From New American Strategies - Progress Report (good info)

[StephNW4Clark]

NATIONAL SECURITY
Condi's Believe It Or Not

The NYT reports White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gave a speech "faulting past administrations" for terrorism and 9/11. She specifically "said the Clinton and other past administrations had ignored evidence of growing terrorist threats and that despite repeated attacks on American interests." Rice's passing the buck claims stand in sharp contrast to news reports that she was the first National Security Adviser in American history to admit to not reading her own Administration's intelligence documents before a war . A few things Rice failed to mention:

WHITE HOUSE PROPOSED CUTTING COUNTERTERRORISM UPON COMING INTO OFFICE: According to the NYT on 2/28/02, the Bush Administration began cutting counterterrorism funding at the Justice Department upon coming into power. “In his final budget request for the fiscal year 2003 submitted on Sept. 10, the attorney general called for spending increases in 68 programs, none of which directly involved counterterrorism” and actually ”proposed a $65 million cut to the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants for equipment, including radios and decontamination suits and training to localities for counterterrorism preparedness.” Former Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation official said they were frustrated that the Administration had not supported more financing for counterterror programs before Sept. 11. One former federal law enforcement official said that top officials in the FBI, which does the bulk of the department's counterterrorism work, had been concerned about Ashcroft's initial lack of focus on fighting terrorism. He said there was worry among some senior agents that counterterrorism would be downgraded in future years if Ashcroft's early attitude did not change. This contrasts to Janet Reno, whose “department's counterterrorism budget increased 13.6 percent in the fiscal year 1999, 7.1 percent in 2000 and 22.7 percent in 2001.” She issued a plan “in 2000 that said the Justice Department would have to devote more attention and resources to terrorism, citing sophisticated computer and bomb-making technology and the ‘emerging threats of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.’”

IGNORING PRE-9/11 INTELLIGENCE: In trying to defend the Administration against charges of negligence before 9/11, Rice said on 5/16/02, “I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon. that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." But according to the bipartisan 9/11 commission report, “intelligence reports from December 1998 until the attacks said followers of bin Laden were planning to strike U.S. targets, hijack U.S. planes, and two individuals had successfully evaded checkpoints in a dry run at a New York airport” . More specifically, ABC reported, “White House officials acknowledged that U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes.”

ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO UNDERFUND HOMELAND SECURITY: Throughout the year after 9/11, the White House and conservatives in Congress repeatedly voted down increased funding for homeland security. By January 2003, though, criticism by Governors, lawmakers and security experts had reached such a crescendo that the White House admitted its negligence. As the NYT reported in February, " the White House is now saying that the long delayed government spending plan for the year does not provide enough money to protect against terrorist attacks on American soil." After initially praising its own counterterrorism budget "the White House reversed itself, conceding in a series of public statements that domestic counterterrorism programs were shortchanged."