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CNN Talkback Live

What Did Bush Know About Potential Terrorist Hijackings?

Aired May 16, 2002 - 15:00   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.
BILL PRESS, HOST: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to TALKBACK LIVE. I'm Bill Press, standing in for Arthel Neville. And there's big news today, because there's a big political storm brewing. Not to mention, a possible public relations nightmare, for the Bush administration.

Here's the story: Disclosure of a President Bush briefing about a potential airline hijacking by the al Qaeda terrorist network, a briefing that the president received more than a month before those September 11th terror attacks. We learned about it just yesterday. Some congressional leaders say they should have seen in on it from the start. The White House says there was no way they could have foreseen the scope of this kind of an attack.

So did President Bush miss an opportunity to stop 9/11 dead in its tracks? We want to hear from you on this one. Call me at 1-800- 310-4NN or e-mail me at talkback@cnn.com. We want to hear from you. Of course we want to hear from the members of our studio audience here. but, first, we want to hear from CNN's Kelly Wallace. She's at the White House to bring us up to on exactly what happened -- hi, Kelly, good afternoon.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Bill. Well again a number of questions being raised on this day. And the White House putting out Condoleezza Rice, the president's National Security Adviser, just an hour from now to answer more questions, lots of questions about why U.S. officials, over the past eight months since the September 11th attacks, never revealed until now that they were aware of the possibility that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, could try to hijack a U.S. commercial airliner.

Now here is what the White House is saying, Bill, that there was an increased threat information since May of last year. Threats that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network could launch an attack against U.S. interests abroad or the United States. And that included the possibility of a hijacking of a U.S. commercial airliner. And that this information was communicated to President Bush during the first week of August.

He asked for an up-to-date briefing on all the threats out there. He was informed by his CIA briefer during his time at his Crawford, Texas ranch. But the main message coming from this White House is that it did not have specific information, no specific threat about what happened on September 11th. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARI FLEISCHER, PRESS SECRETARY: The president did not -- not receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers. This was a new type of attack that had not been foreseen. As a result, a series of changes and improvements have been made to the way the United States deals with a terrorist threat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: And, Bill, Fleischer's comments there generating more questions by reporters. The fact that the FBI was notified in the mid 1990s about the possibility of a terrorist plot to hijack commercial airliners and ram them into U.S. buildings including the CIA, that information passed along to the U.S. from investigators in the Philippines.

The message though, Bill, continues to be this administration did what it could based on what it's calling general information. But, as you said, members of Congress raising questions, and this administration trying to answer them on this day -- Bill.

PRESS: Kelly, one of the big questions is why did they wait eight months to tell us that they in fact did have some warning, even though it may have been a general warning?

WALLACE: Well, that is the key question. And reporters asking Fleischer, looking over comments that President Bush made over the past several months, Vice President Cheney, even Ari Fleischer. The message is that U.S. officials said that there was general information out there, increased information over the summer about the possibility of a threat. They are trying to say that you have to understand no one ever imagined what happened on September 11th would happen. That U.S. officials were answering generally that they had no specific threat about the September 11th terrorists attacks.

But a lot of members of Congress, specifically Democrats, not satisfied, saying that they should have been told well, well before now that there was even a possibility, a concern, about a hijacking by bin Laden's organization, Bill?

PRESS: And, Kelly, today, Senator Daschle called on the White House to release the text of that FBI warning out in Phoenix, which occurred in July. A warning about Middle Eastern men taking flight lessons. And number two, to release the entire text of the briefing he received from the CIA, so that the members of Congress would know what the president knew and when he knew it. Any indication they will release either of those documents?

WALLACE: The only message we are getting, U.S. officials saying they will cooperate with the United States Congress. But, of course, Bill, as you know, much of that information classified. So a lot of concern about keeping top secret information secret. The message from the White House right now is that it will cooperate. We'll have to see what that means, Bill.

PRESS: OK, Kelly, you're right at the he heart of it. Thanks for taking time to join us this afternoon.

WALLACE: Sure.

PRESS: Kelly Wallace, CNN's correspondent at the White House.

I guess the question now is all up to you. You've heard at least a little bit of story. That there was this briefing in early August for the president down in -- at his ranch in Crawford. That there was the possibility of a hijacking by the al Qaeda terrorists. We just found out about it today.

I want to hear from you. Do you think that the president knew more than we thought he knew, do you think he should have done more, or did he do you think he did just about enough? Who's first?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Rod (ph) -- Rod (ph), go ahead.

ROD: Yeah, Rod from Tallahassee, Florida. I think the keyword that the CNN reporter was using earlier was the word "possibility. I mean there are a lot of possibilities out there of a lot of things that can happen in life. But you just wonder how many can really be prevented or how many can you plan for? And I think the president and his administration probably thought that there was a potential there. But, specifically, airplanes into buildings, I don't think anybody knew or foresaw that.

PRESS: OK, Rod (ph), thanks so much.

As we mentioned, some members of Congress are upset about this. They think they should have known sooner. We're going to talk to a couple of members when we come back; Congress people on sides of the aisle, criticizing president bush for keeping them in dark about a pre 9/11 hijack warning. When we come back we'll be joined by a Republican, Richard Burr of North Carolina; and a Democrat, Congresswoman Jane Harman of California. They're both members of the House Intelligence Committee and the subcommittee on terrorism and homeland security. You know they've got a lot to say about this. We'll join them when we come right back on TALKBACK LIVE -- thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PRESS: All right. Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE.

You know the story by now. We learned last night that President bush received a briefing over a month before 9/11 that there could be a possible hijacking by al Qaeda terrorists of an airliner maybe in the United States.

Joining us now, two members of Congress to talk about that: Republican Representative Richard Burr, North Carolina. He's the man on the right, where he belongs. And Democratic Representative Jane Harman of California, she's the person sometimes on the left, sometimes in the middle. Both members of the House Intelligence Committee. Let me start with asking each of you the key question. And I'll start with you, Congresswoman Jane Harman. When did you first learn about this briefing that was given the president about this possible hijacking?

REP. JANE HARMAN (D), CALIFORNIA: I saw it on the wire yesterday. But, Bill, to be fair, on the intelligence committee, we get weekly briefings and we see daily situation reports. And so we had bits and pieces of this over time, and as a member of the commission on terrorism, two years ago lots of us were predicting attacks on American soil by al Qaeda.

PRESS: Congressman Burr, the same question to you. When did you first learn about this briefing that was given to the president in the first week of August?

REP. RICHARD BURR (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Well, Bill, the president gets a briefing every morning. We heard of this specific one and the contents of it today. But as Jane said, we, as members of the intelligence committee, read similar information. It may not be identical to what the president gets. We may read it in a slightly different time frame. But we see "hijacked" every week for probably the 11 months going up to 9/11.

So hijacking was something that we have become immune to, to some degree. But I think we can go back to 1995 and see the first issue of a hijacking come up with Ramsi Youzef.

PRESS: Congresswoman Jane Harman, there were -- some people are talking today about connecting the dots. Let me mention just three dots. There was a memo written by an FBI agent in Phoenix that there were a lot of Middle Eastern men apparently training for flight training on American airliners. There was this briefing of the president, there was the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was trying to learn how to fly a plane, but not how to land it.

HARMAN: Right.

PRESS: Looking back, don't you think that somebody at the FBI or somebody at the CIA should have started connecting the dots before 9/11?

HARMAN: Well, sure I do, Bill. But people were trying to connect the dots. Looking -- hindsight is always better.

PRESS: Sure.

HARMAN: And there probably are three or four more dots that we will discover in the course of doing our report -- which we're doing right now on a bipartisan basis -- about what happened on 9/11. But what I would say about that is -- and I hope we're getting this across -- that investigation by selective leak is not a good way to do this. And I wish that President Bush had said on August 7th, assuming he saw all this information, Gee, let's call DOT and the FBI and let's do more. But it is understandable, at least to me, that for a variety of reasons, we didn't have the systems in place. And let me just make one more point. The key thing now is to prevent the next attack. To connect the dots better next time. And I hope we don't lose focus on that, because that is where a lot of Americans could still be at risk.

PRESS: So Congressman Burr, do you believe -- Senator Daschle this morning asked, I thought, an important question. He said he did not know the answer to it, but the question seemed to be, was this an intelligence failure or a failure to act on intelligence? What do you think, or do you think it was either?

BURR: Bill, I would tell you that it's a comedy of mistakes in some cases. We had a process at the FBI that did not allow what we think was valuable information to make it through the chain of command and possibly to find its way to the CIA and to be included in the threat matrix. To suggest that we weren't given volumes and volumes of intelligence that analyst were going through to try to predict where the greatest threat was is a mistake for anybody to claim.

Jane and I and other members went through all last year those threat assessments to try to figure out what we needed to do. Osama bin Laden has been the number one objective of the FBI since 1998, when we tied him to the embassy bombings. So we knew the players, we knew the potential threat, we just didn't know how or when.

PRESS: Well, that is a important point I wanted to ask you about. If you knew that Osama bin Laden was planning hijackings -- this isn't just another group, this is the al Qaeda network that were planning hijackings -- wouldn't you say, "Hello? These could be different kind of hijackings and we ought to do something about it."

BURR: Well, clearly, our experience up to the point had been hijackings that dealt with the release of prisoners.

PRESS: I know, but this was different. This was Osama bin Laden, no?

HARMAN: Well, looking back, sure, you say people should have had bigger ideas. Tom Clancy wrote about airplanes crashing into buildings, and there were threats of an attack in Paris. And there was the interception of an al Qaeda operative, a successful interception at the Canadian border. He was going blow up LAX. That's near to my heart and my congressional district.

And, so, yes, there was a lot of information around. We were all working hard at this it. I think, though, Bill, what we are disputing is this premise that there was a smoking gun. Wee do not know that yet. And one mistake that one person made that could have prevented 9/11.

PRESS: Good point. All right -- go ahead.

BURR: And, Bill, we as members of the committee have spent some portion of every day looking over documents since 9/11, trying figure out whether we missed something, as well as our intelligence community. And I think what we would ask our colleagues is to be patient. We've completed a process within our subcommittee. We've also got a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) investigation under way.

We will uncover anything if there's something -- if there is a smoking gun or mistake. But let's not prosecute the president in the process in public in the press. Let us go through the process.

PRESS: Well, congressman, I don't think that anybody is doing that. I think people are raising questions today, which I think are good questions. And I want to jump in, if I can, because there is a question that I've heard from members of this audience today I'd like each of you to speak about, which is eight months later, and we do see -- I think you called it, congressman, a "comedy of errors." But so far nobody has been held responsible, nobody's head has rolled because of the failure to act on all of these warnings. Why not?

HARMAN: All right. I don't think the goal is to behead somebody. I think the goal is to fix the process and to prevent the next wave of attacks. If it turns out that a human was culpable, we will find a that out. But let me say -- and I think you'll agree with this, Bill -- it's not partisan to raise questions about this administration or any other. And every administration going back at least four has had to deal with terrorism.

PRESS: Congresswoman, I have to interrupt you. I ask you to stay there. We'll come back to you in just a second. We're going to interrupt our programming right now to go to New York City, where New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is now at ground zero announcing that the end of the recovery efforts there will be accomplished very soon -- here's the mayor.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (R), NEW YORK: ... and save 25,000 lives. And we wanted to update you on a ceremony that we are going to have on May 30th to say "thank you" to those that worked so hard, and also to remind ourselves the terrible cost that freedom has paid on September 11th.

And we also wanted to update you on the progress of the rebuilding. We have an obligation to those left behind and to everybody else to make sure that the terrorists know they did not win. That we still have a right to practice our religion and say what we want to say, and have a better life for our families. And we wanted to show you how all of the different constituent agencies and governments and the private sector have come together to take us forward.

This is what we are talking about, and we're going to talk about it in three separate sections: the recovery, downtown life and rebuilding. To remind you, this is what it looked like in September. And this is roughly what it looks like today. We have removed 1.8 million tons of debris, that is 100,000 truckloads. We have put in 3.1 million person hours of labor.

Most importantly, our first and foremost objective in the whole recovery effort was to do it safely, and God willing, we will get to May 30th, with a record intact of not having one single serious injury or losing one life. We have also done it way under budget and much faster than anybody ever thought that we could. But we want to on May 30th have a ceremony to say thank you to those that at great risk have worked together so we can help those that lost loved ones to the extent humanly possible.

The ceremony will take place on May 30th. It will be -- it will start at 10:29 in the morning, which is the time that the second tower collapsed. It will start with the ringing of the fire department signal for a fire officer lost in the line of duty. That is five bells repeated four times. And then we will have an honor guard made of a number of different groups: the fire department, the port authority, police department, the New York City Police Department, the state troopers, the correctional officers, the court officers, the National Guard, construction workers, volunteer workers, department of design and construction people, office of emergency management people, and EMS people, and certainly, families as well.

They will carry out one empty flag-draped stretcher to symbolize those who we never did recover. Following that will be what we call the last load. That will be that beam that has been left standing, which will be on a flatbed truck covered with an American flag. And it will also come slowly up the entire ramp.

We will have music from combined police department, fire department, and port authority, police department, pipe bands. They will play "America the Beautiful." We will play "Taps." We will have the traditional honor fly-by by the NYPD helicopters, which we've tried to do at every police and fire officer's funeral. And then the ambulance bearing the stretcher and the beam on the truck will proceed down West Street and off through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

Let me remind you that the recovery effort will not finish on May 30th. There will be pockets of debris that we will uncover and want to sift through. And with the same care that we have been doing. There will be the process continuing at the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) site, where we very carefully screen every bit of debris.

There will be the identification efforts going on at the medical examiners office at Bellevue for the next year. This is a symbolic end, however, of the process, and of ways to say "thank you" to those that have worked so hard and taken such risks in order to recover those that we lost.

We have, while we have been doing the recovery effort, rebuilt our ability to keep this city safe. Fire department, we have new recruits entering. This is another class since the last time we got together. A new group of police officers have graduated. We are administering the tests for the next group of police officers. We had over 35,000 people apply to take that test.

We have established a counter-terrorism hot-line. And we have to note that the NYPD, along with the help of everybody in this city, has continued a decline in the crime rate that started eight or so years ago -- or ten years ago. Also, the Office of Emergency Management has designed a permanent operation center, and we have a temporary one going. And their role will be complete at the end of had recovery, but they will stand there to help coordinate any emergencies that come up in this city. GOV. GEORGE PATAKI, NEW YORK: As you know, the Port Authority police also lost a great deal on September 11th. Thirty-seven police officers and all of the top management -- the top management has been replaced. The new commissioner is Charles DiLorenzo (sic), who is doing a excellent job in working with -- De Rienzo -- who is working with the city officials extremely well. And the Port Authority has graduated its first class of 80 new police officers and they are now in processing 200 more in the next class that will be completed probably within the next six weeks or so.

BLOOMBERG: We have not recovered totally but made enormous progress in bringing back transportation. There are people who live and work in lower Manhattan, and they need these services. Here are a number of them that we announced at previous press conferences that have been completed. And you see the final re-paving of most of the roads in lower Manhattan. I'm sorry for all of the rough inconvenience. But right through the rain we had last week, the Department of Transportation continued to work. And they will by the end of the month have the roads re-paved.

We have bus service fully restored; we have the ferry service operating. The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel is opened again. West Street is going again. And the MTA is reconstructing their stations for...

PATAKI: Yes, the two Rector (ph) Street stations should be open by then.

PRESS: OK, that's good news from Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki that recovery efforts at ground zero will be completed by the end of the month.

We're going to take a break now and then resume with TALKBACK LIVE. Unfortunately, our two members of Congress had to leave. That's their job. But when we come back, we'll pose our questions to two national security experts: What did the president know, when did he know it, and what did he do about it? More TALKBACK LIVE coming up; stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PRESS: OK, welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE. The big question of the hour: Was there a breakdown in intelligence prior to those 9/11 terrorist attacks? Well, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt thinks so. He's calling for some kind of investigate into what U.S. intelligence might have known before those attacks happened. Right at 4:00, right after TALKBACK LIVE, CNN's going to be carrying a live news conference by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice trying to answer some of those questions.

We look for answers now to two security experts who join us often here on CNN. Frank Gaffney is former assistant secretary of defense, now president of the Center for Security Policy. And Ron Kessler is an investigative journalist and author of "The Bureau, The Secret History of the FBI."

Ron, so let me start with you. An FBI agent in Phoenix writes a memo in July, two months before the attacks, that says, "Hey, there are a lot of guys from the Middle East. They're taking flight training classes in American flight training schools. Maybe we ought to look into this, and maybe they could be up to something," and the memo never got to the White House, never got to the top of the FBI. Who goofed up?

RON KESSLER, AUTHOR, "THE BUREAU": Well, very clearly, there should have been more centralization at the FBI, which Rob Mueller is now doing. And there should have been more of a sense of urgency as well. There also should have been a better infrastructure. The computers were a wreck as a result of Louis Freeh's version to technology.

On the other hand, we all were aware of the threats. We all read the papers and watched on TV and saw that bin Laden had, in fact, attacked U.S. interests overseas, had, in fact, said he wants to destroy America. The CIA in the person of George Tenet testified a year or two earlier that bin Laden is the greatest threat against America. And none of us understood the seriousness of the threats. So it's really unfair if we ourselves did not understand, and we didn't need an intelligence briefing. We saw it in the briefings. We saw it in the papers. If we didn't understand, for us to now go back and say, "Well, because of this vague, vague possible threat that they might hijack a plane, therefore, they knew, and they should have done something."

And as far as doing something is concerned, even if they knew, how much could they have done before September 11th? We're not in a position to support the kinds of changes that has occurred since September 11th.

PRESS: Well, maybe the answer is they should have done something. But I want to come back to that, but first, I want to ask Frank Gaffney.

Frank, the White House today, Ari Fleischer spent a good 45 minutes explaining the reason they didn't do anything, because they were thinking a pre 9/11 kind of hijack versus what we now think of post 9/11 as the terrible kind of hijackings that occurred at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But if you're briefed that this is a hijacking by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, shouldn't there have been a bell going off that said, you know, al Qaeda's not just going to pick some people up and take them to another country. This could be something different. Yes?

FRANK GAFFNEY, CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY: I think the answer is, of course, yes. But it's like almost all of the other episodes where we've had some kind of attack, a surprise calamity that somebody inflicted upon us. You look back, and there was lots of evidence that it was coming. It's finding at the time what that evidence was and separating it from all of the noise and other confusing signals and acting, as Ron said, acting appropriately. We didn't do it in this case.

I would call that a failure of intelligence. It may even be a failure of policy. It seems to me that, clearly, a postmortem is in order by independent people interested in finding out, not just who was responsible and why, but how do we assure that this doesn't happen again. This is clearly a forward looking problem, because the bad guys are still out there. And you know -- I think there's lots of evidence that right now, the same kind of signals are probably available. We're hearing about yellow days and orange days on this chart. Well, that's the kind of information we have right now that looking back on it would be evidence in a future calamity perhaps of warning of an imminent problem.

PRESS: OK, just jumping in because we have very little time. Key question here. The White House now says that the appropriate agencies were identified. Do we know were the airlines identified of possible hijacking threats? Were the airports identified as soon as we knew of it possible hijackings? Do either one of you know?

GAFFNEY: Do you mean identified or do you mean alerted to the fact that this information was available?

PRESS: Alerted. I'm sorry, not identified, alerted.

GAFFNEY: I don't know the answer to that, and my guess is that, no, that there was sort of a generalized increase in the level of security on the part of the federal government but probably not to the airlines. But that's one of the things that ought to be looked into.

PRESS: But, hello, if you're talking about airlines, don't you alert the airlines, and don't you alert the airports if you want to stop a hijacking?

KESSLER: We know how bad security was at the airport and the airlines, and there are 20,000 flights that take off every day in the U.S. And what were they supposed to do with this threat? You have to have specifics in order to do something about a threat. Alternatively, you have to have the experience of September 11th to raise our level of consciousness and make us take action.

Even now, at that time, there were all kinds of forces that said, no, the FBI should not be given the power to have roving wiretaps. Even now, after September 11th, you have the ACLU saying, well, we shouldn't have national ID cards. It's OK to have state driver licenses that can be counterfeited easily, but it's not OK to have reliable, positive identification.

PRESS: OK, we'll get into a lot of those steps. Right now, we have a question here from Timothy, joins us from South Carolina.

Hi, Timothy.

TIMOTHY: Hi, how are you? I believe our government's been relying on too much high tech surveillance, and I believe that if we go back to the old fashioned way of espionage, is it possible to get like FBI-CIA agents to infiltrate these organizations?

PRESS: And speak Arabic.

KESSLER: Well, it's primarily the job of the CIA to infiltrate al Qaeda overseas. And, in fact, they did. They did have assets in the organization, but they were not in the inner circle. You saw the bin Laden videotape in which he said very few people even in his inner circle were aware of this. So it was very hard to penetrate. It's something that we could do, that we should do, but it's also important to recognize that getting intelligence is not like turning on a TV set, and because they didn't turn on the TV set, we failed. It's not that easy.

PRESS: Frank...

KESSLER: Just like it's not that easy to detect a bank robbery before it occurs.

GAFFNEY: I would argue that...

PRESS: Frank, let me bring you in with a question. Do you think the problem was that understandably, perhaps, we were focusing on overseas terrorism and not thinking it was going to hit on our soil? We're thinking about the embassies, about the Yemen and so forth? We heard warnings, we thought, well, they might do something over there but never back here at home.

GAFFNEY: Yeah, I do think that was sort of a mindset. We have spent most of the past 15 years really thinking that the problems, if there are any, are very much overseas and not to be worried about here. We've also, I think, been pursuing sort of very technical solutions to understanding some of these problems when whether it's al Qaeda, whether it's state-sponsored terrorism or other kinds of networks that are at our throats at the moment, we have not been making the kind of investment in human assets to try to penetrate what are very difficult to penetrate cells and (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

PRESS: OK. All right, thanks, Frank.

When we come back, we'll have a comment from Barbara, but we'll take a break here now. TALKBACK LIVE resumes with national security experts in just a couple of minutes. First, let's go to CNN's Leon Harris with breaking news -- Leon.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Bill. Yeah, we want to let folks know about a story that we've been reporting throughout the afternoon, and we've been following it for the last couple of days. Reports coming out of Mexico that a truck, a brand new truck, carrying some 10 tens of cyanide, potentially lethal cyanide on board had been stolen over the weekend. Well, we're not just getting word moments ago that this truck has been, and the cyanide has been recovered. We don't know exactly where it happened, where it's been recovered, but we do know the truck was stolen from a point in Haldago in Mexico.

A driver of this truck said that they had stopped alongside of the road to help a stranded motorist and was hijacked then by three men who then took the truck which was loaded with the cyanide. Don't know whether or not the thieves of the truck new the cyanide was inside and that they were after the cyanide and not the truck, because it was a brand new truck. Still trying to piece together all of this and exactly where the cyanide is right at this particular point. There was lots of concern amongst the FBI and intelligence community here in the United States and perhaps the cyanide was going to make it into the hands of someone who may be using it for some terrorist purposes.

But the good news on that now is that the cyanide has been recovered. More on that when we get more on the story. In the meantime, we'll take a break right now and back with more in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Before we go back to TALKBACK LIVE and Bill Press down there on the floor filling in for Arthel Neville, we want to check in with Patty Davis in Washington to see what she's learned about this latest word that we've gotten about the recovery of a truck that had some 10 tons of cyanide in it that had been missing in Mexico since the weekend.

Patty, what's the word.

PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Leon, the Mexican embassy tells our producer, Beth Lewendowsky (ph), that indeed that truck has been recovered in Mexico. It had 10 tons, 96 drums of sodium cyanide on board. Now it was recovered in Pueblo, Mexico just a few hours ago. That apparently not too far away from where it originally had been stolen. Three gunmen had held up and hijacked that truck over the weekend. No sign, though, of those gunmen.

At this point, no arrests we're being told, but terrorism experts had been worried that perhaps this laden truck with all the sodium cyanide on board could have been used in a terrorist incident. In fact, sodium cyanide can be -- can cause a coma, can cause death. So there were some scary scenarios out there. It appears now this truck has been found. All the sodium cyanide is on board and appears to be accounted for at this point. Back to you, Leon.

HARRIS: OK, thanks, Patty. I'm glad you cleared that up. That was going to be my first question. Have they determined that they have recovered every single one of those 96 canisters on board?

DAVIS: Yes, the Mexican embassy is saying that it appears now that all of these 96 drums are on board.

HARRIS: Good deal. Patty Davis in Washington, thank you very much. Appreciate it. That's all for now. If there's any other breaking news from here, we will definitely break in and give it to you. For the time being, let's go back now to Bill Press on the floor of TALKBACK LIVE -- Bill.

PRESS: OK, Leon, thank you. And we're talking about a briefing President Bush received early in August, first week of August, they tell us, which warned him that there could be some hijack activity on the part of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network here in the United States. We learned about this report eight months later.

Barbara, what do you think? Did we know enough? Do you think these attacks could have been prevented if somebody had acted?

BARBARA: I really believe that with all the intelligence that the president had gotten in August, something should have been done and could have been done to possibly prevent it even if it was just working with the airlines. Something could have been done. And I'm afraid that what is going to happen in the future if he gets messages again, ignores them, and are we vulnerable.

PRESS: OK, Barbara, thank you. Our guest in Washington at this hour, Ron Kessler, and Frank Gaffney.

Gentlemen, I want to ask you, there are a couple of people on television today. We just heard from Congressman Dick Armey a little earlier. I saw Senator Kit Bond who was saying, this is all just politics. The Democrats are just looking for an issue, anything to work against President Bush in the fall elections. Is that what this is all about or do you think these are serious questions -- Frank.

GAFFNEY: I think the answer is yes. It's both politics. Clearly, the Democrats have been looking for some stick with which to beat the president as a result of the astronomical popularity ratings that he's enjoyed since September 11th and his response to it. And there are serious questions here. And I think it's part and parcel of why there does need to be an independent investigation. I think it's overdue. I regret it very much that when the intelligence committees of the Senate and House decided jointly to create a panel to investigate this, they hired one of the directors of Central Intelligence's oldest friends and colleagues to run it for them.

And he's now left, we're back to square one, I think, with that investigation. It's overdue. It needs to look, I think, not just at what the intelligence community knew and how it was, as they say, fusing the various pieces of information that it new, but what was being done with that information as it was passed on to the policy making community. And that's where, I think, there's clearly going to be some oversight as well.

PRESS: And gentlemen, we're going to have to leave it there. We have to move on. Ron Kessler, Frank Gaffney, thanks so much for joining us today on TALKBACK LIVE.

GAFFNEY: Thank you.

PRESS: When we come back, still ahead, some thoughts from one of those people hit hardest by the September horror.

Thousands of people were lost on 9/11 when. When we come back, we'll hear from one woman who wonders, could the lives of her mother and countless others have been saved?

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PRESS: Up in New York, as we learned earlier in this hour, clean up is nearing completion at the World Trade Center site. Right now, you're looking at a live picture of Ground Zero where thousands of people were killed when the twin towers came crashing down on 9/11. One of them on the -- one of the two jetliners, the hijackers flew into the towers was the mother of Carie Lemack.

Carie Lemack now heads Families of September 11, a nonprofit organization supporting public policies to fight terrorism. She joins us now on TALKBACK LIVE.

Carie, first of all, I know this is a very difficult subject for you. I thank you for taking time to join us this afternoon. And I want to start by asking you, when you heard today or last night that there were at least some kind of a warning about a possible hijacking attempt by terrorists on the United States, what was your reaction?

CARIE LEMACK, LOST MOTHER ON 9/11: I think disgust, complete shock that our government could allow this to happen to their citizens, and the fact that there was no warning. It's just so upsetting to all of the victims' families, and the fact that the Bush administration for months has been squashing a bill that would allow us to investigate what happened into September 11th.

PRESS: So you were operating, I think, like most Americans, on the assumption that we had zero advance warning, we had no idea anything like this could ever happen?

LEMACK: We have been told repeatedly by public officials that we do not know that there was going to be any terrorist attacks. Obviously, now, new information's coming to light. And as the victims' families just want to find out what did we know, what could we have done, and what happened that day, because right now, there has not been an investigation.

PRESS: Do you believe that if some actions were taken in response to that first warning, in response to that information that your mother might still be here today, that other lives might have been saved?

LEMACK: I wish. I think that if we had known that there was going to be a hijacking and the government had let the citizens know, I highly doubt my mother or any of those other people would be on those planes. I also think that as your previous guest said, if the airlines had been warned, if the security companies had been warned, they could have been more prepared. The fact that they stopped 13 of the 19 hijackers that day for additional scrutiny, if they had put two and two together, they could have saved thousands of lives.

PRESS: Have you talked to any other family members of -- the 9/11 members of your association in response to this news and...

LEMACK: Of course.

PRESS: What are they feeling?

LEMACK: The same disgust, the same shock. If there's anger, I guess it's anger, but it's so hard right now. It's been such a trauma to go through. We continue to go through it. You can't turn on TVs today without seeing images of our loved ones dying. You can't be able to go and read a newspaper without finding out information like this that's just shocking. PRESS: So do you think the public -- we, the American public, have been adequately protected from these kinds of attacks?

LEMACK: No, not at all.

PRESS: I want to ask you, members of the families were given a choice, Carie, of taking the money that was raised for 9/11, particularly the money that the federal government has made available to families of the victims. They could either take the money or they could sue the airlines. What did you choose to do?

LEMACK: Well, you have to understand a little bit more. In detail, the Victim Compensation Fund, it's not a charity. As you said, it is in lieu of suing the airlines, and they decide how much your loved one was worth based upon some formulas that are pretty complicated. Based on the formulas for my family, my mother is worth nothing to the government. We would get zero dollars.

PRESS: Zero? I thought every family got...

LEMACK: Zero.

PRESS: ... at least $250,000 -- no.

LEMACK: That's not in the law. Special Master Feinberg (ph) has said that we should trust him, but there's no indication for us to believe that we would get $250,000 at a minimum.

PRESS: So...

LEMACK: Based on the grid, my family would get nothing.

PRESS: So does that mean you plan to sue the airlines, American Airlines?

LEMACK: Well, we have to, you know -- we'd have to weigh the options, but any educated person can look at the facts and make a good decision. And the other thing to keep in mind is, quite honestly, this is not about money. I would trade places with anybody in your audience or anyone in the American public for any amount of money. The facts are I need to know what happened to my mom and to those thousands of other people that day, and there's no way for us to know unless we do take legal action, because if we do, we are able to get discovery and understand some of the documents that the airlines and the government have made secret.

PRESS: We heard earlier in the hour that -- from Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the recovery effort is almost complete at Ground Zero, will be completed by the end of the month. Does that provide some kind of closure to you to know that at least that part of the operation will soon be over?

LEMACK: No, I don't think for many of the families that it does, because there's still 19,000 body parts that have yet to be identified.

PRESS: And what do you...

LEMACK: Many families don't have any money.

PRESS: And what do you think should happen now to that site? What kind of a memorial to your mom and to all the others who died there do you think would be appropriate?

LEMACK: Well, it's quite a complicated question, because there's a lot of different people who have different thoughts. My personal opinion is that there should be a place for reflection, that it should be a place where we remember the people whose lives were taken, because that's what this is all about. This is not about politics, it's not about economies. These are real people who were truly murdered and need to be remembered.

PRESS: Carie Lemack, thank you so much for joining us. It's a tough day, but you more than anyone affected by what happened, affected by this announcement today. We appreciate very much you joining us.

LEMACK: Thank you very much.

PRESS: Thanks, Carie.

Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks to everybody here in the studio audience for being here today. Thank you all watching at home. Again, I'm Bill Press here today, and I'll be back tomorrow for Arthel Neville. Don't forget after the break, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will be right here on CNN. A live news conference about that 9/11 warning we've been talking about. That's next on CNN. Thanks for watching TALKBACK LIVE, folks. Stay with us, stay with CNN. Come back tomorrow for more TALKBACK LIVE. Have a great afternoon. Thank you.

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