August 2001 PDB released

[winterbadger]

The White House has releases a sanitized copy of the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" PDB.

The PDF is available here.



It appears only to be had the designations of intel sources removed. I don't know what to make of the fact that portions of the text are selectable only as images, while other parts are selectable as text, but when you copy the text, it comes out garbled:

FBI information since that time indicates patterns of
suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for
hijackings or other types of aNacks, including recent surveillance of
federal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 luillieid investigations
throughout the US that it considers Bin ladin-related. CIA and the
FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying
that a group or Bin ladir1 supporters was in the US planning at1acks
with explosives.

This suggests to me that the PDF is an image that has been redacted with scanned text. I don't know what to make of it. It may be an attempt to decieve or it may just be somethign to do with the PDF itself.

In any case, the two paragraphs above refute, to me, the assertions Dr. Rice made that we simply didn't have enough information for the administration to have stepped up the level of CT activity, that the PDB was purely historical and was not a warning of impending action, or that we didn't have any clue as to what or how the terrorists were going to attack.

The FBI was conducting 70 field investigations they considered to be AQ-related that included observing surveillance of fderal buildings, and that didn't suggest an attack was likely within the US? The FBI detected patterns of activity that indicated peopleplanning hijackings, and we didn't have any idea how AQ might attack? There were people scoping buildings in NYC, Bin Laden wanted to hit the US, people were planning hijackings, the FBI Joint Task Force investigation of the 1999 WTC bombing had uncovered AQ plans to fly planes into federal buildings, and FBI filed offices were reporting unusual numbers of Arabs taking flying lessons in US flight schools, including students who didn't seem to be interested in take-off or landings, and we had NO IDEA how AQ Planned to attack the US?

We had a very good idea. It was broken up in dozens of different pieces in FBI offices in different parts of the country. This is the same FBI that was told, according to DR Rice, to go on high alert but failed, according to subsequent investigation, to pass that message on any any field offices or any Special Agents in Charge.

This si the same FBI whose crime lad has had considerable trouble in recent years getting fast, accurate results developed and passed on to investigations around the country, in some cases resulting in innocent people being convicted of crimes. The same FBI that has a phobia of computer technology and has had to be dragged, kicking and screaming into the age of databases and electronic communication.

At the *very* least, we desparately need a competent domestic counterintelligence agency run by people who have no connection whatsoever to the FBI. I would suggest the evidence is there to cause us to wonder whether we don't need an entirely new federal criminal investigative service too, to replace what seems to be rapidly becoming an outdated and inefficient operation.

Comments

[luscious-purple.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping this will generate LOTS of outrage.

Good points about the PDF. It's *so* easy to manipulate text and images these days. (Did you ever see the famous Scientific American cover depicting Marilyn Monroe snuggling up to Abe Lincoln?)

[dwarfrage.livejournal.com]

I work PDFs all day for my job. Converting and reformatting them back and forth. I'd say that the PDF was scanned,but it was done by image recognition, which is why the formatting when you copy is funky. I had no problems when I copied the entire file to the clipboard and then pasted into wordperfect. I'd say it's legit, it's acting like other optically scanned documents.