our liars in power

[Alan Sondheim]

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Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says


   W ASHINGTON, 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."

   Also on Friday, the White House offered evidence that the Federal
   Bureau of Investigation received instructions more than two months
   before the Sept. 11 attacks to increase its scrutiny of terrorist
   suspects inside the United States. But it is unclear what action, if
   any, the bureau took in response.

   The disclosure appeared to signal an effort by the White House to
   distance itself from the F.B.I. in the debate over whether the Bush
   administration did enough in the summer of 2001 to deter a possible
   terrorist attack in the United States in the face of increased
   warnings.

   A classified memorandum, sent around July 4, 2001, to Condoleezza
   Rice, the president's national security adviser, from the
   counterterrorism group run by Richard A. Clarke, described a series of
   steps it said the White House had taken to put the nation on
   heightened terrorist alert. Among the steps, the memorandum said, "all
   56 F.B.I. field offices were also tasked in late June to go to
   increased surveillance and contact with informants related to known or
   suspected terrorists in the United States."

   Parts of the White House memorandum were provided to The New York
   Times on Friday by a White House official seeking to bolster the
   public account provided a day before by Ms. Rice, who portrayed an
   administration aggressively working to deter a domestic terror attack.

   But law enforcement officials said Friday that they believed that Ms.
   Rice's testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11
   attacks including her account of scores of F.B.I. investigations under
   way that summer into suspected Qaeda cells operating in the United
   States overstated the scope, thrust and intensity of activities by the
   F.B.I. within American borders.

   Agents at that time were focused mainly on the threat of overseas
   attacks, law enforcement officials said. The F.B.I. was investigating
   numerous cases that involved international terrorism and may have had
   tangential connections to Al Qaeda, but one official said that despite
   Ms. Rice's account, the investigations were focused more overseas and
   "were not sleeper cell investigations."

   The finger-pointing will probably increase next week when numerous
   current and former senior law enforcement officials, including
   Attorney General John Ashcroft, testify before the Sept. 11
   commission. In an unusual pre-emptive strike, Mr. Ashcroft's chief
   spokesman on Friday accused some Democrats on the commission of having
   "political axes to grind" in attacking the attorney general, who
   oversees the F.B.I., and unfairly blaming him for law enforcement
   failures.

   A similar accusation against the commission was also leveled by
   Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican with ties to the White
   House, in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday.

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