--- title: Bush Officials and 9/11: The Available Intelligence, Security Priority description: Reporter Kurt Eichenwald has new details in the New York Times today about the blindness and inaction of the George W. Bush Administration in the... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7184246/bush-officials-and-911-they-had-a-plan/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-09-11T15:51:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-25T05:47:08.568Z article:section: Politics og:title: Bush Officials and 9/11: The Available Intelligence, Security Priority og:description: Reporter Kurt Eichenwald has new details in the New York Times today about the blindness and inaction of the George W. Bush Administration in the... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7184246/bush-officials-and-911-they-had-a-plan/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte0b25ea85c65deb2/698b235ae6e84a52b12ba634/119747288.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TO GO WITH AFP STORIES "US-ATTACKS-5YEAR og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Bush Officials and 9/11: The Available Intelligence, Security Priority twitter:description: Reporter Kurt Eichenwald has new details in the New York Times today about the blindness and inaction of the George W. Bush Administration in the... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte0b25ea85c65deb2/698b235ae6e84a52b12ba634/119747288.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Politics](/section/politics/) # Bush Officials and 9/11: They Had a Plan by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Sep 11, 2012 3:51 PM UTC  TO GO WITH AFP STORIES "US-ATTACKS-5YEARS" (FILES) Photo dated 11 September 2001 shows US President George W. Bush (R) being informed by his chief of staff Andrew Card of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York during an early morning school reading event in Sarasota, Florida. The fifth anniversary of September 11 finds the United States bloodied by foreign war, polarized politically and coping with terrorism's curbs on freedom which helped define American life. AFP PHOTO/FILES/Paul J. RICHARDS \*\*MORE PICTURES AVAILABLE ON WWW.IMAGEFORUM2.AFP.COM\*\* (Photo credit should read PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images) TO GO WITH AFP STORIES "US-ATTACKS-5YEARS" (FILES) Photo dated 11 September 2001 shows US President George W. Bush (R) being informed by his chief of staff Andrew Card of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York during an early morning school reading event in Sarasota, Florida. The fifth anniversary of September 11 finds the United States bloodied by foreign war, polarized politically and coping with terrorism's curbs on freedom which helped define American life. AFP PHOTO/FILES/Paul J. RICHARDS \*\*MORE PICTURES AVAILABLE ON WWW.IMAGEFORUM2.AFP.COM\*\* (Photo credit should read PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)AFP/Getty Images—2011 AFP by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Sep 11, 2012 3:51 PM UTC Reporter Kurt Eichenwald has new [details](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html) in the New York _Times_ today about the blindness and inaction of the George W. Bush Administration in the run-up to 9/11\. In addition to the well-known Aug. 6 presidential daily brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” Eichenwald reports on previously unknown CIA warnings given to the President and his top advisers based on confirmed intelligence from the field.more There has been a lot of reporting over the years about then CIA chief George Tenet running around [Washington](http://topics.time.com/washington/) with his hair on fire during the summer of 2001 trying to express just how dangerous he thought the situation was. The response from Bush Administration officials has been that there was not much new information by which they could do anything about the impending attack. Then National Security Adviser [Condoleezza Rice](http://topics.time.com/condoleezza-rice/) and others have said that repeated warnings came with no actionable intelligence the White House could use to diminish the threat and that eventually the White House became inured to Tenet’s warnings. Eichenwald shows that there were in fact a few details emerging from the field during the summer of 2001 that could have spurred action. More important, while no single piece of information by itself was actionable, there was plenty the Administration could have been doing to disrupt the plot without knowing the specifics of time and place. We first detailed the plan available to the Bush Administration back in 2002. (**PHOTOS**: [Eleven Years Later, New York Reflects on the Tragedy of 9/11](http://nation.time.com/2012/09/11/eleven-years-later-the-nation-reflects-on-the-tragedy-of-911/)) As she took control of the National Security Council in the first week of January 2001, Rice received a lengthy and carefully crafted plan from then NSC senior counterterrorism director Richard Clarke designed to “roll back” al-Qaeda worldwide. Clarke had been working on the plan since the brazen al-Qaeda attack against the U.S.S. _Cole_, and made his pitch with a lengthy PowerPoint presentation, according to TIME’s [Aug. 12, 2002, cover story](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003007-1,00.html): --- > “” --- Throughout the spring and summer of 2001, the NSC leadership, including Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley, slow-walked the plan through the interagency, which is shorthand for the NSC-chaired process through which different agencies clarify potential policies before setting up decisions by the principles, including in some cases the President. The Clarke plan didn’t receive its first dedicated meeting until April 2001\. It was eventually approved by the Bush NSC the day before 9/11 and became the post-9/11 battle plan that has been followed to this day. Eichenwald suggests that an early focus on Iraq contributed to the Bush Administration’s disregard for the terrorist threat. In fact, of the other agenda items that crowded out counterterrorism in the first nine months of 2001, abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia was much more of a factor than Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The top strategic priority of Bush’s national-security team, many of whose members had come of age during [Ronald Reagan’s](http://topics.time.com/ronald-reagan/) Star Wars push, was focused on developing and deploying missile defense. That said, the ludicrous, bizarre and discredited neo-conservative theory that Osama bin Laden and Saddam were inextricably linked did have credence in the White House and did shade its thinking and priorities: near his desk, Hadley had a copy of _Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America_ by Laurie Mylroie, which served as the urtext for Iraq–al-Qaeda conspiracy theorists at the time. 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