US and the World

Setting the 9/11 record straight

The New York Times > National > Correcting the Record on Sept. 11, in Great Detail

It's easy to get lost in all the details of the 9/11 Commission report. The simple fact is, aside from a ton of detail, the Commission changed our thinking on several fundamental facts about 9/11. The NYT sums it dop this way in a story today.

The myths we lived by - and I suspect manys till do:

At the time, it was understood that all of the hijackers had entered the country legally and done nothing to draw attention to themselves; Osama bin Laden had underwritten the plot with his personal fortune but had left the details to others; American intelligence agencies had no warning that Al Qaeda was considering suicide missions using planes; President Bush had received a special intelligence briefing weeks before Sept. 11 about Al Qaeda threats that focused on past, not current, threats.

And the reality we ignored - and I suspect manystill do:

The commission's report found that the hijackers had repeatedly broken the law in entering the United States, that Mr. bin Laden may have micromanaged the attacks but did not pay for them, that intelligence agencies had considered the threat of suicide hijackings, and that Mr. Bush received an August 2001 briefing on evidence of continuing domestic terrorist threats from Al Qaeda.