Jamison Foser’s Misinformation on “Memos”
The weekly "Media Matters" post by Jamison Foser, on July 7, 2006, is an especially weak attempt at claiming that "the media continued to call every match for Bush and his party." But particularly glaring is how Foser misinforms his audience regarding an August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). Foser repeats a misrepresentation he made two weeks earlier in a June 23, 2006, post.
On June 23, Foser baselessly claimed that a CIA briefer "attempt[ed] to draw [President] Bush’s attention to an August 6, 2001, memo titled ‘Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US’." Foser then claims on July 7 that "[President] Bush ignored pre-9-11 memos and briefings warning that bin Laden was ‘Determined to Strike in US’" Notice how Foser’s "August 6, 2001, memo" miraculously multiplied into "pre 9-11 memos and briefings" in two weeks’ time. Amazing, eh? Well, Foser is deceiving his readers.
At issue is President Bush’s PDB of August 6, 2001. Foser and the MSM have falsely reported or implied that the title of the PDB itself was ‘Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US’. This is not true. The truth is that the title is on a single one-and-a-half page item among several in that day’s briefing.
A PDB is a digest that spans several pages (usually 10-20). It contains several different topics in a portfolio-like presentation. You want to see? Here is what a PDB looks like:
As you can clearly see, it’s not just a couple sheets of paper. Foser is clearly misinformed on this.
In addition, Foser clearly implies that the August 2001 PDB item contained actionable material that President Bush could have followed up on that would have prevented the September 11 attacks. Again, this would be false. For example,
1. The PDB item states "suspicious activity" in the U.S. included "recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." Sounds damning, doesn’t it? Except that the World Trade Center towers were not federal buildings!
2. There is nothing in the PDB item that indicates any plot to fly planes into buildings. The item states that the CIA and FBI were investigating a Bin Laden group in the US planning "attacks with explosives."
3. But the part of the PDB item that Foser and his friends in the MSM don’t want you to know about is the last paragraph. It states that the FBI was "conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it consider[ed] Bin Ladin-related" (emphasis mine). This shreds the image that Foser and his friends want to portray; that is, that Bush "did nothing" prior to 9/11 and could have prevented the attacks. In fact, President Bush told the 9/11 Commission that he "remembered thinking it was heartening that 70 investigations were under way."
And there you have it. More misinformation from Media Matters. (Nice alliteration, eh?)
