The following is an excerpt from an article (.pdf) I wrote in January of 2004. The article was being considered for publication in several prominent journals when Richard Clarke came forward and made a much more compelling case for what I was saying. The article was never published. If you read the whole article you will find it is a little out of date. Some facts were cleared up by the 9/11 report. However, the facts about the President’s activities on the morning of 9/11 have never been explored or explained by any government report.

The President had arrived in Florida on September 10th, 2001 and made an
appearance at the Justina Elementary School in Jacksonville. Bush’s “No Child Left
Behind” education bill was held up in conference and the administration was trying to
drum up support for its passage. In the late afternoon he made a brief flight south to
Sarasota, where he lodged at the luxurious, Colony Beach and Tennis Resort. The
next morning Bush awoke before 6 AM and went to the nearby Resort at Longboat
Key Club with Bloomberg News reporter Richard Keil, to have a jog around one of
their golf courses. Bush then returned to his hotel room, showered, put on a suit, and
sat down for his daily intelligence briefing at 8 AM. Right at this moment (7:59 AM
by most accounts, 8:02 by NORAD) American Airlines Flight 11 took off out of
Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boeing 767 was approximately
fourteen minutes behind schedule for its trip to Los Angeles.

Bush’s briefing lasted less than twenty minutes and included a warning of an
elevated risk of terrorism. (As we shall see, intelligence suggesting a major terror
attack was immanent had been coming in all summer long). It was during this
briefing that Flight 11 stopped responding to Air Traffic Control (8:13 AM) and
turned off its transponder. When the controllers gave permission to climb to 35,000
feet there was no response and the “blip” on the radar screen disappeared. Around
8:20 AM Flight 11 began to deviate from its flight plan and, after seven minutes
without radio contact, the Air Traffic Controllers became very concerned about a
hijack. At 8:24 AM that possibility was confirmed when two brief cockpit
transmissions were picked up: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you’ll be
O.K. We are returning to the airport… Nobody move, everything will be O.K. If you
try to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”
Another transmission reiterated these instructions at 8:33:59: “Nobody move
please; we are going back to the airport. Don’t try to make any stupid moves.”
Just about the time of this last transmission Bush entered his 2001 Cadillac DeVille
stretch limousine and headed for his appearance at Booker Elementary to continue
his “war on illiteracy”. When Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower at 8:46:26 AM
President Bush was in transit. The seven-seat limo was designed by the General
Motors Specialty Vehicle Group, hand-customed and equipped to be the most
technologically advanced car in the world.5 Michael O’Malley, Cadillac General
Manager, has been quoted saying that just as Air Force One is a flying Oval Office,
the Presidential limo “provides the same amenities for our nation’s leader while

5 Los Angeles Times January 24, 2001, NEW ‘FIRST CADDY’ ON DUTY AT WHITE HOUSE, TERRIL YUE JONES.

traveling on the ground.”6 Los Angeles Times reporter, Terril Yue Jones characterized
its capabilities, “…assume that President Bush has enough satellite communications
technology at his fingertips to wage war from the back seat.”

In spite of the all this communications technology, all official accounts, claim that
no one made the President aware of a major “accident” during his journey from
Longboat Key to downtown Sarasota. But other travelers in the motorcade were
made aware. Kia Baskerville, a CBS News White House producer recalled, “as the
presidential motorcade headed to President Bush’s first event, I received a call on my
cell phone from a producer who said that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center
in New York.” The White House Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, was informed by
pager as well as by radio. As the Christian Science Monitor reported on September
17th, 2001, “about six blocks from the school, a news photographer overheard a radio
transmission. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer would be needed on arrival to discuss
reports of some sort of crash. The radio also said that Mr. Bush had a call waiting for
him at his holding room in the school from national security adviser Condoleezza
Rice.”7 And U.S. Navy Captain Deborah Loewer, the director of the White House
Situation Room, was contacted by her deputy in the Situation Room, who informed
her about the crash. 8

Skeptics think it is unlikely that the President was not alerted to the accident until
after he arrived at the school when many other people in the motorcade were. The
report of a radio transmission increases their doubt. To say the least, it seems strange

6 Los Angeles Times January 24, 2001, NEW ‘FIRST CADDY’ ON DUTY AT WHITE HOUSE, TERRIL YUE JONES.
7 A Changed World, by Peter Grier The Christian Science Monitor September 17, 2001
8 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/29/earlyshow/leisure/books/main527361.shtml

that millions of people around the world were aware for ten minutes, or more, before
anyone thought it necessary to inform the President.

The growing suspicion that Bush may have known about the hijackings and
deliberately failed to take actions to prevent them is fed by such oddities in the
official line. But the real crux of the matter has to do with the President and his
handler’s decision, once he was informed about the first crash, to continue on with his
reading demonstration as scheduled. Mindy Kleinberg, another 9/11 widow, wonders
“that a national emergency was in progress. Yet President Bush was allowed to enter
a classroom full of young children and listen to the students read.” The White
House’s explanation for this is that the President did not realize an emergency was in
progress. According to them, Bush had been told that the first plane was small, had
initially thought that it was an accident, and had been stunned and unprepared when
Andrew Card leaned down and whispered in his ear that a second plane had hit the
WTC and the country was under attack. For many, the difficulty in believing this
explanation lies in an analysis of the extensive warnings the government had received
over the summer that we might be attacked by civilian aircraft.

The President’s Trip to Italy

The President had just traveled to Europe in late July, 2001. The main event was a
G-8 economic conference in Genoa, Italy. In recent years, major economic summits
had been drawing large numbers of protestors, and had resulted in riots in Seattle just
the year before. So, security for the leaders of the eight major powers was a major
concern. But this concern was greatly enhanced more than a month before the
conference, when foreign intelligence services began to pick up warnings that Osama

11

bin- Laden’s, al-Qaeda organization was planning to make an assassination attempt on
Bush, or, perhaps all eight leaders.
A full month before the summit, on June 22nd, 2001, the New York Post reported:
“President Bush’s meetings with world leaders at next month’s G-8 summit in
Italy might be moved to an aircraft carrier or cruise ship because of terrorist
threats, Bush administration sources said. Security officials from several countries
are discussing threats by Osama bin Laden to assassinate Bush and commit other
acts of violence during the Genoa summit… Security officials were said to be
alarmed about the vulnerability of the Genoa summit site to remote-controlled
airplanes and other exotic weapons.9

The threat was taken so seriously that CNN reported, “…the U.S. President may be
staying at U.S. Camp Darby military base in Livorno or offshore on the American
aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise to avoid any terrorist risk.”10

In the end, the Italians cleared all the air space around Genoa, put fighters in the air
and anti-aircraft batteries on the ground, while keeping the sleeping arrangements of
the various leaders a closely guarded secret.
After the disaster in September, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini
reflected back on the precautions they had taken in July, “Many people were ironic
about the Italian secret services. But in fact they got the information that there was the
possibility of an attack against the U.S. president using an airliner. That’s why we

9 The New York Post June 22, 2001 THREATS MAY MOVE SUMMIT, NILES LATHEM and ANDY SOLTIS
10

<http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/07/17/genoa.security/

closed the airspace and installed the missiles. Those who made cracks should now
think a little.”11

For those who haven’t experienced it, it is difficult to gauge the normal reaction to
being told that terrorists intend use an airliner to kill you, but it seems the idea that al-
Qaeda might use aircraft as weapons should have been quite fresh in Bush’s mind.
Even if the initial report Bush received was of a “light airplane, twin-engine
airplane”, the recent concern about “remote-controlled airplanes” in Genoa should
have set off alarm bells.

Terror Warnings
If the fright and disruption of his sleeping arrangements in Genoa didn’t make
much of an impression on Bush, there were plenty of other reminders that al-Qaeda
was gunning for us. Chief among these were warnings coming in from foreign
leaders and intelligence agencies that suggested an immanent threat of terrorist attack.
In the summer of 2001, the Jordanian General Intelligence Division (GID), made a
communications intercept that contained not only the basic outlines of the 9/11
operation, but even its code name: “the big wedding”12. Jordan then relayed its
contents to Washington and to Germany. Although the intercept did not mention
hijacking or any specific date, it did clearly state that the attack was to be within the
continental United States and that aircraft would be used. This was a warning of an
attack with aircraft, not a mere hijacking. John K. Cooley, of the International Herald
Tribune, after confirming this story, commented, “When it became clear that the

11 http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-092701genoa.story
12 In Arabic, “Al Ourush al Kabir”

information about the intercept was embarrassing to Bush administration officials and
congressmen who at first denied that there had been any such warnings before Sept.
11, senior Jordanian officials backed away from their earlier confirmations.” 13

Two days after 9/11 Germany’s daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), citing
anonymous German intelligence officers, reported that U.S. and Israeli intelligence
agencies had at least three months warning that Middle Eastern terrorists were
plotting attacks on “symbols of American and Israeli culture” using hijacked
commercial aircraft as weapons. As in Jordan, German revelations of this type
quickly dried up, but the FAZ report is partially corroborated by a report in the Times
of London from June 14th, 2002. According to the Times:

“Britain’s spy chiefs warned the Prime Minister less than two months before
September 11 that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda group was in “the final stages”
of preparing a terrorist attack in the West…The heads of MI6, MI5 and GCHQ,
the signals eavesdropping centre, suggested that while the most likely targets
were American or Israeli, there could be British casualties. Their warning was
included in a report sent to Tony Blair and other senior Cabinet Ministers on July
16. But the agency chiefs admitted the “timings, targets and methods of attack”
were not known…The JIC [Cabinet Office Joint Intelligence Committee]
prediction of an al-Qaeda attack was based on intelligence gleaned not just from
MI6 and GCHQ but also from US agencies, including the CIA and the National
Security Agency[NSA], which has staff working jointly with GCHQ. The CIA

13 The U.S. Ignored Foreign Warnings, Too by John K. Cooley The International Herald Tribune May 21, 2002.

sometimes has a representative on the JIC. The contents of the July 16 warning
would have been passed to the Americans, Whitehall sources confirmed.”14

Even Bush friendly Fox News has reported that, “in July and August
[2001], British intelligence shared “general” information that it had learned through
surveillance of Khalid al-Fawwaz, a Saudi Arabian dissident who has publicly
acknowledged being a bin Laden operative…” Fox News further acknowledged
summertime warnings from India, Israel, France and reported of Russia: “President
Vladimir Putin has said publicly that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert the
United States last summer that suicide pilots were training for attacks on U.S.
targets.” 15

Some of this intelligence of an immanent attack may have never reached the
highest echelons of the American intelligence community. But it is clear that much
of it did. That the CIA and FBI were very concerned during the summer of 2001 that
a highly destructive, even spectacular, attack was looming can be seen from the
testimony of Eleanor Hill. Ms. Hill was the Staff Director for the Joint Inquiry Staff,
the congressional committee that investigated 9/11. When she testified before the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on September 18, 2002, she characterized
the atmosphere at the time:

“…in the eyes of the Intelligence Community, the world did appear increasingly
dangerous for Americans in the spring and summer of 2001. During that time

14 Spy Chiefs Warned Ministers of al-Qaeda Attacks, by Michael Evans, The London Times, June 14, 2002
15 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,53065,00.html

period the Intelligence Community experienced a significant rise in information
indicating that Bin Ladin and al-Qa’ida intended to strike against United States
interests in the very near future. Some individuals within the Intelligence
Community have suggested that the increase in threat reporting was
unprecedented, at least in terms of their own experience.”

This was not news to the committee because on February 6th, 2002, DCI George
Tenet had told them that in July and August 2001, “it was very clear in our own
minds that this country was a target. There was no texture to that feeling. We wrote
about it, we talked about it, we warned about it. The nature of the warning was almost
spectacular.”

Given this level of anxiety it is easy to understand the July 26th, 2001 report of
CBS News Correspondent, Jim Stewart. According to Stewart, the FBI, citing
security concerns, had advised Attorney General John Ashcroft to fly noncommercial
aircraft for the remainder of his term. Breaking precedent, the Justice
Department leased a G-3 Gulfstream that cost “more than $1,600 an hour to fly.”16

The Memo

It was within this context of alarm that Tenet briefed the President on August 6th,
2001.

The briefing had been instigated on July 5th, the same day the Federal Aviation
Authority [FAA] issued a circular to the airlines warning that terrorists had ”an

16 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtml

intention of using explosives in an airport terminal.” Disturbed by all the “noise in the
system” Bush had requested that Condoleezza Rice put together an analysis of what
al-Qaeda’s intentions might be. Now as Bush began a month long “working
vacation” at his Crawford, Texas ranch, he got an opportunity to see the results. It
was a document referred to as a Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). Beyond that the
details are disputed. The administration claims the briefing was titled ‘Bin Laden
Determined to Strike the United States’. It is a tightly guarded document with very
limited circulation within the government. But leaks have suggested that the title was
actually ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States’ (emphasis added). The
subtle difference in emphasis has become important because the administration spent
so much time emphasizing that intelligence that summer was focused abroad. A
memo reviewed by the President just a month before the attacks, that focused on
domestic hijacking attacks, would severely undermine the official line.
By the time word of this memo leaked, in May 2002, eight months had passed since
the attacks, and the administration had insisted emphatically that we had no warning.
No one could have predicted 9/11, they said, and nothing could have prevented it. It
came as a shock to hear that the President had been specifically briefed on the subject
of al-Qaeda hijacking. Tom Brokaw led the NBC Nightly News by announcing: “at
the White House tonight it is all hands on deck as the White House tries to deal with a
storm of criticism”.17

The pro-Bush New York Post’s headline blared, “BUSH
KNEW”. The father of WTC casualty, Bill Doyle, said at the time, “I believe our
whole government let people down”. Ron Willet, whose son’s phone cut out when

17 The Hotline, May 17, 2002, FIRST PUBLIC COMMENTS COME AFTER A DAY OF DAMAGE CONTROL

the North Tower was struck, agreed. Asked whether he thought the government
shared some responsibility for the loss of his son, Willet replied, “I have to. We had
the suspicions all along. We’d talked about the possibility of the government
knowing.”18

On May 16th, a shaken Dr. Rice held a press conference to do damage control.
She tried to downplay the significance of the leak and the memo, claiming it was
merely a page and half long and was an, “analytic report, which did not have warning
information in it of the kind that said, they are talking about an attack against so forth
or so on…(it) mentioned hijacking, but hijacking in the traditional sense… the
overwhelming bulk of the evidence was that this was an attack that was likely to take
place overseas.”

When asked why the administration had not volunteered this information she
responded, “this all came out as a result of our preparations to help the committees on
the Hill that are getting ready to review the events. It wasn’t—frankly, it didn’t pop to
the front of people’s minds, because it’s one report among very, very many that you
get.”

Interestingly, the Bush administration refused to provide access to this memo to
those “committees on the Hill” whose very existence they did their utmost to
discourage. Over White House objections, the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence had decided
in February 2002, to conduct a “Joint Inquiry into the activities of the U.S.

18 Springfield News -Leader (Springfield, MO) May 26, 2002 Families differ on what they want to know, Eric Eckert.

Intelligence Community in connection with the terrorist attacks perpetrated against
our nation on September 11, 2001.” Eventually this Joint Inquiry produced a report
(officially S. Rept. 107-351 and H. Rept. 107-792) that ran 832 pages. The result
was so unsatisfying that the families of 9/11 victims raised a public outcry leading to
the formation of a new independent commission called the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (informally known as “The 9/11
Commission”). Former Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a member of the new
commission who recently resigned, characterized this process:

The joint inquiry made up of Democrats and Republican members of
Congress…issued a report this summer , but they couldn’t get at the PDB’s
[Presidential Daily Briefings]. They kicked the can down the street so that the 9/11
Commission could get at the full story. That’s the reason for this independent
commission, with the time and energy and staff to get at all of this. Had the Joint
Intelligence Committee been able to do its job, there wouldn’t have even been a
9/11 commission.19

But the administration has set barriers to even this new commission seeing the
August 6th memo, which may not have been as short as a page and a half. According
to Oliver Schröm, a reporter with the German newsweekly, Die Zeit, the memo ran
“11 and one- half printed pages, instead of the usual two to three.” The truth about
this memo may never be known, because the White House has the Commission by
the short hairs. Technically, they have subpoena power to force the administration to
turn over the document. But, the Commission is only funded until May of 2004, and

19 Salon Magazine “The president ought to be ashamed”, 11/21/03, Eric Boehlert

if Bush exerts executive privilege he can tie the matter up in the courts and run out
the clock.

So, Thomas Kean, the Chairman of the Commission has negotiated some very
unfavorable terms just to get any access at all. Only four members of the commission
will be allowed to look at the most sensitive materials and the White House can deny
them the right to take notes or even to share information with other members.

Moreover, the White House reserves the right to decide what materials are relevant
even within documents. Cleland says this arrangement is an attempt to, “kick this can
down past the elections”, and adds, “It should be a national scandal.” Responding to
the deal, Matthew Sellitto, whose son died in the attacks, said, “I have a lack of faith
in the administration. How else can I feel?”
If the British Sunday Herald can be believed, the content of the memo has the
potential to damage Bush’s reelection prospects if it is publicly exposed. An article
published 5/19/02 claimed:

“Britain gave President Bush a categorical warning to expect multiple airline
hijackings by the al-Qaeda network a month before the September 11 attacks
which killed nearly 3000 people and triggered the international war against
terrorism…According to US government officials, the British warning of al-
Qaeda plans to hijack US airliners was contained in a crucial briefing sent to
Bush on August 6, a month before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the
Pentagon.”.20

20 http://www.sundayherald.com/24822

President Bush insists that he didn’t know “that the enemy was going to use
airplanes to kill on that fateful morning.” Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle
responds, “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.”

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