A report says the Bush administration knew in May of Al Qaeda’s plans to attack. Report: Bush briefed on Al Qaeda

Then-President George W. Bush received more frequent and detailed warnings about Al Qaeda’s plans to attack the United States than have previously been disclosed, according to a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday by author Kurt Eichenwald.

While the Bush administration had revealed an Aug. 6, 2001, presidential brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” other earlier briefings also warned of an attack. The first report came in May, and a June report said an attack was “imminent,” Eichenwald wrote.


( Also on POLITICO: PHOTOS: Sept. 11 remembered)

Eichenwald, a former New York Times reporter who’s the author of a new book, “500 Days: Secrets and Lies In the Terror Wars,” writes that neoconservatives in the Bush administration dismissed the warnings because “bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.” The CIA persisted in its warnings.

Appearing with Eichenwald on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” former New York Gov. George Pataki attacked the author on Tuesday, accusing him of trying to blame Bush for not protecting America from the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Sept. 11, everything changed, and to look 11 years later, and to say: ‘Ah ha! This was happening before Sept. 11 in the summer,’ and to go through and selectively take out quotes and say ‘You should have done that and you should have done that,’ I think it’s incredibly unfair and a disservice to history,” Pataki said on “Morning Joe.”

“What I’m saying is, we cannot say: ‘I’m not going to pay attention to history, cause that part of history is about my party’,” Eichenwald said to Pataki, a Republican, later adding: “It’s 11 years later. Of course we can learn from it.”

Pataki wasn’t actually basing his critique on the book.

“I haven’t read your book, thank God, and I don’t intend to,” Pataki said. “But just looking at the jacket and the quotes on the back, these are selectively taken for the purpose of making the Bush administration look bad.”

Eichenwald said his book was a balanced protrait of the Bush administration and read a passage from the second page of his 640-page book in which a national security aide praises Bush effusively. Pataki didn’t respond.