Bold is the kindest word for the media campaign to somehow
indict President Bush for nonfeasance in the September 11th attack.
The scrawl headline on MSNBC asks: “What did the White House know?”
The implication is that the Oval Office had warnings that went
ignored. The basis for the story is a CIA warning that terrorists
associated with Osama bin Laden had discussed airplane hijacking
and this information was included in the President’s daily
intelligence briefing in early August. The White House says there
was no mention of using aircraft as suicide bombs. But law
enforcement agencies were quietly alerted. The headlines read
generically, “Bush Was Told…”
The networks and the cable outlets seemed to speak with one
voice, and to recall as if on cue a memorable line from a dead
president’s tortured past. “Hardball“‘s Chris Matthews went so far
on CNBC as to resurrect the tape of the 1973 Watergate hearings in
which we hear and see then-Senator Howard Baker utter the famous
phrase, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” as
if there were some dark parallel between the positions of
Presidents Nixon and Bush. The constant repetition of that line
serves to suggest that Bush, like Nixon before him, is concealing
information that would destroy his presidency if made public.
The payoff of this seed of suspicion makes child’s play of the
silly business about “the picture,” the photo of the President
aboard Air Force One used as an RNC campaign coffer inducement.
Let’s carry the conspiracy concoction forward into Lewis Carroll
land. That photo. Was it taken as the President fled Washington for
Florida in advance of the 9/11 attack that was being ignored? Is he
talking to the vice president and about what? “Duck, Dick?”
Truth to tell, there were warnings and rumors well before Mr.
Bush took office. There was “Operation Bojinka,” a plot to bomb
some 11 American passenger planes over the Pacific that was
unearthed in 1995. A test bomb placed aboard a Japan Airlines plane
bound from Manila — base of the conspirators at the time— to
Japan did in fact explode and kill one passenger. Information about
Bojinka gleaned from the arrest of Ramzi Yousef, nabbed in
Pakistan, and Abdul Murad indicated a part of the plan was to kill
the Pope on a planned visit to Manila. There was sketchy
information about plans for suicidal hijackings. Periodic patches
of intelligence wafted in and out of government agencies from that
time to the present. One FBI agent in Phoenix wondered in a July
2001 memo at the number of alien Arabs taking flight lessons at the
many flying schools around the nation. Pieces of puzzles crossed
the desks of several agencies but never at the same time and were
never collected in one bureaucratic room to be fitted together.
Events, not whispers, should have shaken an entire nation from
its sleepy complacency.
The World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, U. S. Embassies in
Africa were car-bombed, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the USS
Cole — a retrospective parade of bloodletting which, seen
as history, makes September 11 as inevitable and foreseeable as
Pearl Harbor. The vague warning of early August pales in comparison
with the plethora of accomplished outrages. But the propinquity
with September and the locus of the White House embolden those who
would somehow assign blame to the Oval Office for not divining what
was coming. Aided by Congress, the speculation will continue.
By pure chance, this is the advent of a Lucas Star Wars film
sequel titled, “Attack of the Clones.” President Bush need not see
it. He is living it.
