Bush Team on Defensive in Threat Inquiry

The Bush administration, on the defensive for the first time over Sept. 11, mobilized Thursday to justify its handling of information it received in August that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network might seek to hijack U.S. aircraft.

Responding to a barrage of questions from Capitol Hill, the White House insisted that it was never presented with specific information that would have enabled it to anticipate or prevent the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“This government did everything that it could,” said National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. “There was nothing specific to which to react. Had this president known of something more specific, or that a plane was going to be used as a missile, he would have acted.”

Rice’s comments came during a news conference hastily arranged at the White House after leading members of Congress had spent much of the day calling for new inquiries into what the White House knew about Al Qaeda’s intentions, and what it had done to protect the public.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) both expressed concern with the administration’s handling of the matter, and said expanded investigations of Sept. 11 might be warranted.

“I’m gravely concerned,” Daschle said. “Why did it take eight months for us to receive this information?” Gephardt called the fresh disclosures “disturbing,” and said White House officials need to provide a full accounting of what they knew leading up to Sept. 11, “when they knew it, and, most importantly, what was done about it.”

While not specifically criticizing President Bush, the comments from dozens of lawmakers--mainly Democrats--represented the most forceful challenge yet of the president on a matter relating directly to the Sept. 11 attacks. Until now, the president’s post-attack popularity has rendered him beyond political reproach on counterterrorism matters.

Republicans accused Democrats of seeking to exploit the issue for partisan gain. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) called the criticism aimed at the White House “deplorable” and “unconscionable.”

In a speech in New York on Thursday evening, Vice President Dick Cheney said the attacks on the White House were “thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war.” He also warned Congress against expanding investigations of the intelligence agencies that might “interfere with the ongoing efforts to prevent the next attack.”

And Bush, who attended a previously scheduled noontime meeting with Republican senators in the Capitol, was said to have remarked that there was a “sniff of politics in the air.”

The tempest was triggered by the White House’s disclosure Wednesday that President Bush was told in a CIA briefing Aug. 6 that Bin Laden’s network might seek to hijack airplanes. Previously, the White House had said only that it had no indication of the Sept. 11 plot.

Even critics of the administration acknowledged that the warning appears to have been so vague that expecting the White House to have foreseen Sept. 11 is unfair.

But the disclosure added to mounting evidence that authorities failed to act on clues and suspicions that, when combined, might have provided a strong indication that a Sept. 11-style plot was at least possible, if not underway.

The FBI recently acknowledged that one of its agents in Phoenix had warned in a memo last July of suspicious activity of Middle Easterners in area flight schools. A month later, the FBI in Minnesota took into custody flight school student Zacarias Moussaoui, a man the bureau has since accused of being the intended 20th hijacker.

“You can’t fault the White House on this,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “But if the information from Phoenix were combined with the general warning [conveyed to Bush] and the incident in Minnesota, I believe that we might have stopped or at least partially stopped Sept. 11.”

Shelby is among the lawmakers leading a congressional investigation of intelligence failures surrounding Sept. 11. In the wake of these latest revelations, he said, “I fear there are a lot of things we’re just beginning to uncover in this investigation. And the agencies don’t want this uncovered.”

Rice said Thursday that the August briefing came to light this week because it had been uncovered by that congressional investigation. Sources familiar with the probe said investigators learned of the warning Monday. The White House claims that some members of Congress had received the same information Bush got in the Aug. 6 briefing, but members of the intelligence committees disputed that.

The disclosure put the Bush White House in a defensive political posture for much of the day. To help defuse the situation, top officials turned to Rice, perceived as a persuasive, nonpartisan figure in the administration.

In a rare impromptu news conference, Rice presented the most detailed accounting to date of the intelligence the administration says it had leading up to Sept. 11.

She stressed that none of the reports received by the White House had any specific information pointing to the Sept. 11 plot. She also said neither she nor Bush recalls being made aware before Sept. 11 of the warning from the Phoenix FBI agent or the suspicions triggered by Moussaoui’s arrest.

Rice said CIA Director George J. Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller have been asked to determine whether it is possible that either of those FBI matters was called to her or Bush’s attention.

The briefing the president received at his Texas ranch, she said, dealt broadly with the methods of attack Al Qaeda had either used in previous strikes, or might consider in the future. Hijacking a plane was mentioned, she said, “but hijacking in the traditional sense,” meaning the taking of a plane with the intent to demand a ransom.

There was no sense, she said, that Al Qaeda “would try to use a plane as a missile,” even though in recent years authorities have uncovered plots in the Philippines and France in which hijacked aircraft were to be aimed at buildings including the CIA headquarters and the Eiffel Tower.

Rather, national security experts were primarily concerned that Bin Laden might hijack a plane to demand the release of an Al Qaeda operative such as the sheik convicted of conspiring to bomb New York-area landmarks.

The Aug. 6 briefing followed months of high activity in intelligence channels trained on Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, Rice said. Most of the intelligence centered on likely overseas targets. She said the administration never saw any reason to issue the sort of public alert it has broadcast frequently since Sept. 11.

A spokesman for Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said Thursday that he had received briefings last summer similar to those given to President Bush.

“There was never anything that we received that would have predicted with credible and specific information anything resembling the World Trade Center attacks,” said Chet Lunner, the spokesman.

The information was relayed to the FAA and the airlines, he said. But it is unclear what, if anything, was done.

FAA regulations allowing passengers to bring aboard knives with a blade up to four inches remained unchanged.

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1995: Philippine authorities alert the FBI that Middle Eastern pilots are training at U.S. flight schools and that at least one proposed flying a jetliner into a federal building.

December 1999: Algerian Ahmed Ressam is arrested with explosives and timing devices while crossing Canadian border into Washington state.

December 2000: Intelligence community records an increase in traffic concerning terrorist activities.

April-May 2001: Government becomes aware of specific threats from Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network against U.S. targets.

May 2001: President Bush learns of increased danger of attacks by Bin Laden followers. Throughout summer, Bush administration receives reports of threats to U.S. interests, most of it focused on threats abroad.

June 2001: Testimony by participants in millennium bombing plot that Abu Zubeida, a senior operations chief for Al Qaeda, had said there was interest in attacking the United States.

June 22, 2001: The Federal Aviation Administration issues an information circular to private carriers from law enforcement, noting there was concern of a possible attack.

June 26, 2001: U.S. intelligence community records an increase in threats and State Department issues worldwide caution to Americans abroad.

July 2, 2001: FBI releases a message to law enforcement agencies saying there are threats to American interests overseas and that a domestic strike could not be ruled out. FAA issues another internal communication that said Ressam intended to use explosives in an airport terminal.

July 6, 2001: Nonessential travel of U.S. counterterrorism staff suspended due to concern about potential attacks in Turkey and Rome.

Mid-July 2001: Intelligence community reports a spike in the number of threats, many related to an upcoming G-8 summit.

July 2001: FBI’s Phoenix office sends memo to D.C. headquarters noting unusual number of Middle Eastern students taking flying lessons and warning that Bin Laden’s followers could be training at U.S. flight schools. It urges check of all flight schools to identify more Middle Eastern students. FBI headquarters did not act on the memo.

July 18, 2001: FAA issues another warning that there are ongoing terrorist threats overseas. FBI issues another communication on the millennium plot conviction.

Aug. 6, 2001: During a daily morning intelligence report Bush is told of possibility of hijackings of U.S. aircraft by followers of Bin Laden.

Aug. 17, 2001: Zacarias Moussaoui, who had aroused suspicions at a Minnesota flight school, is arrested on immigration charges (has since been charged with conspiracy in the Sept. 11 attacks).

Sources: Times research; Associated Press

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Times staff writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Nick Anderson contributed to this report.