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In reply to the discussion: Top general has doubts Russian bounty program killed US troops in Afghanistan [View all]TomCADem
(17,382 posts)13. Politico: What the CIA knew before 9/11: New details
It is not exactly controversial that Dubya ignored warnings of a planned terrorist attack. This is like denying that Trump ignored warnings of the growing COVID-19 pandemic.
https://www.politico.eu/article/attacks-will-be-spectacular-cia-war-on-terror-bush-bin-laden/
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. The CIAs famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. But months earlier, starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and urgently began to warn the White House that an attack was coming.
By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIAs counterterrorism center, it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die. There were real plots being manifested, Cofers former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years. The world felt like it was on the edge of eruption. In this time period of June and July, the threat continues to rise. Terrorists were disappearing [as if in hiding, in preparation for an attack]. Camps were closing. Threat reportings on the rise. The crisis came to a head on July 10. The critical meeting that took place that day was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006. Tenet also wrote about it in general terms in his 2007 memoir At the Center of the Storm.
But neither he nor Black has spoken about it publicly until nowor supplied so much detail about how specific and pressing the warnings really were. Over the past eight months, in more than a hundred hours of interviews, I talked with Tenet and the 11 other living former CIA directors for The Spymasters, a documentary set to air this month on Showtime.
The drama of failed warnings began when Tenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called the Blue Sky paper to Bushs new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threatgetting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan. And the word back, says Tenet, was were not quite ready to consider this. We dont want the clock to start ticking. (Translation: they did not want a paper trail to show that theyd been warned.) Black, a charismatic ex-operative who had helped the French arrest the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, says the Bush team just didnt get the new threat: I think they were mentally stuck back eight years [before]. They were used to terrorists being Euro-leftiesthey drink champagne by night, blow things up during the day, how bad can this be? And it was a very difficult sell to communicate the urgency to this.
By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIAs counterterrorism center, it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die. There were real plots being manifested, Cofers former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years. The world felt like it was on the edge of eruption. In this time period of June and July, the threat continues to rise. Terrorists were disappearing [as if in hiding, in preparation for an attack]. Camps were closing. Threat reportings on the rise. The crisis came to a head on July 10. The critical meeting that took place that day was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006. Tenet also wrote about it in general terms in his 2007 memoir At the Center of the Storm.
But neither he nor Black has spoken about it publicly until nowor supplied so much detail about how specific and pressing the warnings really were. Over the past eight months, in more than a hundred hours of interviews, I talked with Tenet and the 11 other living former CIA directors for The Spymasters, a documentary set to air this month on Showtime.
The drama of failed warnings began when Tenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called the Blue Sky paper to Bushs new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threatgetting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan. And the word back, says Tenet, was were not quite ready to consider this. We dont want the clock to start ticking. (Translation: they did not want a paper trail to show that theyd been warned.) Black, a charismatic ex-operative who had helped the French arrest the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, says the Bush team just didnt get the new threat: I think they were mentally stuck back eight years [before]. They were used to terrorists being Euro-leftiesthey drink champagne by night, blow things up during the day, how bad can this be? And it was a very difficult sell to communicate the urgency to this.
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Top general has doubts Russian bounty program killed US troops in Afghanistan [View all]
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
Jul 2020
OP
Good to know, if true. But still, McKenzie acted upon the intelligence, and sought confirmation. . .
Journeyman
Jul 2020
#2