[lbo-talk] Smoking Gun on 9/11

[Doug Henwood]

At 11:44 AM -0400 4/12/04, editor at thesmokinggun.com wrote:
>With the September 11 commission focusing this week on unheeded 
>warnings and myriad intelligence malfunctions by the CIA and FBI, 
>here are a few government memos that did not spur action:
>
>* As Condoleezza Rice tells it, the August 6, 2001 President's Daily 
>Brief was old news and contained "no new threat information." You 
>know, apart from that stuff about the 70 ongoing FBI investigations 
>of al-Qaeda cells and those bothersome "patterns of suspicious 
>activity." Read the PDB:
>
>http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0409041pdb1.html
>
>
>* Then there was the July 2001 memo from the Phoenix FBI agent who 
>noted the possibility of a "coordinated effort" by Osama bin Laden 
>to place his disciples in U.S. flight schools. Agent Kenneth 
>Williams, whose warning was ignored by bureau bosses, wrote that the 
>terrorist's followers would be in a position "to conduct terror 
>activity against civil aviation targets." Read the Phoenix memo:
>
>http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0412042phoenix1.html
>
>
>* In May 1998, an FBI agent in the bureau's Oklahoma City office 
>penned a memo, titled "Weapons of Mass Destruction," warning that 
>"large numbers of Middle Eastern males" were taking flight lessons 
>at local airports. The agent thought the enrollments may have been 
>"related to planned terrorist activity." Read the Oklahoma City memo:
>
>http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0412041memo1.html