Did Briefing on Bin Laden Constitute a Real Warning?

Re “Memo Cited Fears of Attacks in U.S.,” April 11: President Bush and the White House are defending their lack of action after having received the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing that said Osama bin Laden was planning attacks within the U.S. Their defense is that there was nothing specific about 9/11. This defense shows that they are unable to analyze data and take action.

Because the briefing didn’t spell out an exact date and time, Bush and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice determined that nothing was going to happen. This is the worst excuse they could come up with. What kind of leadership is this? Of course, since Bush has admitted that he doesn’t like to read, that could also explain the lack of action taken.

Les Hartzman

Sherman Oaks

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With the PDB now declassified, the 9/11 commission’s report will amount to no more than the biggest blame game in town. It depends on which party you belong to. If you’re a Democrat and a Bush-basher, you’ll insist that when he got the PDB, he should have stopped doing anything else and sounded the alarm. Or he should have ordered all airports closed and all planes grounded from Aug. 7 onward. Naturally, that’s as impossible as preventing the 9/11 attacks.

Frank Wenceslao

Norwalk

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Apparently Rice and our selected (not elected) president want daily security briefings to include the date, time, location, specific intent and names of attackers before they take a threat seriously.

This kind of cartoonish incompetence would be awfully funny if it wasn’t so painfully clear to family members of 9/11 victims that something, anything, should have been done to alert Americans to potential attacks.

Airport security, for one, should have been on high alert. Every FBI and CIA lead should have been followed up with exacting thoroughness.

John G. Hill

Mission Hills

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Did the PDB contain a warning? I suppose that depends on what your definition of “warning” is.

Lorraine Slattery

Newbury Park

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Ronald Brownstein does your readers a disservice when he quotes James Carville (news analysis, April 11). Carville is indeed a “Democratic strategist” and is well qualified to comment on political tactics. He is not, however, a recognized national security or intelligence expert.

As a Foreign Service officer with 34 years experience looking at intelligence reports, I’d say that the Aug. 6, 2001, report in the PDB would not be considered actionable intelligence by anyone -- except maybe by those with either 20-20 hindsight or a political strategy to pursue.

Brian Carlson

U.S. Ambassador

Riga, Latvia

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Had there been no attack on 9/11, the PDB would be viewed as a ho-hum briefing paper. If people want to read warnings into it they can. Just make sure they say that the warnings go back at least four years and little was done by our government.

Nicholas Yanuzzi

Thousand Oaks