On Face the Nation yesterday morning, Sen. Patrick Leahy added his name to the list of conspiratorial Democrats who imply that “the Bush Administration” had advance knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attacks:

The Bush Administration knew the names of the hijackers before 9/11. They did nothing on it. I want to make sure they do it right.

Download the video (.wmv file)

Check out Bob Schieffer’s tough follow-up:

Alright. To be continued tomorrow morning at that hearing on Capitol Hill and we’ll be back with our roundtable.

Seriously. What on earth is Leahy talking about? Was he referring to Able Danger? (And if so, how does he square his support of that data mining program with the Dems’ unhinged opposition to the NSA terrorist surveillance program?) Or was he referring to some other classified information?

Were there signs missed? Yes. Information-sharing failures? Yes. Dots unconnected? Plenty. But “Bush Knew” and “did nothing?” Leahy’s glib pandering to the Dean/McKinney faction of the Democratic Party must be challenged.

Betsy Newmark adds:

I’ve never seen that we knew the names of the hijackers before 9/11. And, of course, we didn’t know that they were hijackers until they did. And if we had known, what could we have done? Isn’t that the whole business about the Gorelick Wall that would have prevented such information from getting to authorities in time? This is also just the kind of situation that the NSA surveillance program would cover now, but wasn’t in effect before 9/11.

This is a totally irresponsible claim by Senator Leahy and I hope that the media calls him on it and asks him what he meant by that. But, I have little hope that they will.

Yup.

(Hat tip: Ian Schwartz.)

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Reader Dan H. writes:

In addition to the one you already pointed out, he slipped in another whopper.

“Well, everybody wants to stop another attack. I mean, obviously, the Bush Administration, the first attack happened on their watch. They don’t want a second one on their watch.”

Really? That will come as a surprise to the victims of the first WTC bombings, the embassy bombings, and the USS Cole bombing. Naturally, Bob Schieffer gave him a pass on that.