‘I Sniff Some Politics’

May 27 issue — It was supposed to be a routine drop-by, little more: A quick strategic review with the president before he awarded a medal to Nancy Reagan in the Capitol Rotunda. But by the time George W. Bush arrived at a private gathering of Republican senators in the Mansfield Room, a vicious political war had erupted on the Hill, ignited by the disclosure that he had been warned last August about the possibility of Al Qaeda hijackings in the United States