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Miers Briefed Bush on Famous Bin Laden Memo, But Newspapers Handle the AP Photo Quite Differently

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 4 October 2005
2 comments

Edito Attack-Terrorism Governments USA

"Harriet Miers, at the time staff secretary, is seen on Aug. 6, 2001, briefing President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas."

NEW YORK On its front page Tuesday, The New York Times published a photo of new U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers going over a briefing paper with President George W. Bush at his Crawford ranch “in August 2001,” the caption reads.

USA Today and the Boston Globe carried the photo labeled simply “2001,” but many other newspapers ran the picture in print or on the Web with a more precise date: Aug. 6, 2001.

Does that date sound familiar? Indeed, that was the date, a little over a month before 9/11, that President Bush was briefed on the now-famous “PDB” that declared that Osama Bin Laden was “determined” to attack the U.S. homeland, perhaps with hijacked planes. But does that mean that Miers had anything to do with that briefing?

As it turns out, yes, according to Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times. An article by Richard A. Serrano and Scott Gold observes that early in the Bush presidency “Miers assumed such an insider role that in 2001 it was she who handed Bush the crucial ’presidential daily briefing’ hinting at terrorist plots against America just a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.”

So the Aug. 6 photo may show this historic moment, though quite possibly not. In any case, some newspapers failed to include the exact date with the widely used Miers photo today. A New York Times spokesman told E&P: "The wording of the caption occurred in the course of routine editing and has no broader significance."

The photo that ran in so many papers and on their Web sites originally came from the White House but was moved by the Associated Press, clearly marked as an “Aug. 6, 2001” file photo. It shows Miers with a document or documents in her right hand, as her left hand points to something in another paper balanced on the president’s right leg. Two others in the background are Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin and Steve Biegun of the national security staff.

The PDB was headed “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” and notes, among other things, FBI information indicating “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.”

E&P Staff

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/e...

Forum posts

  • I have some questions about Miers. Did Miers brief Bush in August 2001 or was she just handing him the briefing? Conspiracy theorists always look for connections, in this case between 9-11 happening and the people who were supposed to be responsible for it not occuring. Is it typically the job of the White House counsel to brief presidents on matters of national security? Also, was "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" a routine briefing title or something of sufficient importance to have required someone of importance to do the briefing? Is Miers qualified to handle national security briefings?

    Number 2, is Miers Jewish or evangelical? I did a g*ogle search and found several hits under ’jewish miers’. Now if she is, more power to her, but she plays both sides of fence when claiming JC as her savior "sometime in the 80’s" according to her companion (unmarried lover?) who’s now an arch conservative on the Texas Supreme Court. So what is it—saved or not? Also, if she is still Jewish, does she belong to the PNAC-Likud-Israel First crowd? Judging by the coziness of the Chirstian Zionists and Likud, I’m not surprised that she can be both Jewish and Evangelical. As a matter of fact, to get on the Republican ballot in Texas you’d better be Evangelical Christian, but Zionistic would probably be enough...

    Back to conspiracies—if Miers is a closet hardcore Likud/Zionist, then she might choose to underplay a briefing about such a clear and present danger, knowing full well if the Osama’s(?) plan succeeded, the Israelis could get the US to take out some of their enemies in the Middle East. Perhaps by failing to raise sufficient alarm, there wasn’t instilled in the President sufficient alarm, and therefore nothing was done to ward off the 9-11 attacks. Or maybe it was a simple coincidence that Miers delivered (?) a briefing that would highlight the security failure and subsequent attack and response which would end up defining Bush’s presidency. Perhaps Bush’s interests and that of the nation’s security conflict when the ramifications of a successful attack are considered. In hindsight, one wonders where Bush’s personal lawyer would side if forced to choose between trying to stop an attack and not trying—well—quite so hard, knowing the consequences of a successful attack would include sympathy and political gain for her liege.

    With Able Danger and ongoing efforts to restrict information flow on what our government knew and when there’s also the possibility that Miers knows something and her nomination guarantees her silence. The government is continuing to censor leakers, which means transparency related to 9-11 can still do damage to them today. Unfortunately, the stronger they react, the more likely our government knew more than they now claim to have known. Some of the Presidential Daily Briefing was leaked quite quickly after 9-11; still, much of the document is buried like the original 9-11 report looking—among other things—at Saudi involvement. My opinion is that people in our government knew 9-11 was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. Everything else is a smokescreen to hide their complicity; incompetence does make a good excuse, having unqualified personnel delivery info vital to our national security masks darker intentions. Look at Brown/FEMA and Katrina...

    It’s ironic that the failure leading to 9-11 became Bush’s source of strength as our war president—it was his Administration’s failure to protect our country that led to 9-11. Speaking from a purely Machiavellian perspective, you have to wonder what Bush (or his minions) knew he would gain should the attack be successful. Couple thousand body bags in an unnecessary war in Iraq—justified quizzically by the 9-11 attacks—prove that Bush simply doesn’t care about the losses relative to personal political gain (in Iraq’s case, winning the 04 election.) Were the losses from 9-11 similiarly tolerable, simply collateral damage, sacrifices to reach a greater political end?

    • The Bush administration staged and engineered every aspect of 9/11: from setting up the Arab patsies with visas and flight school backgrounds, the NORAD exercises the missile hit against the Pentagon, to the controlled demolition of the two Towers and WTC7, right on through to the psychological operations conducted against the American people since the events of that morning.
      So Miers is probably in on all of it.
      As is John Roberts, who has an extensive background in Iran/Contra and its ensuing cover-up.