An ignoble anniversary

The past few years, we’ve taken to highlighting certain anniversaries, many of them painful. The fifth anniversary of 9/11, the fourth anniversary of the Iraqi invasion, the third anniversary of the “Mission Accomplished” speech, etc.

It hasn’t received much recognition in previous years, but today, Aug. 6, is a noteworthy anniversary as well — six years ago today, the president, on vacation in Crawford, was handed an intelligence briefing document. It was titled, “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.”

In 2004, Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and the State Department’s counterterrorism chief, explained that a Presidential Daily Briefing like that one should have sent Bush back to the Oval Office. Johnson, who’d written dozens of PDBs during Bush 41’s presidency, said the documents are usually brief and dispassionate. The one on Aug. 6, 2001, was a page and a half, with a title meant to capture the president’s attention. “That’s the intelligence-community equivalent of writing War and Peace,” Johnson said.

Johnson added that when he read the declassified document, “I said, ‘Holy smoke!’ This is such a dead-on ‘Mr. President, you’ve got to do something!’ ”

He didn’t.

[A]n unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush’s Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president’s attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

Top intelligence officials — George Tenet, Richard Clarke, and others — were running around with their “hair on fire,” warning that al Qaeda was about to unleash a major attack. Bush, tragically, treated his intelligence briefings about Osama bin Laden as perfunctory chores that he had to endure. Based on the “covered your ass” comment, it was almost as if the president was humoring the CIA briefer.



Slate’s Fred Kaplan explained a while back:

The revelation came this morning, when CIA Director George Tenet was on the stand. Timothy Roemer, a former Democratic congressman, asked him when he first found out about the report from the FBI’s Minnesota field office that Zacarias Moussaoui, an Islamic jihadist, had been taking lessons on how to fly a 747. Tenet replied that he was briefed about the case on Aug. 23 or 24, 2001. Roemer then asked Tenet if he mentioned Moussaoui to President Bush at one of their frequent morning briefings. Tenet replied, “I was not in briefings at this time.” Bush, he noted, “was on vacation.” He added that he didn’t see the president at all in August 2001. During the entire month, Bush was at his ranch in Texas. “You never talked with him?” Roemer asked. “No,” Tenet replied. By the way, for much of August, Tenet too was, as he put it, “on leave.” And there you have it. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has made a big point of the fact that Tenet briefed the president nearly every day. Yet at the peak moment of threat, the two didn’t talk at all. At a time when action was needed, and orders for action had to come from the top, the man at the top was resting undisturbed. Throughout that summer, we now well know, Tenet, Richard Clarke, and several other officials were running around with their “hair on fire,” warning that al-Qaida was about to unleash a monumental attack. On Aug. 6, Bush was given the now-famous President’s Daily Brief (by one of Tenet’s underlings), warning that this attack might take place “inside the United States.” For the previous few years — as Philip Zelikow, the commission’s staff director, revealed this morning — the CIA had issued several warnings that terrorists might fly commercial airplanes into buildings or cities. And now, we learn today, at this peak moment, Tenet hears about Moussaoui. Someone might have added 2 + 2 + 2 and possibly busted up the conspiracy. But the president was down on the ranch, taking it easy. Tenet wasn’t with him. Tenet never talked with him. Rice — as she has testified — wasn’t with Bush, either. He was on his own and, willfully, out of touch.

Six years ago today, Bush received one of the most important warnings any president has ever received — and he told the CIA official who handed him the warning, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

An ignoble anniversary, indeed.