With the publication of a CIA report, “Intelligence Community Terrorist Threat Advisory”, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks reaches its highest level since the Millennium alerts of 1999.
Michael Morell, President Bush’s CIA briefer (and future acting director of the Agency) says that in the first three months of the Bush administration, there was “little to no specific threat reporting on what al Qa’ida [sic] was plotting.” That changed, he says, in the spring through early summer, when the volume of reporting increased and al Qaeda members spoke to each other of “very good news to come.” By July, the reporting “suddenly dried up,” Morell says, and it was during that period of “summer doldrums” that the famed August 6 President’s Daily Brief (PDB) – “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US” – was written to summarize what the CIA knew of any direct threats to the United States. (The Great War of Our Time, pp. 39–43)
Day: March 30, 2021