BBSNews - 2004-04-13 -- Much has been made of the August 6th, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) since former Whitehouse spokesman Ari Fleisher first shared the title in 2002. The 9/11 Commission currently sitting asked for the briefing to be declassified and it's now been released. The same commission is asking now for the testimony of the CIA analyst who compiled the briefing to gain insight to what she was trying to convey back to the president of the United States.

Looking at the original copy of the brief already offers very solid clues into the analysts thinking. The document is structured in the way that many corporate documents are put together in that it highlights the most important portions of what the paper is trying convey. This particular document is not much different in that the most salient points, at least those first parts of each paragraph that are in bold and italics, are likely points the writer considered very important.

When taken alone, the bold and italizied words are as follows:

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US.

The Millenium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US.

Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks.

Al-Qa'ida members--including some who are US citizens--have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a (redacted) service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar "abd al-Rahman and other US held extremists.

-- Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

Very ominously, that's how the document ends. I'm just a small fish news editor in a really big pond. But had I read such a document at the time the president of the United States did, my hair would have been on fire as the beltway phrase most commonly associated with this briefing goes, and the forty other mentions that the president had already gotten about Al Qaeda activity would have encouraged me to move mountains on my own to sound some sort of alarm and shake some trees.

Michael Hess is the Editor of BBSNews in Charlotte, NC. Write to the editor here. Not all submissions are published. Or visit the completely new BBSNews Blog and Forum on our front page - Please Participate in BBSNews!