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Bush Defends His Response As Row Deepens over Terror Warnings
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U.S. President George W. Bush
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With additional reporting by Neveen A. Salem, IOL, Washington D.C.
WASHINGTON, May 17 (IslamOnline & News agencies) – U.S. President George W. Bush defended himself Friday against charges of failing to respond adequately to intelligence reports on potential terrorist attacks prior to September 11.
"Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people," Bush said at the White House, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Bush opponents in Congress called for an investigation after his administration acknowledged Wednesday that the President had general warnings prior to September 11 that terrorists could hijack American passenger planes.
The U.S. administration insists that none of the reports contained specific warnings about the plots targeting New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon near here.
However, the White House admitted late Wednesday that Bush had received general warnings a month before the September 11 strikes that terrorists, including those led by Osama bin Laden, could hijack U.S. passenger planes.
The admission got front-page coverage in all major U.S. newspapers and drew strong criticism in Congress, where Democratic and Republican lawmakers called on the White House to provide all the facts and pressed for a thorough investigation.
Seeking to defuse the gathering storm, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush had been briefed in early August about the hijacking threat, but strenuously denied that any mention had been made of bombers turning planes into guided missiles.
"Throughout the summer, the administration received heightened reporting on threats on U.S. interests and territories, most of it focused on threats abroad," Fleischer said. "As a result, several actions were taken to button down security. All appropriate action was taken based on the threat information that the United States government received."
"The President did not -- not -- receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers. This was a new type of attack that had not been foreseen," he added.
He said the President was briefed on potential hijackings by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
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Ari Fleisher |
The revelation came amid signs of growing frustration in Congress with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, which some lawmakers blame for failing to discern red flags ahead of the catastrophe or act upon them.
"We had not received this information, and I think the Congress should have this known, should know this information ... that's what we need to find out in the days ahead," House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said Thursday.
"We need an inquiry, we need to know what information was given to the White House and what they did with it," he added.
The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Thomas Daschle, concurred.
Meanwhile the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Shelby, stressed the need to probe the role played by the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the events prior to September 11.
Fleischer said the White House was already cooperating with Congress and would continue to do so. He added that many documents had been turned over to lawmakers.
Last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that the bureau largely ignored a July 2001 appeal from its field office in Phoenix, Arizona, to investigate the oddly high number of Middle Eastern men enrolled in pilot training courses.
Some of the September 11 hijackers, who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon studied flying in the United States.
An FBI agent in Minnesota who questioned Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected 20th hijacker arrested on immigration violations prior to the attacks, reportedly warned his superiors of a vaguely-defined terrorist plot targeting the World Trade Center.
The CIA also knew that two Bin Laden associates discussed in 1995 the possibility of crashing a plane into agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, officials said.
"We failed to put the puzzle together before the horrific event," an exasperated Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said late Wednesday.
Several political analysts and activists, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told IslamOnline Thursday that they questioned why the White House chose to leak the information to the press, challenging that the Administration may be trying to direct information away from a greater issue, though none commented on what that “”greater issue” may be.
“I think the Bush Administration learned something from the Clinton Administration. If you try to hide something it will eventually come out and make things worse,” one source told IslamOnline, referring to the Monica Lewinsky scandal that rocked Bill Clinton’s Administration in which he denied having sexual relations with the intern only to later face possible perjury charges and impeachment for lying to a grand jury.
“I think we need to keep our eyes open now as to what else may be hidden and why the White House would choose to divulge information that would be so potentially damaging to them,” another analyst concluded.
Meanwhile, there were further revelations Friday - White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said security officials had prepared an order to dismantle Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network before 11 September - but, because of the attacks, Bush never saw them, according to the BBC.
In a White House briefing Thursday, U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the information passed to Bush was very generalized and did not relate to the possibility of attacks on buildings.
But the disclosure of the 6 August briefing has sparked the biggest row in Congress since the attacks, with many Democrats criticizing the government for the first time over its War on Terror.
For his part, U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney hit back at the administration's critics, saying that some of their comments had been "thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war".
While there is undoubtedly a whiff of politics in the air, Bush will nonetheless have to address the accusations squarely before long, BBC reported.
Democrat Senator Jo Lieberman and Republican John McCain have been pushing for legislation to create a citizen's commission for some time, but are now demanding an inquiry.
"It is irresponsible to point fingers and lay blame without all the facts, but it is equally irresponsible to allow this type of information to trickle out slowly and haphazardly, raising new questions, tearing at old wounds, and alarming the public," Senator Lieberman said Thursday.
Some legislators, meanwhile, are opposed to any new inquiry, on the grounds that investigations by the two houses' intelligence committees are already under way.
House intelligence committee chairman Porter Goss said his inquiry had found "no smoking gun" and no further probes were necessary.
The joint investigation is due to begin hearings next month.
At Thursday's briefing, Rice told reporters the main concern of the administration before 11 September was over possible attacks on American interests overseas.
"I don't think that anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon," she said.
Rice revealed that counter-terrorism officials met almost daily in the summer of 2001 to evaluate the threats.
She said U.S. airlines had been specifically warned in August that terrorist groups were developing ways of carrying out hijackings, using
dsguised weapons such as mobile phones and key chains.
But there was no specific warning, she insisted, and to make public such threats might have meant closing down the country's entire
aviation industry.
Rice, however, denied there had been an intelligence lapse, saying the U.S. had successfully foiled attacks on Rome, Turkey and Paris as a result of its intelligence efforts.
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