Bush: 9/11 questions persist

WASHINGTON, May 19 (UPI) -- Despite new terrorism warnings and the president's impending trip to Russia, the Bush administration Sunday still found itself assailed by questions about whether it ignored or mishandled warnings that could have prevented the devastating attacks on Sept. 11.

Both Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice were grilled on several Sunday talk shows about a briefing President George W. Bush received on Aug. 6 last year -- only weeks before more than 3,000 Americans died in terrorist attacks -- in which the CIA suggested Osama bin Laden was planning an attack in the United States and might hijack aircraft.

Rice confirmed new details about the briefing, including its title, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." She said it "mentioned for instance, that there was concern about buildings, federal buildings in New York. That was looked at -- it was the courthouse complex that was concerned about and action had already been taken so there was nothing new there."

The World Trade Center was only a few blocks from the Federal Court House complex at Foley Square in New York -- the site of the trial of the men who attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 -- and the two towers contained several major federal offices.

Friday, Rice gave an unprecedented account of the intelligence material about the al Qaida threat developed over the summer of 2001, including the preparation of the Aug. 6 document, called a Presidential Daily Briefing.

Between her remarks Sunday and Friday, a picture emerges of a document that told the president bin Laden was going to try and hit the continental United States, to use hijacked aircraft in some fashion, and to threaten buildings in New York.

Though Rice and Cheney have described the 1 1/2-page document in some detail, the White House has so far refused to make it public, or even turn it over to the joint congressional panel investigating the failure of U.S. intelligence to avert the attack.

Cheney said it would be "a mistake" to start "throwing out on the record" what he said were some of the nations most important secrets. "The president's daily brief is developed from some of our most secret operations and it has to be treated that way. It's never been provided to the Congress before, to my knowledge."

But he made it clear that no final decision had yet been made. "The president will have to make the decision about the extent to which we want to provide that kind of information. My own personal recommendation is we should not," Cheney concluded.

The existence of the memo was leaked to news media last week. Cheney said he had no idea who leaked it.

Late Friday and on Saturday, unnamed Bush administration members told several publications there were new terrorism warnings, similar to those last August, of an impending terrorism attack. "There's a lot of chatter in the system again," the New York Times said one official told its reporters, "We are actively pursuing it and trying to see what's going on here."

Intelligence "chatter" is a phrase that Rice has used frequently over the past few two days.

One element of the new warnings, which the FBI has circulated, cautions apartment building managers that terrorists could rent an apartment, pack it with explosives and destroy the building.

Despite the new reports, much of the comment on Sunday's talk shows continued to dwell on how much Bush knew before the attacks.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert showed a video clip of an interview with Stephen Push, a Washington area man, whose wife Lisa Raines died on American Airlines Flight 77, which slammed into the Pentagon.

Push said if the threats last August were "serious enough to brief the president about, its serious enough to warn the American public.

"I am certain that if she knew what the president knew, she would not have been on the plane," Push said.

Russert asked Cheney, "What do you say to him this morning?"

Cheney said that Aug. 6 briefing was a broad, generalized briefing which contained "no actionable intelligence."

Cheney acknowledged that the briefing, which he said he too had received while vacationing in Wyoming last August, contained speculation that bin Laden would carry out hijackings.

"Well terrorists started hijacking aircraft 30 years ago. Are you going to shut down the nation's aviation system based on that report?" he asked.

In two television appearances Sunday, on "Meet the Press" and on "Fox News," Cheney continued to characterize Democrats who have asked how much Bush knew before Sept. 11 as partisans trying to make political capital out of national tragedy.

On Friday, he said, "What I want to say to my Democratic friends in the Congress is that they need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions as were made by some today that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of Sept. 11."

Ask by Fox's Snow whether those comments were a "preemptive strike" to silence Democrats, Cheney said it struck him as "beyond the pale" that "somehow, my president had information and failed to act upon it to prevent the attack on Sept. 11."

Cheney said he was not singling out House minority leader Richard Gephardt, D.-Mo., for criticism but that Georgia Democrat Cynthia McKinney made such comments.

President Bush leaves for Russia Wednesday to conclude a major arms agreement and will not return to the United States until May 27.