The 9/11 Cover-up

It's fortunate for George W. Bush he has a mess on his hands in Iraq; otherwise, he might have to worry about a significant cover-up coming undone.

As matters in Iraq -- rising American casualties, helicopter mishaps, and an abrupt Bush decision to hand off political authority to an Iraqi body to be named later -- have dominated the news, although a tussle between the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks and the White House did attract a short burst of media attention. It was noted on front pages that the bipartisan 9/11 commission and the Bush administration, after weeks of squabbling, had forged a deal regarding the commission's access to intelligence briefings given to Bush before September 11, 2001. But the news reports generally did not fully explain what was at stake.

The White House had refused to turn over this material to the House and Senate intelligence committees when they were conducting a joint investigation of 9/11, and Bush took the same position with the 9/11 commission. But when the commission -- headed by former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean, a moderate Republican appointed to the panel by Bush -- raised the prospect of subpoenaing the documents, the Bush team worked out a compromise. It is permitting the 10-member commission limited access to these intelligence reports, known as the President's Daily Brief (PDB). (It helped that family members of people killed on 9/11 had protested the White House's lack of cooperation.) The arrangement was unprecedented; this is the sort of stuff administrations fight to the death to keep secret, but 9/11 is different. Two Democratic commissioners (former Senator Max Cleland and former Representative Timothy Roemer) and the Family Steering Committee, an association of 9/11 relatives blasted the agreement for imposing tight restrictions on how the commission can use information and, most importantly, on what it can tell the public about the material it is allowed to see.

The accord was a partial victory for a Bush White House that has been trying hard to conceal a key slice of the 9/11 tale: what Bush knew of the pre-9/11 intelligence warnings that al Qaeda was planning a strike against the United States, and what Bush did (or did not do) in response to these warnings. The White House's deal with the commission could well enable the administration to maintain this stonewalling.

Some background: While the World Trade Center ashes were still glowing, Bush and his aides told the public that they had had no reason to suspect this type of horrific attack was about to occur. Yet, as the final report of the joint inquiry of the House and Senate intelligence committees notes, for years the intelligence community had collected information reporting that terrorist outfits, including al Qaeda, were interested in mounting 9/11-like attacks -- that is, hijacking airliners and crashing them into high-profile targets in the United States. U.S. intelligence services, the Pentagon, and the Federal Aviation Administration during the Clinton and Bush II years apparently did not take action in response to these reports. That was a systemic failure. Bush has never addressed it publicly, but if pressed he could blame the bureaucrats at the CIA, the Defense Department and the FAA for ignoring clear-and-present hints.

Bush is more vulnerable regarding warnings about al Qaeda that were sent to the White House during his first eight months in office. In May 2002, media reports revealed that the August 6, 2001, PDB had included material regarding Osama bin Laden's interest in hijacking airliners. That caused a brief controversy for Bush. And in September 2002, the House and Senate intelligence committees disclosed that an early July 2001 intelligence warning had noted, "We believe that [bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against the U.S. and/or Israeli interests in coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."