One such event is the international economic summit in Genoa, Italy, last July. In the weeks preceding the G8 meeting, the Russian federal police warned about an al-Qaida plot to assassinate Bush. The threat was considered sufficiently serious to keep the president away from the luxury cruise ship that housed his fellow heads of state.

Furthermore, U.S. and Italian officials were warned, according to a Los Angeles Times report, that Islamic terrorists might try to hijack an airliner and crash it into the summit location, with the hopes of killing Bush and others. The Italian authorities responded by setting up rocket batteries around the ancient port to thwart an aerial assault. An Italian ministry of defense officer explained to the Guardian that the missile deployment was meant "merely to act as a deterrent against any aerial incursion." And just before the summit opened, the Times of London reported that the CIA station chief in Rome had warned Italian secret services of a possible "suicide attack" by al-Qaida. What did they expect might happen? But a U.S. official told the Los Angeles Times "that American counter-terrorism experts considered the warning 'unsubstantiated.'"

Almost simultaneously, on July 26, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft abruptly stopped flying on commercial aircraft, reportedly due to a "threat assessment" by the FBI. The White House now claims that this had nothing to do with al-Qaida and was related to concerns about a possible attempt against the attorney general's life. At the time, however, CBS News reported that "a senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats against any Cabinet member." Perhaps it is a sign of paranoia to ascribe additional meaning to any of these discrete incidents -- but it is also apparent that numerous warnings and portents were flying around the globe in the months before Sept. 11.

In fact, we have known for some time that those warnings had been in the air not just for months but years. As early as 1995, FBI officials were warned by police authorities in the Philippines that a captured al-Qaida operative had revealed a plot to crash airliners into the Pentagon and urban office buildings in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. When that story was revealed last fall, the newly appointed FBI director, Robert Mueller, was still insisting that his agency had had "no warning sign" of such attacks.

That statement no longer rings true, and the implications for this government are grave. George W. Bush should stop hiding behind his vice president and his press secretary and his national security advisor; he should step forward and answer questions from the press about this crucial matter. The Senate and House intelligence committees should schedule public hearings as soon as practicality will permit. The congressional leadership should bring to the floor legislation proposed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., that would establish an independent national commission to investigate Sept. 11. The first witness to be called before that commission ought to be former FBI director Louis Freeh -- the deeply culpable bureaucrat who has mysteriously escaped questioning or examination in Congress and the news media so far.

And maybe the nation's conservatives should forget about blaming Bill Clinton for a while.

Recent Stories