A Long Look at Response to Brief | LA Times

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A Long Look at Response to Brief
The 9/11 panel to probe how Bush and FBI dealt with report. President says he saw no specifics.

By Peter G. Gosselin and Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — One day after the release of a top-secret report delivered to President Bush only five weeks before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the spotlight shifted to a pair of new questions: How did the president respond? And what did the FBI do?

The 1 1/2-page document, dated Aug. 6, 2001, cited intelligence from 1997 and 1998 as well as more recent information that terrorists in the United States might be planning to hijack an airplane or use explosives.

Experts fiercely debated Sunday whether the report — titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." — constituted a substantial warning of the attacks to come or was, in the words of national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, little more than a "historical memo."

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