The White House has done a good job deflecting attention away from the content of former counter terrorism advisor Richard Clarke's testimony to the 9-11 Commission. Just one of the lies they're telling is that they had no idea that terrorists were planning an attack:
The US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was due to deliver a national security speech on September 11 2001 that dwelt not on terrorism but on the proposed Star Wars missile defence system.
Details of the speech, coupled with fresh allegations that the Bush administration knew of plans to attack the US, piled the pressure on the beleaguered Ms Rice last night, as it was announced that she would testify under oath and in public next Thursday.
A former FBI translator who gave testimony to the commission investigating US preparedness for the September 11 terror attacks said the US should have had an "orange or red type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available".Sibel Edmonds, who worked on the FBI's investigation into 9/11, told the online magazine salon.com: "President Bush said they had no specific information about September 11, and that's accurate.
"But there was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of 2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat we're facing."
Ms Edmonds, an American of Turkish descent who speaks fluent Farsi, Arabic and Turkish, gave three and a half hours of testimony in closed session last week.
She also took issue with recent assertions by Ms Rice that the White House lacked information about the possible nature of an attack. "That's an outrageous lie," she said. "And documents can prove it's a lie."