October 1, 2006

The Bushies knew - and did nothing
Bob Woodward's 9/11 bombshell suggests a coverup:

It describes how, on July 10, 2001, CIA Director George Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, 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. The mass of fragments made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately."

Tenet called Condoleezza Rice. "For months," Woodward writes, "Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy… that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden…. Tenet and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.

"Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming....

Woodward describes the meeting, and the two officials' plea that the U.S. "needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden."

The result? "Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies."

He was doin' enough fly-swattin' on his one-month vacation at the Lazy W!
- m

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