Answering Unanswered Questions About 911

An unanswered question about 911 answered:

Attytood: How John Ashcroft saved his own sorry rear end, and not the lives of 2,973 people who died on 9/11: Just over three years ago, when such things were not in vogue, we wrote an article about the 20 unanwered questions of 9/11. It's sad, but three years later, many of them are still unanswered -- but at least we are finally getting some info. Here's one of those questions we asked on Sept. 11, 2003:

1. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?

On July 26, 2001 - 47 days before the Sept. 11 attacks - CBS News reported that Ashcroft was flying expensive charters rather than commercial flights because of a "threat assessment" by the FBI. CBS said, "Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term." Newsweek later reported that on Sept. 10, 2001, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."

Did either Ashcroft or the Pentagon have advance information about a 9/11-style attack and, if so, why wasn't this shared with the American public?

Tonight, it looks like we can answer the first half of this one.

Yes.

As pointed out earlier today by Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake, Ashcroft was in on the July 2001 warnings of a pending attack by top CIA officials, the same one that was given to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who then tried to lie and say the meeting never happened. Check out this report from the News Service Formerly Known as Knight Ridder...