The mantra from the Right is that, though Bush has spent 40% of his term away from the Whitehouse on his ranch in Crawford and other family retreats, he doesn’t need to be at the Whitehouse in order to fullfill his duties. That he has access to everything he needs wherever he may be.
They have also gone out of their way to point out how — contrary to reports from Richard Clarke and others — he was fully engaged on Terrorism because he met every day with his CIA Chief, George Tenet, on precisely this topic.
Today’s testimony by Tenet to the 9/11 Commission would suggest otherwise, however.
It seems that after Zacarias “The 20th Hijacker” Moussaoui was detained in August 2001 after suspicous behavior at a Minnesota flight school — in the midst of the summer of unprecedented “threat spikes”, when “lights were blinking red” and Bush had already received his now-infamous PDB warning of Al Qaeda’s plans — it was revealed that Tenet didn’t speak to the President at all during the month while Bush was on vacation in Crawford, TX.
From the MSNBC report on Tenet’s testimony today:
A spokesman for the CIA later clarified that Tenet had flown to Texas to brief Bush on Aug. 17 and resumed regular briefings on Aug. 31 after the president returned to the White House.
After Moussaoui was arrested, Tenet and other top CIA officials received a briefing headed “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.” Tenet said that was Aug. 23 or 24.
Another self-deluding DittoHead myth falls by the wayside.
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