New York Post reporter Andy Soltis writes of the latest Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll that finds a great majority of Americans believe the government failed to heed warnings about 9/11. Soltis writes that this poll shows increasing support for 9/11 “conspiracy theories”:
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found.
And that’s not the only conspiracy theory with a huge number of true believers in the United States. […]
Sixty-two percent of those polled thought it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that federal officials turned a blind eye to specific warnings of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
The NY Post’s headline blares: “’Blame U.S. For 9/11′ Idiots In Majority.” As frequent readers of this site are well aware, ThinkProgress does not condone 9/11 conspiracy theories which allege the attacks were an inside job. But whether the Bush administration failed to heed warnings of a terrorist strike is not a conspiracy theory — it is a fact.
Here are some bits of information the NY Post may want to read up on:
1) Bush received intel briefing on Aug. 6, 2001 entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US.” The briefing specifically warned to “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks,” particularly targeted at New York.
2) CIA Director George Tenet briefing Condoleezza Rice and other top administration officials on July 10, 2001 about a specific urgent and looming threat from al Qaeda.
3) An FBI agent in Phoenix sent a memo to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001, which advised of the “possibility of a coordinated effort” by bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools.
The alarming nature of the Scripps poll is not that 62 percent of Americans believe the government ignored warnings of 9/11; it’s that nearly 40 percent still aren’t aware of that fact.
UPDATE: Malkin proudly trumpets the NY Post story as evidence of “America: Tinfoil hat nation.”
UPDATE II: Atrios pulls up this gem from the archives: