The Bush high command protests too much. They seem to be running scared. But let's take their objections at face value.

Let's assume the CIA's Aug. 6 warning to Bush wasn't terribly specific. The New York Times reported Thursday that the CIA briefing "was based on 1998 intelligence data drawn from a single British source." It would be enlightening to know exactly what that intelligence data was, and whether congressional leaders were given the same information. But let's assume it was a vague warning, one of many we know the president received last summer.

Let's also accept Rice's argument: Making public "all of the chatter" about al-Qaida hijacking threats would have disrupted the nation's airlines, and to some extent, the economy. It's certainly true that without the horror of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, such a warning would have been a tough sell for the administration. The dislocation to the economy -- particularly to the travel industry during that peak vacation season -- would have provoked skepticism and no doubt criticism about whether the alert was justified. Definitely a political risk there.

And what if the president had imposed tighter airport security, including tougher scrutiny of Middle Eastern or Muslim men flying in the U.S.? Surely we'd have seen a spate of stories, maybe even in Salon, about racial profiling and the threat to civil liberties such moves represented, as well as push-back from Democrats in Congress.

But I have to say, So what? This administration braves criticism of its civil liberties policies and its handling of the economy every day. And the nation would have survived the temporary dislocation, just as it did after 9/11. The question is how much the Bush administration would have suffered politically if the nation didn't know it had to endure such hardships, or else suffer what we did Sept. 11. But risk is crucial to political leadership. Rice's demurrer is a coward's way out.

When the nation's top counterterrorism expert warns the heads of U.S. security agencies that "something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon," I think Americans should be notified. If Clarke is a hothead prone to fanciful exaggeration, he should be relieved of his duties. If not, his warnings should be heeded and publicized.

We don't know if Bush was told of Clarke's dire warning. We don't know if he was briefed on the disturbing FBI alerts about Middle Eastern men in U.S. flight schools, or Zacarias Moussaoui's capacity, in one FBI agent's words, to "fly something into the World Trade Center." Condi Rice said Thursday she'd get back to us on that. We're still waiting for her answer.

Even if it turns out the White House wasn't informed about the FBI alerts, Bush is not off the hook. Enron executives used the same excuse -- we didn't know -- when confronted with their company's flagrant missteps. But of course executives are supposed to know. And if they don't, it's a poor reflection on their management skills. Blaming FBI officials smells strongly of passing the buck. As we all know, the buck stops in the Oval Office. That old liberal refrain -- "imagine if this were Clinton" -- rings true here. The Republicans and the press would never have let Bush's predecessor get away with blaming the G-men.

Meanwhile, Bush's defenders in the media are insisting this is a nonstory. I waited all day Thursday for Andrew Sullivan, one of the president's smartest boosters, to deal with the mess on his Web site, in vain. He talked about college anti-Semitism, a LEGO version of the crucifixion and the collapse of the Euro-left. It wasn't until around 2 a.m. Friday morning -- is that bar time in D.C.? -- that he weighed in.

"Several of you have written me asking why I haven't jumped on the story that President Bush was told of threats of al Qaeda hijackings before September 11. The reason is simple: it's not a story. So far as I can tell, there were no specific threats, no suggestion of commandeering planes to use as missiles, nothing that could be differentiated from any number of such warnings before or since."

This is absurd, and Sullivan would be the first to tear holes in this limp rebuttal if a Democratic president were in the hot seat. There were a growing number of specific terrorism alerts in circulation at the time. And if the Bush administration had decided before 9/11 that terrorism was a top security priority, the president would certainly have acted more decisively after his Aug. 6 briefing. But as the Washington Post reported on Friday, "Bush and his Cabinet advisers were not yet disposed to respond to al Qaida as a first-tier national security threat ... As late as Sept. 9, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld threatened a presidential veto when the Senate proposed to divert $600 million to counterterrorism from ballistic missile defense."

After letting Rice and other aides take the heat on Thursday, Bush himself finally talked about the growing scandal on Friday morning, at a Rose Garden ceremony to honor Air Force cadets and their football team -- his favorite sort of photo op because it doesn't allow for press intrusion. "Had I known the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people," he declared, adding, "I take my job as commander in chief very seriously" -- a strange reassurance that should go without saying, but in this case, unfortunately, doesn't.

Bush's hiding behind his minions Thursday raised bad memories of Sept. 11, when he spent the day hopping around the country from one high-security location to the next while his advisors claimed (falsely) he was being protected from threats against him. This time, he needs to stand before the public and answer the dozens of tough questions that are being raised about his administration's state of awareness before 9/11. The White House needs to drop the script and put the president in front of the press corps. And it needs to cooperate with congressional leaders who have called for full and independent inquiries. Such investigations would not, as Ari Fleischer suggested this week, be a waste of taxpayers' money. In fact, this is a primary reason we pay the government our taxes -- to protect us, and when it does not, to find out why.

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