Today, the cable "news" stations are reporting on an interview Condoleezza Rice gave to the powerhouse national security experts at the NY Post. Like any liar, Condi now is trapped by her past mendacity, as recorded in forms that cannot now easily be changed by White House clean-up crews. The most readable summary I could find is
(1) an op-ed Condi published in the Washington Post two weeks before her very limited 9-11 Commission testimony, on April 8 2004.
But Richard Clarke testified before the 9-11 Commission for 15 hours, and directly contradicted what Condi continues to repeat.
What do you believe, Condi's undocumented assertions that there was no plan, or documentation of a plan (pdf link to a draft of it below) Richard Clarke presented to Condi on January 25 2001?
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(1) From
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13881-2004Mar21?language=printer :
"9/11: For The Record By Condoleezza Rice Monday, March 22, 2004; Page A21
"The al Qaeda terrorist network posed a threat to the United States for almost a decade before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Throughout that period -- during the eight years of the Clinton administration and the first eight months of the Bush administration prior to Sept. 11 -- the U.S. government worked hard to counter the al Qaeda threat.
During the transition, President-elect Bush's national security team was briefed on the Clinton administration's efforts to deal with al Qaeda. The seriousness of the threat was well understood by the president and his national security principals. In response to my request for a presidential initiative, the counterterrorism team, which we had held over from the Clinton administration, suggested several ideas, some of which had been around since 1998 but had not been adopted. No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration.
We adopted several of these ideas. We committed more funding to counterterrorism and intelligence efforts. We increased efforts to go after al Qaeda's finances. We increased American support for anti-terror activities in Uzbekistan. We pushed hard to arm the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle ... We also considered a modest spring 2001 increase in funding for the Northern Alliance. ...
The president wanted more than a laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or "roll back" the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to "eliminate" the al Qaeda network. The president wanted more than occasional, retaliatory cruise missile strikes. He told me he was "tired of swatting flies." Through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda -- which was expected to take years. Our strategy marshaled all elements of national power to take down the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures. ..."
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(2) From
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/index.htm :
"The National Security Archive
Bush Administration's First Memo on al-Qaeda Declassified
January 25, 2001 Richard Clarke Memo: "We urgently need . . . a Principals level review on the al Qida network."
Document Central to Clarke-Rice Dispute on Bush Terrorism Policy Pre-9/11 National Security Archive
Electronic Briefing Book No. 147 Edited by Barbara Elias February 10, 2005
"Washington, D.C., February 10, 2005 - The National Security Archive today posted the widely-debated, but previously unavailable, January 25, 2001, memo from counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke to national security advisor Condoleezza Rice - the first terrorism strategy paper of the Bush administration. The document was central to debates in the 9/11 hearings over the Bush administration's policies and actions on terrorism before September 11, 2001. Clarke's memo requests an immediate meeting of the National Security Council's Principals Committee to discuss broad strategies for combating al-Qaeda by giving counterterrorism aid to the Northern Alliance and Uzbekistan, expanding the counterterrorism budget and responding to the U.S.S. Cole attack. Despite Clarke's request, there was no Principals Committee meeting on al-Qaeda until September 4, 2001. ...
Two days after Rice's March 22 op-ed, Clarke told the 9/11 Commission, "there's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options -- but all of the things we recommended back in January were those things on the table in September. They were done. They were done after September 11th. They were all done. I didn't really understand why they couldn't have been done in February."
Also attached to the original Clarke memo are two Clinton-era documents relating to al-Qaeda. The first, "Tab A December 2000 Paper (
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/clarke%20attachment.pdf ) : Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects," was released to the National Security Archive along with the Clarke memo. "Tab B, September 1998 Paper: Pol-Mil Plan for al-Qida," also known as the Delenda Plan, was attached to the original memo, but was not released to the Archive and remains under request with the National Security Council.
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(3) See also vyan's EXCELLENT link-annotated transcript of the 9/24/06 Fox News Sunday interview of Bill Clinton. The links above are the fruit of click-thrus of Vyan's links, at
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2842346 .
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