At war: What We Know.(controversy over intelligence information regarding September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks)(Brief Article)

For years, the prize for tabloid headline zip and overstatement was held by the New York Daily News: FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD. This May, that paper was passed by the New York Post: BUSH KNEW. The president, in other words, knew before September 11 that such an event was coming.

Democrats had a field day with the most sensational tidbit, that Bush had been given a briefing in August that warned that al-Qaeda might attempt a hijacking. Sen. Clinton took the Post headline to the well of the Senate. House minority leader Richard Gephardt, flashing back to Watergate, said "We need to know what people knew, and when they knew it." (We need to know where Dick Gephardt acquired such feeble rhetorical habits, and why he acquired them.) But first prize went to Joe Lockhart, who said that the administration's initial post-9/11 professions of surprise "took parsing to a brand new level. They were very precise [in what they said], but [they] trampled the spirit of our language." Mr. Lockhart, it must be remembered, was the Diogenes of the president who wondered what the meaning of "is" was.

Cooler heads noted that presidents do not pore over satellite photos with magnifying glasses, but rely on the information of the experts who work for them, and that the August briefing was not in fact that specific. Did our crime-fighting and intelligence agencies serve him ill? This was the charge of two FBI agents. Coleen Rowley, in the Minneapolis office -- which was investigating Zacarias Moussaoui, now thought to be the 20th hijacker -- leaked a bitter 13-page letter addressed to director Robert S. Mueller. She charged that FBI headquarters in Washington "inexplicably thr[e]w up roadblocks and undermine[d] Minneapolis's desperate efforts to obtain" a warrant to search Moussaoui's laptop computer. Rowley also complained that Minneapolis was not told of a July memo by agent Kenneth Williams, in the Phoenix office, which had suggested that al-Qaeda was trying to infiltrate American flight schools.

Partisan point-scoring is not in itself a bad thing. The American system is designed to induce politicians to pursue the public good in pursuit of their own interest. It is also no bad thing to have the Democrats criticizing Bush from his right. If they showed more wisdom, and if they had better records of security consciousness themselves, they would be more credible, and do the country more good.

With all the evidence we have, President Bush can manifestly defend himself for his ...