Chris Whipple has a piece up at Politico, “The Attacks Will Be Spectacular” in which a surprisingly chatty George Tenet, CIA director during 9/11 tells us a few things that might have been nice to know in, you know, real time:
“There were real plots being manifested. The world felt like it was on the edge of eruption. In this time period of June and July, the threat continues to rise. Terrorists were disappearing [as if in hiding, in preparation for an attack]. Camps were closing. Threat reportings on the rise.”
As Tenet and other CIA old hands tell it, the agency was sure that Al Qaeda was coming, but the Bush Administration? According to Tenet, he and other agency chiefs had a meeting with then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, where Rice was told, among other things, “there will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months. The attacks will be spectacular. They may be multiple. Al Qaeda’s intention is the destruction of the United States. We need to go on a wartime footing now!”
Well, on a war footing we weren’t. Unsurprisingly, Condi can’t remember that meeting today. A little more surprisingly, the 9/111 Commission’s report makes no mention of the meeting, even though, according to Whipple, Tenet says he told the commision about it. Hey George! If the commission wouldn’t tell the truth to the American people, why didn’t you do it?
