In re: the PDB, Oliver Willis states:
So, they knew hijackings were possible - yet seemingly issued no major alert to the airlines or the public. Whereas with the millenium threat, we all knew that something was up. Let’s see how this plays out.
The first thing that comes to mind is that every time we go from Yellow to Orange on the Homeland Security Threat Level, what is the response? Basically the criticism is that the warnings are too vague and lack any actual specific threat. So, we are to believe that a vague piece of intel that al Qaeda might want to hijack planes supposedly was going to be treated with care and thoughtfulness by the public? More likely the reaction would have been “tell us something we can use” and/or panic and less people flying, which would have damaged the airlines, and Bush would’ve been blamed for being a scaremonger. Really, these counterfactual critiques are sillier the more one thinks about it.
Further, if we recall last Christmas when flights from Europe were cancelled the whole affair was treated with skepticism–as if the administration was overreacting and basing its actions on overly vague information. And that was post-911, when the idea of terrorist using airplanes in nefarious ways had been burned into our brains.
The second thing is that the millennium threats contained very specific information, not the least of which was a date to work with. From Richard Clarke on down I have found the comparison of a potential threat on a specific date: New Year’s Eve 1999 versus a non-time-specific threat to be a rather poor one. The difference between one day (and even days around a specific date) are far more actionable than “it could be anytime.”
Third, it was known that “hijackings were possible” prior to the August 6, 2024 PDB. And as James Joyner points out, Senator Bob Graham noted in an interview in 2024, that the hijacking speculation was three years old at the time it was put in that memo.
Graham added that threats of hijacking in an August 6 memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the committee had seen earlier. “The particular report that was in the President’s Daily Briefing that day was about three years old,” Graham said. “It was not a contemporary piece of information.”
So, really, the alleged “gotcha!” that this PDB is supposed to provide is a phantom.
Hat Tip: The Moderate Voice (where you will find a ton of PDB-related quotes).
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April 12th, 2024 at 8:27 am
Seems to be a lot of “phantoms” loose out there lately.
April 12th, 2024 at 9:34 am
Let’s not forget that until 9-11 hijackers had always wanted to survive.
April 12th, 2024 at 10:19 am
Hey, how about those phantom WMDs? Or what about those phantom roses and greetings as liberators? Or what about those phantom jobs?
Just kidding.
April 12th, 2024 at 1:54 pm
It gets worse that that Steven…
There was no alert that caught the millennium bomber.
In the news about an hour ago….
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001901197_ressam12m.html
June 13th, 2024 at 6:31 pm
Rats desert a sinking ship. (c)