Michael Moore, while explaining why he’s putting up $20,000 in bail money for Julian Assange, asserts that had WikiLeaks existed 10 years ago, it might have prevented the 9/11 attacks:
I ask you to imagine how much different our world would be if WikiLeaks had existed 10 years ago. Take a look at this photo. That’s Mr. Bush about to be handed a “secret” document on August 6th, 2001. Its heading read: “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.” And on those pages it said the FBI had discovered “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings.” Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went fishing for the next four weeks.
But if that document had been leaked, how would you or I have reacted? What would Congress or the FAA have done? Was there not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would have done something if all of us knew about bin Laden’s impending attack using hijacked planes?
You can see that PDB right here. It did indeed mention hijackings. It also mentioned bin Laden encouraged an attack on LAX, that bin Laden wanted to use a hijacking to secure the release of “blind sheik” Umar Abd al-Rahman, possible surveillance of federal buildings of New York, and 70 FBI field investigations that are bin-Laden investigated and a call in to a U.S. embassy about an attack involving explosives. If you could stop the 19 hijackers based on that mix of generic accurate and inaccurate information, you’re psychic. Even the left-of-center comic strip “Tom the Dancing Bug” mocked politicians like Tom Daschle who claimed they could have stopped the threat if they had the chance to see the same information at the time.
I hope everybody who paid money to watch one of his documentaries feels proud right now.