[iwar] [fc:Heads-Up.To.Ashcroft.Proves.Threat.Was.Known.Before.9/11]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-06-05 22:33:47
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 22:33:47 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Heads-Up.To.Ashcroft.Proves.Threat.Was.Known.Before.9/11]
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Heads-Up To Ashcroft Proves Threat Was Known Before 9/11
by Harley Sorensen
Special to SF Gate

Monday, 3 June, 2002

Don't let them fool you, folks: They knew.

They might have been surprised by the ferocity of the attacks, but the
highest-ranking members of the George W. Bush administration knew before
Sept. 11 that something terrible was going to happen soon.

Bush knew something was going to happen involving airplanes. He just didn't
know what or exactly when. His attorney general, John Ashcroft, knew. His
national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, knew. They all knew.

And, in spite of its apparent ineptness, the FBI knew, too.

Not only did they all know, but they told us. Obliquely. And we didn't pay
attention. Why would we? Then, as now, terrorist threats were a dime a
dozen.

Is this my opinion? No, it's published fact.

On July 26, 2001, cbsnews.com reported that John Ashcroft had stopped flying
on commercial airlines.

Ashcroft used to fly commercial, just as Janet Reno did. So why, two months
before Sept. 11, did he start taking chartered government planes?

CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart asked the Justice Department.

Because of a "threat assessment" by the FBI, he was told. But "neither the
FBI nor the Justice Department ... would identify what the threat was, when
it was detected or who made it," CBS News reported.

The FBI did advise Ashcroft to stay off commercial aircraft. The rest of us
just had to take our chances.

The FBI obviously knew something was in the wind. Why else would it have
Ashcroft use a $1,600-plus per hour G-3 Gulfstream when he could have flown
commercial, as he always did before, for a fraction of the cost?

Ashcroft demonstrated an amazing lack of curiosity when asked if he knew
anything about the threat. "Frankly, I don't," he told reporters.

So our nation's chief law enforcement officer was told that flying
commercial was hazardous to his health, and yet he appeared not to care what
the threat was, who made it, how, or why?

Note that it was the FBI that warned Ashcroft before Sept. 11. That's the
same FBI now claiming it didn't "connect the dots" before Sept. 11.

Had we in the press been on our toes, we might have realized that if flying
commercial posed a threat to John Ashcroft, it also posed a threat to the
population at large.

But the CBSNews.com story was largely ignored. CBS ran it once, briefly. A
number of CBS affiliates repeated the story, even more briefly. That was it.
As near as I can tell, no other major news outlet ran the story of a danger
to commercial air travel so severe that our attorney general was told to
stay away from it.

When the furor broke recently over who knew what, or when, President Bush
chose his words carefully. "Had I known that the enemy was going to use
airplanes to kill on that fateful morning," he said, "I would have done
everything in my power to protect the American people."

Note the phrase, "use airplanes to kill." It suggests he thought the bad
guys were going to use airplanes in some other way, perhaps, for example, as
a trading chip to win the release of those responsible for the first World
Trade Center bombing.

On Sunday talk shows recently, Condoleezza Rice used similar language,
indicating Bush had known ahead of time that terrorists were about to
attack. She didn't say that, of course, but her careful use of language
suggested that Bush knew trouble was brewing but simply didn't know the
extent of it.

On July 5, 2001, according to a recent Washington Post article, the White
House called together officials from a dozen federal agencies to give them a
warning.

"Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to
happen soon," the officials were told by the government's top
counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke.

Clarke considered the threat sufficiently important to direct every
counterintelligence office to cancel vacations and get ready for immediate
action, the Post reported.

Several senators, including Dianne Feinstein, have called for a full-fledged
investigation into what the government knew before Sept. 11.

Incredibly, the Bush people are saying they don't want to be bothered by yet
another investigation. Asking questions and demanding answers will help the
terrorists, they say.

Even more incredibly, the public is buying it.

The public's gullibility knows no bounds. Recently, the families of the
people who died on Flight 93 on Sept. 11 were allowed -- finally! -- to hear
the final 30 minutes of the cockpit voice recorder on that flight before it
crashed in Pennsylvania.

But they weren't allowed to record it or even take notes. Why? Because (they
were told) the tape might be used in evidence against Zacharias Moussaoui,
the so-called "20th hijacker."

Is there even a dollop of logic in that explanation? It's like saying we
can't watch video of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center because
that video might be used in a trial.

Yet, the public seems to buy such specious "explanations" when uttered by a
government official.

We need a full-blown investigation of who know what before Sept. 11. We need
explanations of such things as the FBI warning Ashcroft off commercial jets,
while simultaneously ignoring strident warnings from its own agents in
Minneapolis, Phoenix and Oklahoma. These things don't add up.

And we should not let the people we'll investigate -- the Bush
administration in particular -- dictate the ground rules. Who are they to be
telling us what what questions we can ask and how we can ask them? They work
for us, not us for them.

One final note: The government has responded to the FBI's apparent mistakes
before Sept. 11 by expanding that agency's size and power.

If you think that's a good idea, and if you approve of all the extraordinary
powers the government is giving itself these days, just remember that the
next president with the power to spy on Americans, to listen in on
lawyer-client conversations, to arrest and detain without probable cause,
and so on, may be named Hillary.

Still think it's a good idea?

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist and iconoclast. His column appears
Mondays. E-mail him at harleysorensen@yahoo.com.

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