REUTERS 11 AM September 11, 2001: It's Bin Laden and we were Warned

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Watching the NBC real-time rebroadcast of 9/11 coverage.

Before the second tower even fell the NBC security corespondent said it's probably the work of Osama Bin Laden, but that would be odd, since we usually get warnings about an increase in "chatter" before an al Queada attack. Surely we would have been warned if that were the case...

At 11 AM, less than two hours after the second plane hit (the point where it was known to be terrorism) Reuters had a story out saying it's probably Bin Laden, since he had promised an unprecedented attack on US interests three weeks earlier.

By 11:30 all discussion was about al Queada. The word Iraq had not been mentioned at any point that I heard.


But as we know, later that night at the White House Bush was telling Richard Clarke to try to pin it on Iraq.


As a rule of thumb, when Katie Couric and Tom Brokaw are out-thinking your national security team it's a problem.

[Boz]

1. And YESTERDAY Dana Perino said Bin Laden wasn't the mastermind of 911

They have the Mastermind in custody

[ErinBerin84]

2. I watched part of it

and Tom Brokaw said something like "down the line.....this is an intelligence failure, and there will be a price to pay for that." Of course, other people interjected and said "Oh, but you can NEVER really know when this sort of stuff is going to happen..."

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

4. "A price to pay" What a quaint concept. That's so 20th century!

[dennis4868]

3. "Surely we would have been warned"

we were warned but the Bush crime family ignored it :-(

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

5. The guy was genuinely puzzled why we hadn't heard.

It's a good historical fact-check to see the covergae before history was re-written.

People had an EXPECTATION that we would be warned. Only later did they edit their own memories to think that such a warning was obviusly impossible.

[blondeatlast]

6. If Conedi had just known about those Halaal meal requests, she'd have known what to do. nt

[oasis]

7. Condi Rice blew it. (eom)

[ErinBerin84]

8. Tom Brokaw just said

"in addition to a collapse in intelligence, there was a collapse in airport security as well." Katie then said "Oh but Tom, these days, the devices can just be so invisible, security cannot detect them!" Um, exactly Katie. That's the point.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

9. 11:47 Andrea Mitchell reports it's Osama Bin Laden for sure

Says this is "Obviously the largest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor"

[Arkansas Granny]

10. I remember hearing a couple of brief news reports toward the end of August

that year that something big was expected to happen within a few weeks. Seems like it was a warning from the CIA, maybe not. Then it just disappeared and I heard nothing else until the planes hit.