By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, “it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die.” “There were real plots being manifested,” Cofer’s former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years. “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.” The crisis came to a head on July 10. The critical meeting that took place that day was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006. Tenet also wrote about it in general terms in his 2007 memoir At the Center of the Storm.

But neither he nor Black has spoken about it publicly in such detail until now—or been so emphatic about how specific and pressing their warnings really were. Over the past eight months, in more than a hundred hours of interviews, my partners Jules and Gedeon Naudet and I talked with Tenet and the 11 other living former CIA directors for The Spymasters, a documentary set to air this month on Showtime.

CONTINUED

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The material contains much new information about the hunt before and after 9/11 for bin Laden, the development of the drone campaign in AfPak, and al-Qaida’s relationship with America’s ally, Pakistan. Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.

Let’s start there. In 2000 and 2001, the CIA began using Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Afghanistan. “The idea of using UAVs originated in April 2000 as a result of a request from the NSC’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism to the CIA and the Department of Defense to come up with new ideas to go after the terrorists in Afghanistan,” a 2004 document summarizes. The Pentagon approved the plan for surveillance purposes.

And yet, simultaneously, the CIA declared that budget concerns were forcing it to move its Counterterrorism Center/Osama bin Laden Unit from an “offensive” to a “defensive” posture. For the CIA, that meant trying to get Afghan tribal leaders and the Northern Alliance to kill or capture bin Laden, Elias-Sanborn says. “It was forced to be less of a kinetic operation,” she says. “It had to be only for surveillance, which was not what they considered an offensive posture.”

“Budget concerns … CT [counterterrorism] supplemental still at NSC-OMB [National Security Council – Office of Management and Budget] level,” an April 2000 document reads. “Need forward movement on supplemental soonest due to expected early recess due to conventions, campaigning and elections.” In addition, the Air Force told the CIA that if it lost a drone, the CIA would have to pay for it, which made the agency more reluctant to use the technology.

Still, the drone program began in September 2000. One drone swiftly twice observed an individual “most likely to have been Bin Laden.” But since the CIA only had permission to use the drones for intelligence gathering, it had no way to act on its findings. The agency submitted a proposal to the National Security Council staff in December 2000 that would have significantly expanded the program. “It was too late for the departing Clinton Administration to take action on this strategic request,” however. It wasn’t too late for the Bush administration, though. It just never did.

Former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has taken credit for the drone program that the Bush administration ignored. “Things like working to get an armed Predator that actually turned out to be extraordinarily important, working to get a strategy that would allow us to get better cooperation from Pakistan and from the Central Asians,” she said in 2006. “We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida.” Rice claimed that the Bush administration continued the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism policies, a claim the documents disprove. “If the administration wanted to get it done, I’m sure they could have gotten it done,” says Elias-Sanborn.

Many of the documents publicize for the first time what was first made clear in the 9/11 Commission: The White House received a truly remarkable amount of warnings that al-Qaida was trying to attack the United States. From June to September 2001, a full seven CIA Senior Intelligence Briefs detailed that attacks were imminent, an incredible amount of information from one intelligence agency. One from June called “Bin-Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” writes that “[redacted] expects Usama Bin Laden to launch multiple attacks over the coming days.” The famous August brief called “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US” is included. “Al-Qai’da members, including some US citizens, have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure here,” it says. During the entire month of August, President Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Texas — which tied with one of Richard Nixon’s as the longest vacation ever taken by a president. CIA Director George Tenet has said he didn’t speak to Bush once that month, describing the president as being “on leave.” Bush did not hold a Principals’ meeting on terrorism until September 4, 2001, having downgraded the meetings to a deputies’ meeting, which then-counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke has repeatedly said slowed down anti-Bin Laden efforts “enormously, by months.”

For all the information the documents reveal, one huge matter is conspicuously absent: torture. There are nearly 50 CIA documents relating to such matters as the interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the intelligence gleaned from him, and yet “none of them were declassified at all,” notes Elias-Sanborn. “Certainly, the CIA has a stake in revealing what they did,” and they clearly do not want to reveal their complicity in war crimes.

One last thing is worth mentioning from the documents published today: Anyone with any doubt that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dangerous to the United States is contradicting U.S. intelligence. “Violence between Israelis and the Palestinians, moreover is making Sunni extremists more willing to participate in attacks against US or Israeli interests,” the CIA wrote in February 2001. It is not the only piece of information revealed by the new documents that will be deeply uncomfortable for the Bush administration and hawks across the country.

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On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief — and only that daily brief — in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.

Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.

That same day in Chechnya, according to intelligence I reviewed, Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. Within 48 hours, an intelligence official told me, that information was conveyed to the White House, providing more data supporting the C.I.A.’s warnings. Still, the alarm bells didn’t sound.

On July 24, Mr. Bush was notified that the attack was still being readied, but that it had been postponed, perhaps by a few months. But the president did not feel the briefings on potential attacks were sufficient, one intelligence official told me, and instead asked for a broader analysis on Al Qaeda, its aspirations and its history. In response, the C.I.A. set to work on the Aug. 6 brief.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur. That is true, as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.

Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all.

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The phone call from my sister, telling me that Chase was killed in Iraq, is among the brutal.

My nephew, Chase Comley, died a little over five years ago. He enlisted in the military because he believed our freedoms were in jeopardy, a message George Bush gaveled into the American psyche after 19 hijackers used planes as weapons to attack US symbols of power on 9/11.

This week, we mark the ninth anniversary of that turning point, the day that invokes images of death and destruction, and the date that heralded our post-9/11 world with its increased militarism/imperialism resulting in more death and destruction, mainstream media failure, the Patriot Act, a surveillance state, torture, indefinite detention, military tribunals, corporatism, economic collapse, and Islamophobia.

I have just watched 9/11 Press for Truth at the urging of Jon Gold, a friend and fellow member of Peace of the Action. Gold has worked diligently to bring justice for 9/11 families.

Less than two minutes into the film, George Bush says: “Today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom, came under attack.”

Members of the Bush Administration tell us there were no warnings. Condi Rice states: “No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon … into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile.”

We learn, however, that 14 nations alerted our intelligence agencies to the threats, and that on the eve of the event, Bush stayed at a resort whose roof was mounted with ground-to-air missiles, a safeguard never before taken.

The film navigates tragedy, fear, courage, hope, perseverance, strength, anticipation, disappointment, anger, disbelief, and futility. Its heroes are those who scratch and claw for honesty. They are the “Jersey Girls,” Lorie Van Auken, Patty Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg, and Kristen Breitweiser, four women whose husbands perished in the towers. There are other heroes, of course, but the Jersey widows, bound by heartbreak, researched, questioned, attempted to connect dots, and walked the halls of Congress. Eventually, they held a rally in DC to unite 9/11 families, form a larger group, and push for a formal investigation. Frustrated by the Bush Administration’s position and a lack of support from the public, they made the decision to open their private anguish to the press. Their efforts, finally, forced George Bush to authorize an independent commission to investigate 9/11.

Patty Casazza uses the word adversaries when she talks about the Bush Administration. It is not an antonym for hero. Villain is, but I’ll stick with Casazza’s noun. George Bush and Dick Cheney resisted the investigation of 9/11 and, thus, became adversaries of honesty and justice. Recall that they insisted on a not-under-oath tandem testimony.

Many readers have written and asked me to address 9/11 as an “inside job.” That’s not my intention. I have no knowledge to support grand conspiracy ideologies. My comprehension resides with family grief and an acknowledgement that the 9/11 Commission was a contrivance that failed to provide a thorough, transparent, and factual assessment.

Evidence can be manipulated or ignored. An investigator can look at what he or she wants and shift an examination in any direction. Even down a road leading nowhere.

A week after my nephew was killed, I poured my feelings into an essay. I was naïve, then, and believed my article might prevent other families from hearing the words my brother received: “We regret to inform you.”

The families who were unwilling to accept the government’s account of September 11, needed assurance that tragedies like theirs would never be repeated. They expected to find answers that would make the world safer for their children.

Their questions led to more questions:

Why did it take two hours for standard air defense operating procedures to be put in place when there was an obvious attack on the United States?

Why, when George Bush had been briefed (August 6, 2001) that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike within the United States, did he do nothing to prevent an attack?

Why, when the north tower was hit, were people told to remain in the building and why weren’t those in the south tower immediately evacuated?

Why was then Attorney General John Ashcroft told to avoid commercial air travel in the days before 9/11?

Why was Henry Kissinger selected to chair the 9/11 Commission when he had an obvious conflict of interest—one exposed by Lorie Van Auken when she asked if his consulting firm had any Saudi clients named bin Laden?

Why did the mainstream media fail to accomplish what Paul Thompson achieved when he compiled an online timeline of reports and articles that became the basis for his book, The Terror Timeline, whose content is the foundation for the film?

Why did the United States invade Afghanistan?

Why did the US allow Osama bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora?

Why were al-Qa’ida and Taliban members flown from Afghanistan to Pakistan?

What role did Pakistan play in 9/11, and why did the US ally with this country?

Why did the chief of Pakistani intelligence (ISI) order Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a man who was both a member of al-Qa’ida and the ISI, to wire $100,000 to Mohammad Atta?

Why did members of the Bush Administration meet with that same chief of Pakistani intelligence in the weeks and months prior to 9/11?

Why, given all that was exposed by Paul Thompson, did the 9/11 Commission find that the events of September 11, 2001 were the result of a “failure of imagination”?

Americans need to know what happened that day. Why? Not just because we owe it to those who died and to their families but, also, because every single day, our country commits acts of unspeakable horror in the name of 9/11.

Journalist Ron Suskind wrote an article, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” for the October 17, 2004 New York Times Magazine, in which he said:

In the summer of 2002 … I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

This is astonishing thought and language. It underscores the hubris of a power-mad administration. And it’s a glimpse into a mindset that, perhaps, allowed terrorists, “determined to strike within the United States,” an opportunity. The Bush Administration was, at the least, negligent. In a very deliberate way. The warnings were there and they were not obscure.

As George Bush concluded his address on 9/11, he said, “This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace.”

Justice has not been served. Peace seems far from our grasp. The 9/11 Commission was a farce, conducted by “history’s actors,” those aligned with the distortion that: “… when we act, we create our own reality.”

This created “reality” promotes the fear necessary to prevent critical thinking at a time when a premium must be placed on “the judicious study of discernable reality.” Let us not be told what to think, what to believe. We need a REAL, independent criminal investigation of 9/11, justice for the families, justice for families whose troops were sent to avenge a disaster that possibly could have been averted, and justice for those who have died, their lands destroyed, in the countries we invaded in a revenge frenzy.

Please watch the movie, 9/11 Press for Truth, read Paul Thompson’s comprehensive book, The Terror Timeline, and never forget the words often attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr., an admirer of Theodore Parker, the 19th century abolitionist and Unitarian minister, who originally spoke them: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one … But from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”

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