Bush defends position despite memo
President George Bush remained on the defenisve today insisting there was no warning in a pre-September 11 intelligence memo before the nation’s worst terrorism attack.
“There was nothing in there that said, you know, ‘There is an imminent attack,”’ Bush told reporters. “That wasn’t what the report said. The report was kind of a history of Osama’s (bin Laden’s) intentions.”
Democrats have suggested there was more to the memo, the centre of an election-year skirmish over the president’s anti-terrorism policies before the 9/11 attacks.
He said he would answer more questions at an East Room news conference tomorrow.
Bush is coming under intense scrutiny for his anti-terrorism policies before the 2001 attacks. The criticism threatens Bush’s political standing seven months before he stands for re-election, with the war on terrorism his strongest selling point.
At the centre of the controversy is an intelligence memo from August 6, 2001, showing that Bush received reports from as recent as May 2001 about possible terrorist plots in the United States.
The memo specifically told Bush that al-Qaida operatives had reached American shores, had a support system in place and were engaging in “patterns of suspicious activity … consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.” It did not provide specific times or places for potential attacks.
Standing alongside Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at a joint news conference, Bush minimised the importance of the memo.
“There was nothing in this report to me that said, ‘Oh, by the way, we’ve got intelligence that says something is about to happen in America,”’ Bush said.
Citing statements by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Bush said: “Now may be the time to revamp and reform our intelligence services.”
He said the memo brought him some comfort when it outlined efforts by the FBI to prevent attacks.
“Had they found something, I’m confident they would have reported back to me,” Bush said.
The president has been on the defensive since the White House, under pressure, released the memo on Saturday.
The document has “nothing about an attack on America. It talked about intentions, about somebody who hated America – well, we knew that,” Bush said yesterday.
“I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into” and had any specific intelligence pointed to threats of attacks on New York and Washington, “I would have moved mountains” to prevent it, Bush said during a visit to Fort Hood, Texas, 50 miles from his ranch in Crawford.
