In
The New York Times today, journalist Kurt Eichenwald
writes a
9/11 anniversary op-ed asserting that there are many more
pre-Sept. 11 documents aside from the infamous Aug. 6, 2001
presidential daily brief warning the Bush administration that Osama
bin Laden was planning to attack the United States. The nut of
Eichenwald’s argument:

While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts
from many of them, along with other recently declassified records,
and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s
reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that
infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has
been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the
controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs
that came before it.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda
attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central
Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group
presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation.
Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda
strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the
time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just
bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush
administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative
leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning
the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this
theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to
distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the
neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials,
these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an
Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi
secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions
were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but
pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin
Laden was real. 

I can’t vouch for Eichenwald’s reporting, and I’m generally wary
of working backwards from a once-in-a-lifetime event, since it’s
always possible to pluck (and then overrate) a few relevant
floaters from the ocean of data. Regardless, these two
reaction-tweets
to the op-ed by former Bush administration spokesman Ari Fleischer
are just crazy-wrong:

Disgusting op-ed in NYT by a truther implying Bush knew of
9-11/let it happen. NYT decries lack of civility, then adds to
it.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) September
11, 2012

How can the NYT ridicule birthers then make their op-ed page
home to a truther??

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) September
11, 2012

To state what should be the obvious, asserting that there was
more relevant pre-attack intelligence than previously known, and
criticizing the administration for undervaluing it, is an entirely
different category of commentary than claiming that “Bush knew.” If
Eichenwald is a “truther,” there is no evidence of it in this
op-ed. Fleischer’s blurt is the kind of mistake that
immediately calls to mind the phrase “reading incomprehension,” but
I think it’s something a bit more insidious than that.

Of the countless things I lament about our Sept. 12 world, the
fever of irrational, emotion-fueled, shaddappayerface discourse,
especially over those first three years after, ranks high on the
list. Ari Fleischer was, and continues to be, part of that foul
process. It’s one thing to be a drunk in a bar, shouting epithets
at anyone who dare criticize the political team you support. But
this same impulse that Fleischer is reviving today was used in real
time, by Fleischer and a variety of administration officials, to
prevent anyone outside the White House from investigating
the run-up to Sept. 11 or reading any of the relevant
documents.

If anything, the
disproportionate response to Eichenwald’s
classified-documents-based argument could be read as a pre-emptive
attack against the possibility of ever releasing such briefings to
the public. Which would be bad for the very national security such
moves claim to protect. Recall that Thomas Kean, chairman of the
Sept. 11 Commission, said in 2005 that the failure to prevent the
attacks were more attributable to overclassification
and lack of information-sharing than anything else. 

As I wrote
in 2004, 

In the history of high-profile American catastrophes, has there
been a disaster inquiry so painfully slow in getting off the
ground? FDR’s Roberts
Commission presented its Pearl Harbor finger-pointing by
Jan. 23, 1942. The Warren
Commission held its first
hearing just two weeks after John Kennedy was murdered,
and issued its report (however,
um, flawed) within 10 months. Richard Feynman delivered
his famous
critique in the same calendar year as the Challenger
crash; the Columbia commission wrappedin eight
months. […]

The Bush Administration tried to keep the investigation behind
closed doors (in congressional intelligence committees), lashed out
at Democrats who suggested otherwise (“Such commentary is
thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders
in a time of war,” Vice President Dick Cheney said when
the subject gained initial public traction in May 2002, just after
word of the famous “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in
U.S.” memo was
firstleaked), fought
Congress for four months after the House passed a
Commission-creating bill, and then hand-picked as chairman none
other than Henry
Kissinger, an act roughly as serious as hiring Bill Clinton to
prosecute a sexual harassment case.

Above all, Bush’s attitude toward sensitive information has
remained consistent from his pre-9/11 behavior: Transparency is
overrated, secrecy is
a virtue, and post-Watergate reforms curtailing the government’s
ability to snoop, prosecute and act freely are a serious obstacle
to protecting the country.

Pay particular attention to that bolded Dick Cheney quote above.
In the fog of war and raw emotion of murdered innocents it can be
hard to see that on the other side of a jingoistic appeal lies an
old-fashioned bureaucratic ass-covering. But that’s what this stuff
so often is. Fleischer’s crude slur should be laughed out of the
room, all relevant files should be declassified without fear, and
Americans should always be wary of government-proposed restrictions
made in the name of “war.”