The FBI translator who is under a gag order has nonetheless talked with the UK's The Independent. The story by Andrew Buncombe says:
A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened. She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".
Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".
She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily."
I have not faulted the Bush administration for failing to protect us from the 9/11 attack because I've assumed that terrorists are devious bastards who can find a way to work their will. But this, along with what else we've learned, paints a picture of an administration who wasn't paying sufficient attention to terrorism as threat. No administration can protect us from all attacks, but increasingly it looks like Bush's attention simply was elsewhere.