Missed clues, but old battle

Disclosures about how the White House handled pre-Sept. 11 warnings of possible terror attacks make at least one thing clear: The US war against Al Qaeda began long before September 2001.

From their first months in office, Bush officials considered Osama bin Laden a mortal danger to Americans. Weeks before hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush himself was pressing for a strategy on destroying the Al Qaeda organization, according to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The Clinton administration, too, was involved in a struggle against Al Qaeda of which the US public was only dimly aware. Efforts included training Pakistani commandos whose mission was to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden.

Today, with reports circulating that Al Qaeda is planning a major new attack on the US, the pressing question is still one that predates Sept. 11: America's leaders know the terrorist threat is real, but do US intelligence agencies have the resources and coordination to keep America safe?

Clearly, the intelligence community is operating at higher alert now than before Sept. 11, when the FBI and other agencies apparently failed to fit crucial warning signs into a pattern. But the danger is one of which they have long been aware.

Beginning in the Clinton years "I think there was a growing recognition that ... clearly one of the great threats that we did have to confront was terrorism," says former Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta. "It wasn't communism any more. It was terrorism."

In recent days, Bush officials have continued to aggressively defend the White House against Democratic suggestions that the President ignored warning signs of the Sept. 11 attacks.

An intelligence briefing Bush received last August contained only a vague reference to a possible desire by followers of Osama bin Laden to hijack airliners, according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. At the time, intelligence officials thought the purpose of any such hijacking would be to seize passengers as hostages. Al Qaeda operatives were thought to be focused on operations in Europe and the Mideast, not the US itself.

Democrats are just playing politics in pursuing this line of inquiry, the White House says.

"Washington is unfortunately the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature," said Bush at a Rose Garden ceremony honoring the Air Force football team on Friday.

For their part, Democratic leaders insisted that they were not second-guessing, but trying to ensure that Sept. 11 never happens again. Among their specific questions: Why didn't anyone in the government connect the dots of the hijack alerts and an FBI memo warning of possible terrorists training at US flight schools?

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