This is pretty telling.
Posted on Mon, Jun. 03, 2002
RAY MCGOVERN
Signs of attacks well-known
No one wants to believe that the attacks of Sept. 11 could have been prevented, but we do a disservice to our country if we stay in denial. No one wants to believe that President Bush had more forewarning than he acknowledges, but there is strong circumstantial evidence that he did.
Reviewing that evidence on May 26, The Washington Post's ombudsman, Michael Getler, alluded to one very telling sign from a conversation between CIA Director George Tenet and former U.S. Sen. David Boren over breakfast on Sept. 11. When an aide rushed up to tell Tenet of the attacks, Tenet's immediate reaction was: ``This has bin Laden all over it. . . . I wonder if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training?''
Getler notes that the reference is to Zacarias Moussaoui, the ''20th hijacker,'' who had been taken into custody in Minnesota four weeks before, after attracting suspicion at a flight school there.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the FBI did not tell the White House about Moussaoui until after Sept. 11.
But it is a safe bet that the CIA's Tenet did. Even before learning about Moussaoui,
Tenet's President's Daily Brief of Aug. 6 bore the title ''Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.'' When analysts working in Tenet's Counterterrorist Center were warned about Moussaoui a few weeks before Sept. 11, it is inconceivable that they would not have told Tenet. He is, by law, ''the principal advisor to the president for intelligence matters related to national security,'' and is entitled to ``all intelligence related to the national security, which is collected by any department, agency or other entity of the United States.''
