Weitere Rätsel rund um das Security-Briefing vom 6.8.2001

--- Die New York Times lässt nicht locker und reitet weiter auf dem noch immer nicht in voller Länge veröffentlichten Präsidentenbriefing vom 6. August 2001 herum. Die Aussage Rice' habe die Wahrheit stark gedehnt und die Terrorabwehrmaßnahmen als zu rosig dargestellt. Bush habe hübsch seinen Urlaub in Texas verbracht und 911 mehr oder weniger verschlafen, so der unterschwellige Vorwurf des langen Artikels: President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday. The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford. The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders. ... law enforcement officials said Friday that they believed that Ms. Rice's testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks — including her account of scores of F.B.I. investigations under way that summer into suspected Qaeda cells operating in the United States — overstated the scope, thrust and intensity of activities by the F.B.I. within American borders. ... The F.B.I. was investigating numerous cases that involved international terrorism and may have had tangential connections to Al Qaeda, but one official said that despite Ms. Rice's account, the investigations were focused more overseas and "were not sleeper cell investigations."

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