frankenlies.com
#18: One Memo: So Many Fallacies
On pages 35 to 38 of Truth, Franken misinforms his readers regarding an August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) received by President Bush.
Franken misrepresents the PDB in several ways:
I.
On page 35 of Truth, Franken writes that the brief was "memorably titled 'Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US'." This is incorrect. Rather, the title refers to the one item of the PDB, not the entire PDB itself.
PDBs "generally span 10 to 20 pages, covering seven or eight topics in newspaper-like digests."2 (The President receives a PDB six days a week.3) What Franken refers to as the "August 6, 2001, PDB" is actually only a single 1 1/2-page item among several in the actual PDB.
Franken is simply misinformed on this. Here is a spring 2006 Reuters photo I came across. It shows what an actual PDB looks like.
II.
On page 35, Franken quotes a passage from the PDB item (emphasis mine):
"FBI information ... indicates suspicious activity in this country ... including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."1
Have you guessed it? The World Trade Center towers were not federal buildings!
Franken's information is worthless!
III.
In addition, Franken conveniently fails to include text from the important last paragraph of the August 6 PDB item. It said that the FBI was currently "conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it consider[ed] Bin Ladin-related."
Of course, if Franken had included this, it would have shredded his claim that those under the Bush administration "did nothing" prior to 9/11 (page 39 of Truth). It would also debunk Franken's baseless "firm belief that President Bush never read the August 6 PDB" (page 36). President Bush told the 9/11 Commission that he "remembered thinking it was heartening that 70 investigations were under way."4
This is a crystal-clear "deception by omission" by Franken.
IV.
Franken also conveniently leaves out the fact that the PDB also said that "The CIA and FBI [were] investigating ... that a group of bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives" (emphasis mine).
Needless to say, there are countless ways to attack with explosives. There is nothing in the PDB item that implies any kind of plot to fly planes into buildings!
V.
Most importantly, the PDB item did not contain any specific information, or "actionable intelligence," that could have been used to halt an impending attack.
Bestselling author and terrorism investigator Richard Miniter illustrates the importance of "actionable intelligence" in his latest book Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror. Please read this:
"To prevent the September 11 attacks (or any terrorist attack), intelligence officials need to know the target, timing, and type of attack, what counter-terrorism researcher Kevin Michael Derksen calls 'the three Ts of tactical intelligence.'5 Without knowing all three elements - when, where, and how - an attack cannot be stopped. If you knew that al Qaeda was going to attack the World Trade Center on September 11, but assumed it would be a truck bomb attack, you would be inspecting cars while the planes flew overhead."6
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The bottom line is that the August 6 PDB item did not provide any information that implied, recommended, or requested any kind of action from the President. If the intelligence community desired any action from President Bush, they would have asked for it. But they didn't!
In addition, the August 6 PDB item did not provide any of the "three Ts": a target, timing or type of attack.
Franken's anger over "Bush's nonreaction" (page 35) to the August 6 PDB item is simply baseless and misinformed.
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Notes:
1 The PDB is available on-line where Franken says it is, at http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/80601pdb.html.
2 Greg Miller, "Key August 2001 Bush Briefing To Be Made Public," Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2004, p. A10. [See also The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004), p. 254: "Each PDB consists of a series of six to eight relatively short articles or briefs covering a broad array of topics; CIA staff decides which subjects are the most important on any given day." http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch8.pdf.]
3 Ibid.
4 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004), p. 260. http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch8.pdf.
5 Kevin Michael Derksen, "Commentary: The Logistics of Actionable Intelligence Leading to 9-11," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 28, 255.
6 Richard Miniter, Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror (Washington D.C.: Regnery, 2005), p. 49.