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President's Daily Briefing Warned of Possible Hijacking

Aired May 16, 2002 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Our senior White House correspondent, John King, who has been covering this story, joins us from the White House -- John, good morning.

There are a lot of questions that the house speaker brings up -- I'm sorry, house minority leader, I just gave him a quick promotion there -- house minority leader. But also this is now kind of politics fair game, the Democrats saying all right, we can forget all that bipartisanship that we have had to have since 9/11.

JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I'm not sure, Daryn, we should go that far just yet. Nobody suggesting the president did anything wrong. What Congressman Gephardt suggesting, is perhaps there are a lot of questions that's need to be answered because of new revelations. This latest one, of course, as we reported last night, the president told in the weeks just prior to the September 11 attacks that there was the possibility that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network might try to hijack U.S. airliners as part of some terrorist plot.

What the White House is saying is that it was a very general warning, listed among a range of options at the time they were seeing increased activity around the world by bin Laden activists. So the administration says it did what it needed to do. It brought together domestic agencies, like the Justice Department, like the Transportation Department. It put them on notice about the possibility of a hijacking. It issued very specific warnings to U.S. embassies and military bases overseas.

The administration saying it did everything it could based on the information it had at the time. What some members of Congress, now including the influential Democrat Dick Gephardt, are saying is that, wait a minute. Did the government know more? Did the CIA fail to share information with the FBI; specifically, Mr. Moussaoui, arrested before September 11. He was in custody. Everyone believes he would have been the 20th hijacker had he not been in custody.

This warning from the FBI in Phoenix, Arizona. An agent saying Middle Eastern men he believed might be part of a terrorist plot attending flight schools in the United States. Take those two actions over at the FBI, take this CIA warning to the president that there might be a hijacking. Mr. Gephardt says there now should be a congressional inquiry to see whether the CIA and FBI properly shared that information, whether the government should have known more and perhaps could have done more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D), MINORITY LEADER: I do know is that we need the facts on the table, we need everybody to know what happened. Again, so that we can do better. People count on their government first for safety and security. That is our most important obligation. And we've just got to do the best we possibly can.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The White House saying, perhaps it is being treated unfairly after this new disclosure. That will be the subject of the debate. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer saying earlier today that everyone is now processing this information based on our experiences and our prism of understanding, if you will, after 9/11. That we have seen the pictures of the planes flying into buildings; we know of the threat of using planes as bombs.

He said when the president received this very general briefing back in August, he did activate the relevant government agencies and he said this briefing from the CIA contained absolutely no indications, no suspicions, no hints people would hijack planes and then use them essentially as suicide bombs, as we saw on September 11.

Obviously, though, these calls for a congressional inquiry, already some congressional inquiries on their way, more questions to be asked and answered by the administration in the days and weeks ahead -- Daryn.

KAGAN. John, first of all, give us some perspective. Apparently the president getting this information in what's called the daily intelligence briefing or daily intelligence report. What goes into that? How extensive is that? Is it something that could be buried among a number of items the president sees on a daily basis?

KING: The report to the president, the daily intelligence briefing from the CIA, is one of the most classified sensitive documents in the U.S. government. The president sees it, the vice president sees it, his national security adviser sees it. Sometimes the White House chief of staff sees it.

The president in that document is told of threats against the United States, the disposition of U.S. military forces overseas, whether you have a campaign like now in Afghanistan, peacekeeping forces in Kosovo. Everything in the range is out there. Included in it, though, is what's called a threat matrix. Does the CIA think the United States or interests overseas are at risk of attack?

That is where we are told throughout 2001, early on in this administration, even in the final days of the Clinton administration, there were a number of warnings that the bin Laden network was gearing up for something. The question was, just what would that be? And we are told in August the president specifically was warned one of the range of options might be hijacking U.S. planes. Now one key thing we should point out, one lesson learned by this president is because of that, at that time, august 2001, that briefing in the morning was from the CIA and the CIA only. Now every day when the president sits down, he sits down with CIA briefer and an FBI briefer. So the information is brought together in one meeting, so that it can be condensed and shared to make sure the two agencies are talking to each other and sharing information not only among themselves, but with the president of the United States.

KAGAN: And let me get to the political aspect of this. Don't you see a shift in this in seeing Dick Gephardt come out and make these comments? If this was post 9/11, it would have been nothing but, "Rah, rah," and supporting the president no matter how he's leaving the country.

KING: Certainly, you will see the Democrats more assertive in asking for information. But it's not just the Democrats. Richard Shelby, a Republican of Alabama, a very conservative member of the Congress; the vice chairman of the intelligence committee, he was on CNN this morning raising the very same questions. He says he wants to know exactly what the president knew and when he knew it. And what he wants to know most of all, he said, is why is it that the FBI has this memo out of Phoenix, Mr. Moussaoui under arrest?

The president then gets warned by the CIA about a potential hijacking. Was there enough information to reach a threshold, if you will, and then the government should have done more?

The White House response is the president brought together the relevant agencies; he put them on alert. The White House is also saying these hijackers did not walk on to these planes. They did not get through security with guns or hand grenades. They used box cutters.

So that these hijackers themselves were very sophisticated. And even though the government was put on alert here in the United States, in the White House view, these hijackers knew enough about airport security to get through it in the pre-9/11 environment. We're in a very different world now.

KAGAN: That we are. John King, at the White House -- John, thank you very much. Much more on the story just ahead in this hour.

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