This article, published
May 2002, is by Bob Woodward and describes the memo mentioned in Rice's testimony today. The memo was delivered to Bush on Aug 6, 2001 and had the headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike the United States." Before the memo was discovered by the press in May 2002, the Bush Administration had been sticking to this line:
In earlier comments this week, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials stressed that intelligence officials were focused primarily on threats to U.S. interests overseas.
However after the memo was discovered and publicized, their story changed:
But sources made clear yesterday that the briefing presented to Bush focused on attacks within the United States, indicating that he and his aides were concerned about the risks.
And so began the fiction that Bush was concentrating on threats to the continental U.S. from bin Laden pre-9/11.
Also the article outlines the birth of another Bush Administration claim:
Under growing criticism for a failure to act on the Phoenix memo and other potential warning signs, Bush administration officials have said repeatedly that U.S. intelligence analysts never envisioned the possibility that terrorists would use jetliners as suicide missiles and slam them into such buildings as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
This is clearly contradicted in the article, however:
A 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters.