White House, CIA Kept Key Portions of Report Classified (washingtonpost.com): "President Bush was warned in a more specific way than previously known about intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda terrorists were seeking to attack the United States, a report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks indicated yesterday. Separately, the report cited one CIA memo that concluded there was 'incontrovertible evidence' that Saudi individuals provided financial assistance to al Qaeda operatives in the United States.
These revelations are not the subject of the congressional report's narratives or findings, but are among the nuggets embedded in a story focused largely on the mid-level workings of the CIA, FBI and U.S. military.
Two intriguing -- and politically volatile -- questions surrounding the Sept. 11 plot have been how personally engaged Bush and his predecessor were in counterterrorism before the attacks, and what role some Saudi officials may have played in sustaining the 19 terrorists who commandeered four airplanes and flew three of them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
...With respect to Bush, the congressional panel indicated that it tried to determine "to what extent the President received threat-specific warnings during this period" -- but obtained only limited information."

By the way, one of the findings is that "From at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001 [when Bush was on vacation in Texas for a month] the intelligence community recieved information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons."

I note Condoleeza Rice's prior emphatic denial that "anybody" ever warned of such a thing.

Was Bush warned specifically about the threat of an attack using aircraft? This must be investigated by the Keane commission, which is currently being stalled by the White House. I wonder why?
- posted by geoff @ #