"All right. You've covered your ass now."
December 1, 2022 1:20 PM   Subscribe

Secret 9/11 memo reveals Bush rewriting the history of the 9/11 attacks and the warnings he'd tuned out
On April 29, 2004, President George W. Bush hosted one of the most unusual meetings to ever take place inside the Oval Office. The 10 members of the 9/11 Commission got to ask him and Vice President Dick Cheney any question they wanted about the September 11, 2001, attacks. The words that were spoken in that room remained secret for nearly two decades. Now, we can finally read what Bush said.
Earlier this month, after more than 18 years, the government declassified a 31-page "memorandum for the record [PDF]," which compiles notes that the commissioners took during the meeting. The document shows the commissioners giving Bush multiple chances to acknowledge the numerous documented warnings he'd received from his own government of an impending attack by Al Qaeda. For the most part, Bush failed to do so. Instead, he passed the buck.

Perhaps the largest of Bush's evasions that day concerned his CIA director, George Tenet: "The threat was overseas — that was what George said." Bush's implication at the time is clear. He wanted the commission, and by extension the public, to think that no one could have anticipated Al Qaeda mounting a large-scale attack on US soil. But in fact, Tenet's CIA had warned Bush more than once that Al Qaeda could strike anywhere, at any time, and that all US citizens were potential targets. The most notorious warning that Bush received, but not the only one, was a CIA briefing headlined "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US [PDF]."
9/11 Commission Report, Section 8 [Excerpt]

National Security Archive on the 6 August 2001 President's Daily Brief.

When Bush got the August 6 PDB, he said, “All right. You’ve covered your ass now.” It was the 36th PDB relating to bin Laden or al-Qaeda during 2001.
posted by kirkaracha (47 comments total) 32 users marked this as a favorite
 
Speaking as a New Yorker:

WE KNEW THIS AND WE TRIED TO TELL YOU BACK THEN AND Y'ALL DIDN'T LISTEN.

And we also tried to tell you what a shitgibbon Trump was because we'd been putting up with his bullshit for 20 years already. And y'all didn't listen.

So maybe us New York elites kinda know what we're talking about sometimes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:36 PM on December 1, 2022 [159 favorites]


EmpressCallipygos, I thought of flagging your comment as fantastic, but I'm not sure that is what the flag is for. But goddamn you are right and right and right and correct.

Everyone: listen to the Empress, she knows what she is talking about.
posted by mumimor at 1:49 PM on December 1, 2022 [17 favorites]


I'm kind of a FOIA geek and read this a few weeks ago when it appeared on a listserv that I follow. During the discussion about shoot-down orders, there's an exchange in there that seems to demand some followup, at least to me:
Chairman Kean asked if they were aware that aircraft had been scrambled out of Andrews AFB, outside the NORAD chain of command, under instructions from the Secret Service.

The President, surprised, asked the Chairman to repeat "ordered by the Secret Service?"

The Chairman affirmed that. The President said he did not know about that.
posted by martin q blank at 1:52 PM on December 1, 2022 [19 favorites]


For a Shrub he was a helluva lot more dangerous than the Bush.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 1:56 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


Anyone who was alive at the time will not be surprised by any of this. We all knew he’d been warned and informed and did nothing about it because it was an issue the previous administration cared about, so obviously it was worth ignoring.
posted by rikschell at 2:27 PM on December 1, 2022 [71 favorites]


I walked through falling ashes and burning paperwork to get home that day. The biggest foreign enemy of the USA is the Republican Party, and has been for 23 years.
posted by rikschell at 2:29 PM on December 1, 2022 [151 favorites]


Yeah. We had burnt paperwork with Korean type littering the street in Brooklyn. We could smell the burning. Fuck the GOP.
posted by Splunge at 2:42 PM on December 1, 2022 [20 favorites]


There once was a man from New Haven
His desire for power was craven
He faked being Texan, and stole an election
And probably did nine-elæven
posted by Jon_Evil at 2:43 PM on December 1, 2022 [43 favorites]


To be clear, let’s not confuse this revelation with any of the false-flag “Bush knew” bullshit. But I have no doubt that if Gore hadn’t caved and let W steal the election, we’d still have those two towers.
posted by rikschell at 2:46 PM on December 1, 2022 [34 favorites]


We all knew he’d been warned and informed and did nothing about it because it was an issue the previous administration cared about, so obviously it was worth ignoring.

This. So much this. Fuckheads were briefed and warned about Bin Laden’s plans, and they pooh-poohed it away. Assholes. And, then they used 9/11 as an excuse to wipe Iraq off the map. Fucking assholes. Cheney will go down as America’s most murderous president.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:48 PM on December 1, 2022 [42 favorites]


For all the above reasons, GWB was far from my favorite politician.

However, he is a mountain biker. One of his former Secret Service detail bought my book on that subject, which of course I signed thus, "For President Bush, Keep rollin' like the bike is stolen."

To my considerable surprise, I received from Mr. Bush a hand written thank you note, acknowledging his appreciation and quoting my inscription back at me.
posted by Repack Rider at 2:50 PM on December 1, 2022 [27 favorites]


The biggest foreign enemy of the USA is the Republican Party, and has been for 2 43 years.
Since Reagan.
posted by theora55 at 2:57 PM on December 1, 2022 [38 favorites]


“Since Reagan”

We’re letting Nixon off the hook?
posted by jzb at 3:02 PM on December 1, 2022 [22 favorites]


We’re letting Nixon off the hook?

Proof of concept. Not a production model.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:27 PM on December 1, 2022 [47 favorites]


W made Nixon look good. Trump made W look good. I'm reminded of a recent New Yorker cartoon where two guys are caught in a giant spider web, and one of them is saying something like, "The really scary thing is that someday people will probably look back at today and say, 'Remember when the worst thing we had to worry about were the giant mutant spiders?'"
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:41 PM on December 1, 2022 [50 favorites]


We all assumed that it happened;
It's confirmation from the room where it happened.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:45 PM on December 1, 2022 [10 favorites]


I mean, if the government was really caught off guard, what are we giving the IC all that money for?
posted by rhizome at 3:56 PM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]


But I have no doubt that if Gore hadn’t caved and let W steal the election, we’d still have those two towers.

I don't know about that, but it's safe to say that being a dumbass and doing absolutely nothing was the worst possible approach. A Gore administration would have tried harder.

On the ground we had heightened alerts in the city around New Year's 2000. I remember that there was palpable anxiety in the air, and people generally weren't out. So it's not like this was some shot out of the blue.
posted by anhedonic at 3:58 PM on December 1, 2022 [15 favorites]


Surely this
posted by ActingTheGoat at 4:07 PM on December 1, 2022 [10 favorites]


And don't even get me started on how the whole "America's Mayor" thing convinced the rest of the country that Rudy Giuliani was a noble hero

god DAMN i hated when that miserable fucker was mayor
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:27 PM on December 1, 2022 [35 favorites]


Now watch this drive.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 4:34 PM on December 1, 2022 [16 favorites]


The first intelligible thought I had while watching the 2016 election results roll in while I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach was “Goddammit, the worst thing about all of this is that this turd is going to make Dubya look good in comparison.”

That turned out not to be, in fact, the worst thing about Trump, but still.
posted by darkstar at 4:52 PM on December 1, 2022 [13 favorites]


Mission accomplished.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:15 PM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]


“…got to ask”…fuck.

Bush couldn’t be trusted to answer questions without Cheney sitting beside him.
posted by brachiopod at 5:16 PM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]


Anyone who was alive at the time will not be surprised by any of this.

It's sobering to realize there are voters who were not alive at the time.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:22 PM on December 1, 2022 [21 favorites]


Speaking of "we tried to warn you", I was in Texas in the 90s when GWB was governor and establishing his plans to run for the presidency. We tried to tell y'all about running government like a bidness and passing it all off to the bidness guys. I know a lot of Metafilter folks listened to that warning; I sure wish more of the national electorate had. (The Supreme Court was in the bag for Republicans already, if not to the extent they are now. Bush v Gore is one of those things I'm gonna die mad about.)
posted by gentlyepigrams at 6:40 PM on December 1, 2022 [18 favorites]


I’ve always felt that if Gore had run again in ‘04, enough people would have wanted to right the wrong that was done him in ‘00 that he’d have had a decisive victory.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:10 PM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]


'The Man Who Knew'.

An open source story a day or so before 9-11 was Massoud' assassination, a big warning sign. Included, two mefi searches on two subjects, these glimpes are apt and interesting.
Ahmad Shah Massoud

Metafilter posts on Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Taliban smash tomb of Ahmad Shah Massoud on his 20th anniversary death September 09, 2021

Metafilter posts on the Taliban.

Taliban reveal burial place of founder Mullah Omar, nine years after death
November 06, 2022

Former Presidential Chef Reveals The Bush Family's Go-To Dessert
posted by clavdivs at 7:27 PM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]


Former Presidential Chef Reveals The Bush Family's Go-To Dessert

This is indeed a disturbing universe.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:07 PM on December 1, 2022


We tried to tell y'all about running government like a bidness and passing it all off to the bidness guys.

I'm not saying running government like a bidness is a bad idea per se, but both Bush and Trump were shitty businessmen.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:14 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]


It’s important and relevant that the Republicans had made hay with conspiracy theories and whisper campaigns against Clinton for the 1998 cruise missile strikes against Bin Laden and his organizations. Specifically, they accused Clinton of “wagging the dog” with military action for no reason but to distract from his personal actions. So, Bush had a lot of incentive to not legitimize anything about what Clinton had done. When this cynical politicization of attempts to stop attacks on Americans backfired they had little option but declare the whole thing unimaginable, even as many of us had already imagined it.
posted by meinvt at 11:04 PM on December 1, 2022 [7 favorites]


both Bush and Trump were shitty businessmen

So was GHWB! The theory with GWB was that the things he didn't know how to do, he'd give to the specialists because he was the decider, and that was how he did things in bidness, how he did things as governor of Texas (with Bill Hobby, a conservative Dem, in his Lt. Gov role, which is actually more important in Texas politics and plays a bigger part in preparing and shepherding legislation through the Texas legislature than the Governor does), and how he was going to do things as President. As things turned out, he was kind of the folksy figurehead who didn't give a shit or pay attention and Dick Cheney seemed to be the actual decider a lot of the time. (Which I think is what ties the observation to the theme of this post.)

It doesn't surprise me that GWB was followed by a super-wonky Dem, just as he was preceded by one, and that TFG was also followed by a president with a lot of policy/legislative chops . Even if you don't like Biden much, it's hard to argue with his experience, at least if you're in what we called the "reality-based" community during the GWB administration. Also, cracks about Biden being a sleepy dude notwithstanding, he's obviously paying attention, which I never thought was the case with GWB as governor (his eyes were on DC) or as President.

To complete the circle of observation, our current governor would be happy to follow in GWB's footsteps. Assume he's trouble and vote accordingly even if he seems ridiculous.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 11:33 PM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]



Anyone who was alive at the time will not be surprised by any of this. We all knew he’d been warned and informed and did nothing about it because it was an issue the previous administration cared about, so obviously it was worth ignoring.
posted by rikschell at 17:27 on December 1
[35 favorites +] [!]


Cared about and fired cruise missiles into the contested border between Pakistan and Afghanistan due to actionable information on the location of Osama bin Laden after the African embassy bombings. Trivial Pursuit disagrees with the contemporaneous articles from the Washington Post on which country they were sent to.

It's left as an exercise to the reader if that president ignored the briefings due to the location of the embassy bombings.
posted by I paid money to offer this... insight? at 12:18 AM on December 2, 2022 [4 favorites]


Ursula Hitler: W made Nixon look good. Trump made W look good.

There's your Overton Window right there. Not "good" in the sense of moral leadership, is it? It's "good" in the sense of better or worse, so don't forget the starting badness of Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush and Trump.
posted by k3ninho at 1:13 AM on December 2, 2022 [5 favorites]


I'm still convinced Bush was a worse president than Trump, if only because Bush had eight years to be a fuckup and Trump only had four (so far, anyway). But when I take a step back, I'm not so sure. To me, what put Bush over the top was a legacy: wars of aggression that went on for decades after he bumbled off into the helicopter and flew away from DC for the last time. But Trump managed to fill a third of the Supreme Court with shit, which has already had fantastic consequences and may do so for the remainder of our lives or even longer.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:58 AM on December 2, 2022 [7 favorites]


The fact that the Bush Administration tried so hard to cover up its incompetence made it obvious that they were well aware they were asleep at the switch.

If we had a functioning media, the fact that they changed their demurrals from "no warning" to "no specific warning" should have been taken as an admission that they did, in fact, have warning.
posted by Gelatin at 4:13 AM on December 2, 2022 [10 favorites]


I don't know this still seems pretty weak to me, and I agree Bush sucks. We all know that Trump's people plan on striking democracy in the US, has made multiple attacks on people, and still haven't done anything much to stop it. What makes this any different?

There is a giant divide between "no specific warnings" and "no warnings" and it's silly to treat the two as similar. Airlines had been hijacked before, that's not useful information. The WTC had been hit before - also not useful information.


IMO this yet again reveals that our entire US intelligence apparatus is borderline worthless, or at least was in terms of stopping any threats.The info and reliability given to Ukraine earlier this year is the only thing that sort of changes my mind.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:05 AM on December 2, 2022


from this: Bid Ladin determined to strike

IA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the [United Arab Emirates] in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

Do airplanes translate as explosives? That intelligence line read even relatively broadly was wrong, given hindsight. Added tracking on fertilizer, tnt sales, and so on doesn't stop 9/11.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:10 AM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


This part of the PDB is more relevant:
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [redacted] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, 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.
Sure, they don't mention the specific buildings people were planning on flying hijacked planes into, but come on. They had warnings of al Qaeda operatives in the United States getting ready to hijack airplanes. That's actionable intelligence: the action is "prevent hijackings." If they did that, it wouldn't matter what the hijackers wanted to do with the planes.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:43 AM on December 2, 2022 [7 favorites]


They had warnings of al Qaeda operatives in the United States getting ready to hijack airplanes. That's actionable intelligence: the action is "prevent hijackings."

Flights just into JFK alone in Nov 2022 was 39520, so 1-3 years worth would be greater than 1million checks. Assuming they were adding extra checks on any 'internet chatter' type tracks, they found nothing actionable.

1 million checks against just one airport worth of flights is not actionable.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:07 AM on December 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


The DHS created afterwards, has 250k employees, and there are reasonable disagreements about the expense, scope, and budget of the group to this day.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:10 AM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


The only good thing about this is that it was properly documented and has eventually been released
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 9:16 AM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


Ah, nostalgia from the good old days of the early blogosphere! It gives me cause to dust of an old rebuttal:

Arguing over the potential usefulness of whatever W might have done to prevent the 9/11 attacks is an admission that Bush did nothing.
posted by Gelatin at 10:42 AM on December 2, 2022 [6 favorites]


The info and reliability given to Ukraine earlier this year is the only thing that sort of changes my mind.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:05 AM on December 2 [+] [!]


Yes, that makes me think that even though the Cold War ended some thirty years ago, Western intelligence services have never found out how to adapt to a different situation, but are still running the old methods. Which then came in handy in Ukraine, but goddammit.
posted by mumimor at 2:44 AM on December 3, 2022 [1 favorite]


all I ever needed to know about Bush Molly Ivins wrote.
posted by oldnumberseven at 9:25 PM on December 3, 2022 [5 favorites]


It's left as an exercise to the reader if that president ignored the briefings due to the location of the embassy bombings.
posted by I paid money to offer this... insight? at 12:18 AM


eponysterical?!
posted by bendy at 8:56 PM on December 4, 2022


A little secret about the CIA. there's a description on the building something something the truth shall set you free. when the usual mechanisms of intelligence works fails, use a version of the truth if it's in yours or someone else's best national interest.
posted by clavdivs at 9:10 PM on December 4, 2022


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