President’s Daily Brief of 6 August 2001

the CIA decided to write a briefing article summarizing its understanding of this danger.

It was the 36th PDB item briefed so far that year that related to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and the first devoted to the possibility of an attack in the United States.

The following is the text of an item from the Presidential Daily Brief received by President George W. Bush on August 6, 2001.

The President told us the August 6 report was historical in nature.

We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States.

We cannot say for certain whether these reports, as dramatic as they were, related to the 9/11 attacks.

if his advisers had told him there was a cell in the United States, they would have moved to take care of it. That never happened.

Tenet told us that in his world “the system was blinking red.”

Most of the intelligence community recognized in the summer of 2001 that the number and severity of threat reports were unprecedented.

Despite their large number, the threats received contained few

specifics regarding time, place, method, or target. Most suggested that attacks were planned against targets overseas;

FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting