a group
of bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with
explosives."

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Bush knew...
Bush knew...
Bush knew...