Who Knew and When?

Remember when the Bush administration denied that the US government had no idea that attacks of the specificity of 9.11.2001 could have been possible? The Administration trotted out every neocon official and pundit they could find to deny, deny deny.

David Horrowitz on 5.17.2002 went to bat for the President as he is often wont to do:

If, on the other hand, Bush had known what the Clinton administration knew -- that al-Qaida had plans to use commercial airliners as bombs and fly them into buildings, specifically the CIA headquarters -- this would be a serious charge. But they did not know it, because the Clinton team never told them. (The fact that Bush didn't know about plans to hijack planes and run them into tall buildings was confirmed by Condoleezza Rice at her Thursday press conference.)

Shortly after 9.11, when every reporter on the east coast was vying for a pulitzer prize in journalism, David Maraniss, of the Washington Post wote a piece tying together the lives of a few involved in the tragedy. Not only should this article prove that Bush lied, it contains a very interesting coincidence that has been rarely noticed.

At Dulles Airport, Capt. Charles Burlingame, who had been a Navy F-4 pilot and once worked on anti-terrorism strategies in the Pentagon, was steering his 757, American Airlines Flight 77, down the runway for the long flight to Los Angeles. Plenty of empty seats in his cabin, like several other cross-country trips at that hour.

...

Matt Rosenberg was down on Corridor 8, a medic at the health clinic in the massive military headquarters, grateful for an uninterrupted hour in which he could study a new medical emergency disaster plan based on the unlikely scenario of an airplane crashing into the place.

[emphasis added] Washington Post 9/16/2001

Burlingame's plane, if indeed it crashed into the Pentagon, crashed into the area where he would have worked. As a reservist, he wrote plans for the Navy War College and the Pentagon on counter-terrorism. It is likely that he authored the plan that Mr. Rosenberg was studying.

But you know, even if Bush didn't know about this plan (which is highly suspect) top government officials did know. And if it was "unlikely" that a plane could crash into the Pentagon, why would the government spend the time and energy planning for the possibility?