The New York Times.
IT was perhaps the most famous presidential briefing in history.
On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review
of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al
Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret
document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the
now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few
weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.
On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief — and only that daily brief —
in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was
investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials
dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the
jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history,
not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered
that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument
had some validity.
That is, unless it was read in conjunction
with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration
would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have
read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified
records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s
reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous
briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been
disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the
controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that
came before it.
