10 April 2004	Saturday	19 Safar 1425

CRAWFORD, April 9: Under pressure from the 9/11 commission, the White House on Friday worked to declassify an intelligence memo that was used to inform President George Bush on Aug 6, 2001, that Osama bin Laden wanted to launch attacks inside the United States.

Democratic members of the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept 11, 2001, attacks demanded on Thursday that the president's daily intelligence briefing for that day be released to help them with their probe.

White House officials worked with government agencies involved in the production of the page-and-a-half memorandum to ensure its release would not compromise sources and methods of intelligence gathering.

Mr Bush was spending the week at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, and was being joined by members of his family for Easter weekend. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was coming to Crawford as well for Easter.

The memo's title - "(Osama) Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" - was revealed on Thursday in public testimony by Ms Rice, and was a subject of close questioning. The memo, called the President's Daily Brief and referred to as a "PDB," was dated Aug. 6, 2001, and given to Bush while he was vacationing in Crawford.

Democratic members of the commission demanded to know why the document was not seen as a warning of the attacks that would ultimately befall the country little more than a month later, when al Qaeda hijackers crashed two airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon and seized another that appeared headed toward Washington but crashed in Pennsylvania.

UNCORROBORATED REPORTING: Rice said the memo referred to uncorroborated reporting from 1998 that a terrorist might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft in an attempt to blackmail the government into releasing U.S.-held terrorists who had participated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

"This briefing item was not prompted by any specific threat information, and it did not raise the possibility that terrorists might use airplanes as missiles," Rice said.

A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, asked Rice, "Now, was the president, in words or substance, alarmed in any way or motivated to take any action, such as meeting with the director of the FBI, meeting with the attorney general, as a result of receiving the information contained in the PDB?"

Rice replied: "I'm told he was told this is historical information. And there was nothing actionable in this. The president knew that the FBI was pursuing this issue. The president knew that the director of central intelligence was pursuing this issue. And there was no new threat information in this document to pursue."

Commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator, revealed some of the still-classified memo at the hearing. "This is what the August 6 memo said to the president - that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity, and I'd say it's consistent with preparations for hijacking," Kerrey disclosed.

The White House view was that Bush and his team were doing all they could to guard against attacks that they believed were more likely to hit overseas targets. Democrats were not convinced.

"While Dr. Rice repeatedly cited the lack of detailed or specific threats, there are no indications that the administration reacted to this briefing with the vigilance it clearly merited," said West Virginia Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller on Thursday. -Reuters