Moving Further Down the Spectrum of Conspiracy

The New York Times ran an interesting article yesterday by Kurt Eichenwald, wherein he revealed that the Bush administration had a lot more advance warning about 9/11 than what they'd acknowledged to the 9/11 Commission or the public.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,”
 ...
And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track. 

That level of awareness (especially when combined with the administrations efforts to downplay and hide it after the fact) is pretty damning.  Somebody should have been impeached.

There's a wide spectrum of possibilities as to what really happened, and what level of complicity various high-level individuals might have had. Here's one possible way to dissect it:

1. Incompetence and denial amongst a few key people at the top. 
2. Innocent of all but incompetence at the time, but actively covering it up and hamstringing the official investigation after the fact to save political face.
3. Willful risk-taking of a few key people at the top, hoping for the "New Pearl Harbor" that would allow their dream policies to move forward, and incompetently underestimating just how successful or potent the terrorist attack would be. Thinking they were risking a few dozen deaths, not thousands. Motivation to cover-up after the fact is guilt instead of just worrying you'll look like a fool.
4. Actively allowing it to happen for political gains. Willfully standing down crucial portions of our defenses, knowing full well how deadly the attack was going to be, and deciding that the scope and scale were just going to be that much more effective. The cover-up no doubt started before the attacks in this scenario.
5. Actually orchestrating or funding this murderous nightmare. 

The recent revelations via the NYT lays to rest Scenario #1. What I took away from that article was that it was at least Scenario #2, and Scenarios #3 or #4 seem much less extreme than they did just a few days ago (though I was inclined to believe at least Scenario #3 myself already, as it seems to be something a political insider could easily get themselves mired in).  And to be clear, I'm not arguing for or against #5. I don't think this piece of evidence speaks to motive or level of complicity beyond a certain point. They should have seen it coming. Afterwards, they had something to hide, and hide they did. The details beyond that are still debatable.

Even if you insist that it was the more innocent fuck-up-then-cover-up scenario 2 and nothing more, these revelations show just how extreme the incompetence at the top must have been. Not just "we failed to put the pieces together" but a more dramatic "a team of experts actually did put the pieces together and spelled it out for us repeatedly, yet we chose not to do a damn thing."