The 'First Rough Draft'

By Michael Getler

Sunday, May 26, 2002; Page B06

In 1963 the late Philip L. Graham, then the publisher of The Post and the newly acquired Newsweek magazine, gave a speech in which he described the "daily and the weekly grist of journalism" as providing what he called a "first rough draft" of history. It was, and remains, an apt description of the work reporters do, and the information readers, listeners and viewers absorb.

That history, he said, is never complete, as more details become known every day. That is what is happening now. A much fuller picture is emerging about what went on inside the White House, FBI, CIA and Federal Aviation Administration before the deadly terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

Disclosures in the past few weeks by The Post, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, Time and Newsweek magazines and others portray a much different, more complicated and more worrisome picture about alertness, coordination and candor at the top of the U.S. government than was the case last fall.

What we know now, first from a scoop in U.S. News & World Report and then from a May 3 AP story, is that last July, an alert FBI agent in Phoenix informed FBI headquarters that several Middle Eastern men were training at an Arizona flight school. He speculated that this could be part of an al Qaeda plot and recommended this be discussed within the U.S. intelligence community. It wasn't. On May 15 CBS News reported that early in August President Bush had been briefed by the CIA that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden had discussed the possibility of hijacking U.S. airliners. Three days later The Post reported that the top-secret CIA memo for that Aug. 6 briefing carried the headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." and said that he and his followers hoped to "bring the fight to America." The New York Times reported on May 21 that both Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller were told a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks about the earlier memo from the FBI agent in Phoenix but that they had not told George W. Bush and his staff about it until recently.

Many other stories have run about what was known by the FBI but not by the White House or the airlines, or what was known by the CIA but not by the FBI. Some warnings, we now know, went back well before July. Given the flood of warnings and raw intelligence routinely generated about terrorism, it would be hard to make the case that even if things were better coordinated, the attacks could have been stopped. But the accumulation of missed opportunities is disturbing. Also disturbing is that the administration said nothing publicly about this history of signs and suspicions until forced to respond to press revelations.

Previously, the public statements were all similar to what FBI Director Mueller said on Sept. 17: "There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country." Given the administration's penchant for secrecy -- from the energy task force to the war in Afghanistan -- it should not be surprising that a fuller account did not surface on its own.

Now the revelations are followed instantaneously by dire warnings of new attacks from Vice President Dick Cheney, FBI chief Mueller and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. One must take these seriously, yet the timing and lack of candor earlier feed suspicions.

Among the White House opportunities to reveal more about the pre-attack warnings was an eight-part Post series in January about the immediate post-Sept. 11 period, for which the president was interviewed at length. As some readers have already noted, none of what we've learned about warnings in the past few weeks was revealed then by the president or The Post. But there were some signs. In one segment, CIA Director George Tenet was having breakfast at a hotel on Sept. 11 with former senator David Boren when an aide rushed over to whisper the news to him. "This has bin Laden all over it," Tenet is reported to have said. "I wonder if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training?" he was also overheard to say. This is a reference to Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been detained in August after attracting suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota. The Wall Street Journal reported on May 20 that the FBI did not tell the White House about Moussaoui's arrest until after Sept. 11. It did tell the Federal Aviation Administration. But that agency decided against warning the airlines to increase security, the Journal reported.