Politics Or Terrorism Part II

Remember the Presidential Daily Briefing from August 6, 2001? Most likely you don’t, but that’s the one critics of the president, years, well after the fact, argued that the president “ignored” the warnings in the PDB. Here’s the first line of the PDB:

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

The PDB has more on the quality and age of the intel:

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a xxxxxxxxxx service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. This is the same PDB that the vast majority of the left has assailed Bush for “ignoring”. The Bush administration claimed there was no actionable intelligence in the PBD.

When the PDB was released The New York Times and The Washington Post both breathlessly hyped it as proof that an IMMINENT threat had been ignored (in hindsight, of course), even though the text of the report indicated that the information was mainly from the 1997 to 1999 time period.

NYT –Bush Was Warned bin Laden Wanted to Hijack Planes

WaPo – Bush Was Told of Hijacking Dangers

So what are the The New York Times and The Washington Post breathlessly hyping that the latest terror warnings?

NYT – Reports That Led to Terror Alert Were Years Old, Officials Say

WaPo – Pre-9/11 Acts Led To Alerts

Buried in the Times story is fact that much of the information just came to our attention.

The New York Daily News sumarizes the developments:

Sources said the data shows the surveillance of the five buildings dates back before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that it clearly continued into recent months.

“It’s true that some information predates 9/11, but it’s also true that the surveillance has been sustained and continuous,” another intelligence source said.

Some data emerged after the July 13 arrest in Pakistan of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, including detailed building descriptions, traffic patterns and security measures, sources said.

Another factor that contributed to the weekend’s heightened alert was material found on two computers seized after the July 25 arrest of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an Al Qaeda associate indicted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa.Bush haters need to get some consistency of reasoning in their argument. If the PDB was a smoking gun, Sunday’s terror warning should indicate that your concerns are being addressed, and actionable intelligence is being acted on…

Predictably that’s not happening…