Much has been made lately of a single Presidential Daily Briefing from August 6th 2001. During Condoleeza Rice's public testimony before the 9/11 trial -- sorry, I meant Commission -- Senator Bob Kerrey seemed absolutely fixated on its title, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." He didn't want her to elaborate on its contents, however. Apparently the title alone was supposed to cause President Bush to institute emergency measures before 9/11 that would absolutely have prevented the terrorist attacks that had been planned for several years. Somehow the Democrats want us all to believe that in the weeks before 9/11, with no definite warnings about any specific threat, they would gladly have accepted armed security on airplanes, public "terror alerts", racial profiling of young Middle Eastern men, constant jet fighter patrols over large American cities, and a pre-emptive strike on a terrorist-supporting sovereign nation before its terrorists could attack us.

Who do they think they're kidding? They don't accept those things NOW!

Let's take a look at this critical memo, and figure out exactly where it predicted 9/11 just weeks in advance.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."
After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a -- -- service. An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told - - service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

It seems that for at least four years, everyone -- including the media -- had known that bin Laden planned to attack America at some point. He was fairly open about it in his 1998 interview with John Miller of ABC. However, the exact date planned for that coming attack doesn't seem to have been common knowledge. If President Bush had held a press conference to say "Terrorists plan to attack us, but we have no idea when," he would have been excoriated. Washington is mentioned, but in connection to what?

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S.
Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that in ---, Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.

  The "millenium plot" to blow up Los Angeles International Airport during the New Year's Eve celebrations at the end of 1999 was foiled by an alert border guard and pure luck. Nothing here addresses future terrorist attacks with anything like unambiguous specifics. Should President Bush have sealed the Canadian border to prevent terrorists like Ressam from crossing it? As we know, it still wouldn't have prevented 9/11.

Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.
Al Qaeda members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.
Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.
A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

Nothing in any of the above paragraphs gives a clue as to al-Qaeda's plans for 9/11 that I can see. The fact that bin Laden prepares operations years in advance actually lessens any sense of urgency this briefing might have engendered.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Finally, a future airplane hijacking is mentioned. Yet there's no indication what plane, which airport, when, or by whom. What could realistically have been done with this information? Put armed men and women on every flight in America for an indefinite period? Cause a panic by warning the public about a vague danger of terrorist activity with no specifics? Note that the presumed purpose of the possible future hijacking was wrong, although it may be what many of the hijackers themselves were told was the aim.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

Note that this information, too, would have led nowhere. No Federal buildings in New York City were attacked by terrorists on 9/11. Since no terrorists had flown airplanes into buildings before, why would anyone derive from this briefing that anything other than a truck bomb or other explosive was being planned? Was the President expected to tell the public that a Federal building in New York City might get blown up soon, but that we had no further details? What would it have accomplished besides pointless fear-mongering (which the administration is accused of doing every time the terror alert level is changed post-9/11)?

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

Putting all the elements of this report together would have brought any reasonable person to two conclusions. First, al-Qaeda was planning to hijack an airplane to bargain for the release of Omar Abdel Rahman. Second, al-Qaeda might be planning to detonate a bomb at one of the Federal buildings in New York City.  Both conclusions would have been wrong. As the briefing contained no specifics regarding time and place, there was nothing that could reasonably have been done to prevent 9/11 based on this memo.

After reading the last paragraph of the briefing, no one could have said anything other than, "It sounds as though the FBI's on top of things. Keep me informed." The problem is that the FBI wasn't on top of things, even though they were warned in 1995 of an al-Qaeda plan to hijack planes and ram them into the CIA headquarters at Langley VA and the Pentagon, as well as "commercial towers" in NYC, Chicago and San Francisco. Instead of twisting the 9/11 Commission into a partisan witch hunt against the Bush administration, perhaps Richard Ben-Veniste (Clinton's defender during the Whitewater scandal), Jamie Gorelick (Clinton's deputy attorney general, who once said, "in a campaign year, Justice can't afford to be totally blind,") and Bob Kerrey should spend more time trying to find out why we didn't put the clues together to see 9/11 coming years in advance, and how we can improve our vision in the future more than President Bush has already done. Ms. Gorelick, in particular, turns out to have been partially responsible for putting up those intra-agency walls that prevented the information-sharing that might have prevented 9/11... putting her in the interesting position of having to sit in judgement of the consequences of her own actions. The Commission should focus on how to prevent future terrorist attacks, instead of wasting their time launching public attacks on members of the current administration.

However, that wouldn't fit their agenda of attacking President Bush during an election year in his greatest area of strength, an issue that should be in the forefront of all our minds -- fighting terrorism.