| Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US | |
|---|---|
 The briefing | |
| Created | August 6, 2001 |
| Presented | July 22, 2004 (public) |
| Media type | President's Daily Brief |
| Subject | Terrorism threats indicating theSeptember 11 attacks |
| ||
|---|---|---|
Personal 1st General Emir of al-Qaeda Works Killing and legacy | ||
"Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" is aPresident's Daily Brief prepared by theCentral Intelligence Agency that was given toU.S. presidentGeorge W. Bush on Monday, August 6, 2001. The brief warned, 36 days before theSeptember 11 attacks, ofterrorism threats fromOsama bin Laden andal-Qaeda, including "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for ahijacking" of U.S.aircraft.[1]
The President's Daily Brief (PDB) is a brief of crucialclassified information onnational security collected by variousU.S. intelligence agencies given to the president and a select group of senior officials. On August 6, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency delivered a President's Daily Brief to President Bush, who was vacationing athis ranch inCrawford, Texas.[2][3]
President Bush's response of "All right. You've covered your ass" has been erroneously linked to this PDB. This response, however, came from a separate PDB linked to Bin Laden from several months earlier. During 2001, CIA analysts produced several reports warning of imminent attacks by Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Senior officials, includingVice PresidentDick Cheney and staff fromDonald Rumsfeld's office at theDepartment of Defense, questioned whether these reports might not be deception on the part of al-Qaeda, purposely designed to expend resources in response needlessly. After re-evaluating the legitimate risks of these recent reports, CIA analysts produced a report titled "UBL [Usama Bin Laden] Threats Are Real." It was after this report that the president gave that now-infamous response.[4]
Like all but a handful of PDBs, the memo's content was kept secret until it was leaked in 2002.[2]CBS Evening News reported on the document on May 15.[1]
The PDB was declassified and approved for release to the9/11 Commission on April 10, 2004, and was included in the commission's9/11 Commission Report, published on July 22, 2004.[5] According to theNational Security Archive, President Bush was the first sitting president to release a PDB to the public.[1]
In response to accusations that the administration failed to act on the contents of the briefing,U.S. secretary of stateCondoleezza Rice and GeneralRichard Myers emphasized that the CIA's PDB did not warn the president of a specific new threat but "contained historical information based on old reporting."[6][7]
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{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the Aug. 6 P.D.B. warned against possible attacks in this country? [...]
RICE: You said did it not warn of attacks. It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.
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