White House defends pre-9-11 actions

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Posted 8:03AM on Saturday, May 18, 2002

WASHINGTON - The White House dug in for a protracted political battle as new details emerged about a pre-Sept. 11 warning to U.S. intelligence that terrorists might try to fly airliners into government buildings. While Democrats demanded answers, the Bush administration sought to put criticism of how the president handled advance information out of bounds. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Friday: ``I think that any time anybody suggests or implies to the American people that this president had specific information that could have prevented the attacks on our country on September 11, that crosses the lines.'' Reports surfaced that two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, during the Clinton administration, an analysis prepared for U.S. intelligence warned, ``Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA or the White House.'' Until the report became public, the Bush administration has asserted that no one in government had envisioned a suicide hijacking before it happened. Democrats suggested the expansion of inquiries into what the White House and federal law enforcement knew about possible terror attacks. ``Our nation is not well served when the charges of `partisan politics' is leveled at those who simply seek information that the American people need and deserve to know,'' said House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo. Fleischer said the administration was aware of the report prepared by the Library of Congress for the National Intelligence Council, which advises the president and U.S. intelligence on emerging threats. He said the document did not contain direct intelligence pointing toward a specific plot, but rather included assessments about how terrorists might strike. ``What it shows is that this information that was out there did not raise enough alarm with anybody,'' Fleischer acknowledged. Former President Clinton, golfing Friday in Hawaii, played down the intelligence value of the 1999 report. ``That has nothing to do with intelligence,'' he said. ``All that it says is they used public sources to speculate on what bin Laden might do. Let me remind you that's why I attacked his training camp and why I asked the Pakistanis to go get him, and why we contracted with some people in Afghanistan to go get him because we thought he was dangerous." President Bush commented on the controversy for the first time Friday, calling Washington ``the kind of place where second guessing has become second nature.'' Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said the president was missing the point. ``I think the question is, why didn't he know? If the information was made available, why was he kept in the dark? If the president of the United States doesn't have access to this kind of information, there's something wrong with the system.'' More details also surfaced revealing the White House was in the midst of plotting a strike against al-Qaida when the terrorist attacks occurred. The White House acknowledged publicly for the first time this week that before the attacks Bush's foreign policy team had devised a strategy to dismantle Osama bin Laden's network with military and intelligence operations. The plan was finished Sept. 4, but it never got to the president's desk for approval. A proposed presidential directive outlined an extensive CIA program to arm anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan. The plan, which later became the cornerstone of Bush's response to the attacks, was approved by the president's team Sept. 4 and was awaiting his review after a trip to Florida that began Sept. 10. White House officials say there were vague, uncorroborated threats of hijackings in the spring and summer of 2001, but they insist there was no reason to believe terrorists would slam hijacked planes into buildings. Democrats noted that suicide hijackings were not unthinkable before Sept. 11. There has been evidence of plots to slam planes into the Eiffel Tower, U.S. targets and even an economic summit in Genoa, Italy, attended by Bush last year. As the administration dealt with the growing criticism, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said more terrorist attacks on America are likely. ``The likelihood is - because it's not possible to defend at every place at every moment - that there will be another terrorist attack. We should just face that reality,'' he said.