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The PDB: It Ain't Just 'History'
Posted, 11:20 p.m., April 9, 2004
CNN reports it has confirmed an Associated Press report that the infamous Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing (PDB) on terrorist threats contained information--only three months old at the time--that al Qaeda "was trying to send operatives into the U.S. for an explosives attack."
This is the same briefing that national security advisor Condoleeza Rice told the 9/11 commission was a "historical document." As Rice put it in response to whithering questions from former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, "It was not a particular threat report. And there was historical information in there about ... various aspects of al Qaeda's operations."
The AP report quotes sources who have seen the still-classified document, which Rice acknowledged was titled, "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States." According to the AP, the PDB said there were various reports that Osama bin Laden had wanted to strike inside the United States as early as 1997, and continuing into the spring of 2001.
According to the AP:
- The memo cited al-Qaeda's interest in hijacking planes to win the release of Islamic extremists arrested in 1998 and 1999. It suggested al-Qaeda might have a support system in the U.S.
- It included FBI analysis that some al-Qaeda activities were consistent with preparation for airline hijackings or other types of attacks.
- At least 70 terror-related FBI investigations were under way in 2001 involving matters or people on U.S. soil. Rice testified to this Thursday.
- Al-Qaeda operatives were trying to get inside the United States to carry out an explosive attack, though the timing of such attacks was not detailed.
It's an old homily: history is written by the victors. But in this context, it seems clear that nothing precludes attempts at presenting history, as Condi Rice defines it, by the presumptive losers. It is now beginnning to look positively bleak for a Bush White House hoping to be reappointed to their current posts by an increasingly angry electorate.
Incidentally, in that other war on terror, the one that we opted to fight preemptively (and where al-Qaeda-style terror was once only a tenuous presumption), the news today is that two U.S. soldiers and an unknown number of civilian contractors are missing after their fuel convoy was attacked with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. One soldier and an Iraqi driver are known to have died in the attack.
Meanwhile fighting around Iraq continues. The CBS Evening News reports tonight that 45 soldiers have been killed since various uprisings began on Sunday.
On a (mostly) unrelated note, it turns out that today is the 28th anniversary of the day that the folk singer Phil Ochs ended his own life at 35 by hanging himself in his sister's home at Far Rockaway, N.Y. Wouldn't it be interesting today to hear what Ochs, at 63, might have to say about the way things are now?
Copyright 2004, by Kevin Featherly
