Reply #6: on a serious note [View All]

[Wafture]

Five years after 9/11 and we're no safer

And as the Clinton administration left office, Bush and company were told that their top national security concern should be al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. But vice president Cheney, according to C.I.A. employees, was only interested in intelligence about Saddam Hussein and Iraq. What an ominous foreshadowing.

During the summer of 2001, according to the Wall Street Journal, "Intelligence officials know that al-Qaida both hopes to use planes as weapons and seeks to strike a violent blow within the United States, despite government claims following 9/11 that the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks came like a 'bolt out of the blue.' "

In July, F.B.I. Agent Ken Williams wrote a memorandum about suspicious activities involving a group of Middle Eastern men taking flight training in this country. "The memo specifically suggests that bin Laden's followers might be trying to infiltrate the civil aviation system." The memo was sent to F.B.I. headquarters and the counter-terrorism division in New York. The memo was ignored, and no action was taken, according to Williams.

"On August 6, 2001, President Bush received a classified intelligence briefing at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, indicating that Osama bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. Entitled, 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,' the memo focused on the possibility of terrorists attacks inside the U.S., with the World Trade Center specifically mentioned," the Washington Post reported.

http://www.desertdispatch.com/2006/1157981799914.html