I Googled this quote- "All right.You've covered your ass, now." A Google news search today Sept. 11, 2011 brings up hardly a reference to that line. In August 2001 President Bush is reported to have uttered it to an intelligence agent after receiving a briefing titled Bin Laden determined to strike in US.
One interesting article is found in the Guardian UK which has a review of three 911 books. The reviewer finds that in the past ten years the world has learned much about al Qaida and Bin Laden. He says:
Since then, of course, we have heard a lot about al-Qaida as a result of events that took place 10 years ago today. Perhaps even too much – and definitely too much that has been ill-informed. But one thing is certain: no one can say America was not warned about the biggest attack on its soil since Pearl Harbor.
The gist of the memo Bush received August 2001 summarized here from a 2004 article
The 1 1/3-page memo reported that U.S. intelligence officials had not been able to corroborate that bin Laden "wanted to hijack a US aircraft" in 1998. "Nevertheless," it said, "FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
It said the FBI was "conducting approximately 70 full field investigations" throughout the United States that it considered bin Laden-related. The CIA and FBI, it continued, were investigating a tip called in to the U.S. embassy in the United Arab Emirates that said a group of bin Laden supporters were in the United States "planning attacks with explosives."
Well who could have predicted?
No comments:
Post a Comment