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CNN Saturday Morning News

White House Says No Specific Warnings Were Given Prior to 9-11

Aired May 18, 2002 - 09:35   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's begin with an e-mail, shall we? This one comes to us from Sherry in Grand Rapids, Michigan: "I don't know what is worse, that the administration knew what the probable attack was going to be and did nothing, or they couldn't put 1,2 and 3 together.

Kelly Wallace, take it.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, very important to note a couple of things there, Miles, to tell this viewer that, number one, this administration only knew of a possibility, a possibility that bin Laden's al Qaeda network could consider hijacking an American airplane. Again, it was based on very general information. Nothing specific. No specifics about time, place, or really method of attack. So that's number one.

The bigger question that a lot of lawmakers are raising is how the administration, in terms of the intelligence community, perhaps didn't connect some of the dots. We know about a memo that an FBI agent in Phoenix put out in July warning that Middle Eastern students could be taking flight classes in the United States and could be linked to Osama bin Laden. We know, of course, there was an arrest in August of Zacarias Moussaoui. He was under suspicion taking flight classes in the United States.

So a bigger concern about how maybe the intelligence community didn't put together some of these dots. But again, the administration very much saying it had no specific warning about what happened on September 11, Miles.

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