CIA briefing memo exposes Bush lies on 9/11
By Barry Grey
12 April 2004
The declassification and release of the president?s daily brief (PDB) for August 6, 2001, coming on the heels of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice?s appearance before the commission appointed to investigate the events of September 11, has thoroughly exposed the official version of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington as a tissue of lies.
Whatever shred of credibility remained for the Bush administration?s claims that it had no prior warnings of an attack by Osama bin Laden?s Al Qaeda network on the US mainland has been shattered by the publication of the CIA memo, entitled ?Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.?
The administration?s decision to release the memo, like every other concession it has made to demands for a public investigation of the 9/11 attacks, was taken in a grudging attempt to quell growing skepticism over the official line, and the vocal protests of family members of 9/11 victims, many of whom are outraged over White House stonewalling and sabotage of efforts to uncover the facts surrounding the worst single attack on US civilians in American history.
When the existence of the August 2001 PDB was first revealed in May of 2002, White House officials, first and foremost, Condoleezza Rice, dismissed it as irrelevant. Rice declared at the time that the memo dealt entirely with possible terrorist attacks outside the US. She was, as is now proven, lying then, and, as even a cursory examination of her sworn testimony last week before the 9/11 panel shows, she is lying still.
For nearly two years the White House refused to release the document, given to President Bush more than a month before the hijack-bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It only agreed to do so in the wake of the controversy sparked by the testimony last month of Bush?s former counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, who told the 9/11 panel that the Bush administration took no serious action in response to multiple warnings of an impending, massive attack within the US by Al Qaeda, and then exploited the death of nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001 to implement an agenda for invading and occupying Iraq that had preoccupied Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company from the outset of the Bush administration.
The content of the August 6, 2001 PDB makes clear why the administration was so reluctant to release the document. It is a clear and stark warning that Al Qaeda is actively preparing an attack within the US, that its previous attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania show that it has the capability to do so, and that a likely method of attack involves the hijacking of one or more US commercial aircraft.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/pdb-a12.shtml