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Article 33 charges that the president “REPEATEDLY IGNORED AND FAILED TO RESPOND TO HIGH-LEVEL INTELLIGENCE WARNINGS OF PLANNED TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE US, PRIOR TO 9/11.”
The text contains a devastating run-down of the many times President Bush was warned that an attack was coming and did nothing.
George Tenet did sound the alarm often and loudly. But as a retroactive glance at August 2001 shows, the president, literally, could not be bothered.
Tenet’s own performance was hardly blameless. The 9/11 Commission found numerous screw-ups within the CIA, and Tenet’s discharge of his statutory duty to coordinate the work of the entire intelligence community was abysmal.
It was his responsibility to ensure that the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies were sharing information freely on this priority issue. Sadly, Tenet preferred backslapping to holding the intelligence community to professional standards of work and conduct.
Article 33 of Impeachment shows that President Bush’s inaction in the face of myriad warnings prior to 9/11 constitutes utter failure with respect to his Constitutional duties to take proper steps to protect the nation.
Those who remember Watergate and other misadventures will be aware, too, that the cover-up of wrongdoing constitutes an additional – and often more provable – crime, especially when it involves perjury and obstruction of justice.
That’s where George Tenet comes in. Until now, Bush has managed to escape blame for his outrageous inactivity before 9/11 because his subordinates – first and foremost, Tenet – have covered up for him.
This is what is dealt with in Article 34 of Impeachment: OBSTRUCTION OF INVESTIGATION INTO THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001.
A Faustian Bargain
What did the president know, and when did he know it?
This double question, with Watergate antecedents, is the one that Bush and Cheney had to guard most carefully against.
By all appearances, they had little trouble enlisting a malleable-cum-guilty-conscience George Tenet in this effort at denial and obfuscation. And this helps to explain some of the more bizarre episodes of that time.
Faustian bargain? Call it mutual blackmail, if you prefer the vernacular.
Yes, Tenet gave the president enough warning to warrant, to compel some sort of action on his part. But Tenet’s lackadaisical management of the CIA and intelligence community was at least as important a factor in the success of the attacks of 9/11.
The raison d’etre of the CIA had been to prevent another Pearl Harbor. Yet, 9/11 took more lives than the Japanese attack in 1941.
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