Ramzi Binalshibh, the [9/11] hijackers' paymaster, commented that "if the 9/11 organizers, particularly Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had known that the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, had been arrested at his Minnesota flight school on immigration charges, then Bin Laden and KSM would have called off the 9/11 attacks."
9/11 Commission Report, pp 247 & 376.

When the WTC was bombed the first time, five weeks after Bill Clinton's first term, Republicans blamed Clinton for not preventing the attack. After 9/11, nine MONTHS into W's first term, Republicans blamed Bill Clinton for not preventing the attack. Now, Grandma Punky used to say, "When you're pointing the finger of blame at someone, remember that you have three more pointing back at you." Shakespeare wrote, "Methinks thou protesteth too much."

The fact remains that the Bush Administration received hundreds of alerts about the looming catastrophe, from vague rumors to very specific threats. In August alone, Bush's White House was warned 23 times, by allies and enemies alike. By following through on any one or two of those warnings, or possibilities such as those listed below, Bush and the Republicans could have unraveled the crap out of the 9/11 plot and still held the record for most vacation days taken in modern history. The fact that they didn't is what haunts some of us when we're half awake in the middle of the night. None dare call it complicity, but we just can't shake that feeling that there's some real bad funny business going on.

In the eights months between the Bush Inauguration and 9/11, and in the five weeks after the August 6 PDB, the Republicans could have:

• struck a deal with the Taliban for the capture of Usama bin Laden (UBL). Envoy R. Hashimi met with the State Dept more than 20 times, with an offer to give up UBL in exchange for economic help. The US insisted on a direct hand-over (when it wasn't declaring the Taliban insincere); the Taliban desired discretion. A CIA official later says,
  “We had no common language. Ours was, ‘Give up bin Laden.’ They were saying, ‘Do something to help us give him up.'”
• re-examined the urgent "system blinking red" warnings that George Tenet and Cofer Black pitched to Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft in July 2001 (in response to the dozens of specific warnings flooding the intelligence community that summer)
• jawboned Saudi and Pakistani intelligence to shake dowm their informant networks
• resumed the Predator drone Afghanistan reconnaissance missions to spy on and harass al Qaeda training camps, and pushed for the final deployment of the armed Predator to attack such camps
• reinstated the Interagency Work Groups and ordered the CIA and FBI to compare counterrorism notes
• re-opened US intelligence investigations of terror-funding by the bin Laden family and Saudi royals
• demanded that the Attorney General spearhead an immediate all-agency evaluation of the domestic terrorism threat (like the one that caused him to abruptly stop flying commercially in July), instead of cutting funds and otherwise ignoring the issue
• re-appointed counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke to principals-group level, and authorized principals' meetings on the threat
• returned John O'Neill to Yemen to resume investigation of the USS Cole bombing (which had already implicated two future 9/11 hijackers)
• bombed UBL's training camps in retaliation for the bombing of the USS Cole. US Intelligence had entire libraries of images filmed of Tarnak Qila and its sister camp, Garmabat Ghar, and had, in fact, been watching al Qaeda train several thousand men a year in these camps, but no retaliation is taken on these camps until after 9/11
• placed USS Cole bombing suspects, several of whom will later be involved in 9/11, on CIA watch lists
• red-flagged all visa/passport irregularities and overstays and ordered INS and customs to update synchronize their watch lists
• created an expanded 'no-fly' list for suspected terrorists; had one been in place on 9/11, half the hijackers would never have been allowed aboard their planes. As it was, at least three of the hijackers were pulled aside for more direct verification, and then allowed to board anyway
• alerted mayors of prime target cities, urging them to mobilize their own resources and offering to help create prevention and response protocols
• transfer desperately-needed funds from missile defense to counterterrorism programs
• re-issued state and local conterterrorism grants
• re-opened Clinton's National Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center to resume the cooperative tracking of terrorism financing
• used the technology of the US clandestine services to hack into and destroy as Qaeda's revenue streams, and disrupt its electronic communications. The BBC reports on the magnificent capabilities of electronic surveillance:
  "The US’s global surveillance program, Echelon, has become particularly effective in monitoring mobile phones, recording millions of calls simultaneously and checking them against a powerful search engine designed to pick out key words that might represent a security threat. Laser microphones can pick up conversations from up to a kilometer away by monitoring window vibrations. If a bug is attached to a computer keyboard, it is possible to monitor exactly what is being keyed in, because every key on a computer has a unique sound when depressed."
  [BBC, 5/4/2001]

  Furthermore, a BBC report on a European Union committee investigation into Echelon one month later notes that the surveillance network can sift through up to 90% of all Internet traffic, as well as monitor phone conversations, mobile phone calls, fax transmissions, net browsing history, satellite transmissions and so on. Even encryption may not help much. The BBC suggests that:
  “it is likely that the intelligence agencies can crack open most commercially available encryption software.”
  [BBC, 6/29/2001]

  In a series of articles for Washington TImes publisher Reverend Sun Myung Moon's newest media acqisition, UPI (United Press International), journalist Richard Sale describes the NSA’s electronic surveillance of al Qaeda:
  “The United States has scored notable successes in an information war against the organization of terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden. US hackers have gone into foreign bank accounts and deleted or transferred money and jammed or blocked the group’s cell or satellite phones... Bin Laden is surrounded by US listening posts.” Sale also discusses the extent to which the NSA’s Echelon satellite network is monitoring al Qaeda; all this is in March 2001.
  Says Richard Palmer, former head of the CIA’s Moscow station:
  “We could have starved the organization if we put our minds to it. The government has had the ability to track these accounts for some time.”

• fast-tracked implementation of Hart/Rudman anti-terror legislation
• spent far less time breaking Presidential vacation time records in 2001
• funded upgrades in airport security, including improved passenger/baggage screening, demanded and FAA compliance. [NOTE: An American Airlines spokesman states that the airline, “received no specific information from the US government advising the carrier of a potential terrorist hijacking in the United States in the months prior to September 11, 2001. American receives FAA security information bulletins periodically, but the bulletins were extremely general in nature and did not identify a specific threat or recommend any specific security enhancements.”

  In the eight months before 9/11, the government fails to require any enhanced airline security measures. Congressionally mandated improvements in passenger screening and baggage handling ordered by Congress in 1996 are still not in effect by 9/11. The FAA also makes no effort to expand its list of terror suspects, which includes only a dozen names on 9/11. The former head of the FAA’s civil aviation security branch later says he wasn’t even aware of an increase in potential terror threat in 2001.

• held counterterrorism security briefings (formerly attended by only a few airline reps at the biggest airports) for pilots, flight attendants, passenger screeners and baggage handlers, and any others who might play a preventive or defensive role in any attack. Instead, as Dave Machett, president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, claims
  “Not one word about this growing threat ever reached the pilots, and the flight crews were kept completely in the dark.”
• expanded the armed air marshal training program
• ordered airlines to vigorously enforce current security policies; for example, the preferred weapon of the 9/11 hijackers, box cutters, were specifically prohibited items (despite repeated claims to the contrary by mainstream media), as was pepper spray (mentioned by flight crew during the hijackings). This prohibited items list has been the airline security standard since the early Clinton Administration
• reminded the airlines that by federal law, air carriers are required to protect passengers from hijacking and terrorism
• cross-referenced passengers pulled aside for prohibited objects with terrorist watch lists
• ordered FAA alerts, containing the names and pictures of hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq al-Hamzibe, to be sent to all US ticket counters, airports and travel agencies after authorities discovered in August that they had entered the US
• ordered, after the arrest of Zaccarias Moussaoui, an agency-wide coordination of FBI flight school investigations, and requested the cooperation of US flight schools to help identify suspicious individuals
• demanded the FAA oversee the strengthening of airliner cockpit doors
• circulated names and photographs of potential hijackers to boarding gate security checkers, and/or posted such wanted lists publicly at boarding gates
• released a nationwide bulletin to flight schools with names and photographs of potential terror suspects
• begun in-flight and in-terminal public service announcements to increase air passenger awareness and passenger cooperation
• taken action on the Russian UN mission's report, which provided enough information to potentially locate and kill UBL
• ordered airlines to fully utilize anomaly-tracking software models, to flag suspicious bookings (e.g., one-way tix purchased for cash)
• issued the FISA warrant needed to trace Moussaoiu's e-mails and phone calls back to Mohammed Atta and others, in Germany
• focused on hardening the security at high-risk targets, and developing response and evacuation plans
• tasked all 56 FBI US field offices to increase surveillance of known suspected terrorists, and to shakedown the informant network
• hired Arabic translators to assist in sifting through intelligence
• recommended the modification of traditional hijacking protocols, which require flight crews to fully cooperate with hijackers
• developed counterterrorism awareness and response training programs for pilots and air crews,
• released a nationwide APB to all local law enforcement with names and photographs of potential terror suspects
• Requested that the New York Times run a prepared Judith Miller series on the intensifying NYC Arab-American community
• complied with a US-Russian resolution to “freeze without delay” funds of at least five reported al Qaeda leaders including bin Laden’s security coordinator and finance manager
• increased the number of on-alert fighter jet squadrons at east and west coast air bases
• cut short W's Crawford vacation after the Aug 6 Presidential Daily Briefing (after which W told the CIA staffer who delivered it,
  "You can go now; you've covered your ass") and returned immediately to Washington (as W did later during the Terry Schiavo caper)