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[Editor-Within-Chief]

Bush under fire over terror alert

The White House said on Thursday that it will co-operate with congressional 
investigations.

Some independent observers smell a rat, claiming that the administration 
knew in advance of the attacks but deliberately took no action to stop them.

The administration reacted touchily to allegations that there is something 
fishy about its failure to release information about the Phoenix document.

On Wednesday, the White House acknowledged that President Bush had received 
a warning last summer that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network might attempt 
to hijack a U.S. airliner.

The White House did not want to be put on the defensive with leaks about 
what the president knew, our correspondent says.

But Mr. Fleischer noted that in the daily flow of intelligence information 
the president receives, the warning of what appeared to be the threat of a 
conventional hijacking was not as serious as it appears in retrospect. "We 
were a peacetime society, and the F.B.I. had a different mission," he said.

White House officials, however, said vague talk of the threat of potential 
hijackings was a recurring issue in U.S. intelligence data and cautioned 
against considering this new information with "post-9/11 thinking."

The C.I.A. warning might also explain why Mr. Bush's aides were so certain 
that Mr. bin Laden was behind the attacks almost as soon as they happened.

"You put all that together, and you've dotted a lot of things, you've 
closed some circles, but it didn't happen," Shelby, R-Alabama, said. "I 
think it was a lost opportunity. If you put it all in context, not just the 
briefing of the president, but the FBI is involved here, and I think they 
could have done a better job, but they didn't."

"As we have seen the nations of the world really have come together to 
fight this global scourge of terrorism," Blair said.

"The president was also provided information about bin Laden wanting to 
engage in hijacking in the traditional pre-9/11 sense, not for the use of 
suicide bombing, not for the use of an airplane as a missile."

Several times [Bush] has told audiences that he is working on solving that 
problem, and these days he is briefed jointly by the F.B.I and the C.I.A., 
ensuring that each hears information from the other agency.

The whole thing leaves a bad taste in yours-truly's mouth.

Graham said the House and Senate intelligence panels soon will hold 
hearings about various memos and reports, including the Phoenix document.

"Did the right officials not act on the intelligence in the proper way? 
These are the things we need to find out."

It was not clear Wednesday evening why the White House waited eight months 
after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington to reveal what Mr. 
Bush had been told.

"The folks who conducted to act on our country on September 11th made a big 
mistake. They underestimated America. They underestimated our resolve, our 
determination, our love for freedom. They misunderestimated the fact that 
we love a neighbor in need. They misunderestimated the compassion of our 
country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the 
Commander-in-Chief, too," Bush said.

Asked whether the September 11 attacks might have been averted had the 
Phoenix document raised more red flags, Graham said, "Well, it might have 
been if this had been seen in the context of other information, which 
indicated that there was a potential conspiracy to use commercial airliners 
as weapons of mass destruction."

"There ought to be a red flag put on transformation programs," Warner said, 
noting that transformation efforts resemble a chain that is only as strong 
as its weakest link.


--
Joe Futrelle
editor-within-chief
http://www.newspoetry.com/