Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she cannot recall then-CIA chief George Tenet warning her of an impending al-Qaida attack in the United States, as a new book claims he did two months before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Maybe Condi Reagan should have her head examined. She could have early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Condi cannot remember this meeting, which occurred on July 10th. To corroborate that Tenet and Black are probably telling the truth, let’s remember what the 9/11 Commission said happened on July 5th. “…the CIA briefed Attorney General Ashcroft on the al Qaeda threat, warning that a significant terrorist attack was imminent. Ashcroft was told that preparations for multiple attacks were in late stages or already complete and that little additional warning could be expected.” Seven days later, Ashcroft told the acting FBI Director that he didn’t want to hear another word about al-Qaeda.
More Condi:
“What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible,” Rice said.
We all find it hard to comprehend but that is only because it is hard to ascribe that degree of incompetence or evil to our own government. No one would have believed Katrina until we witnessed it with our own eyes.
“I don’t know that this meeting took place, but what I really don’t know, what I’m quite certain of, is that it was not a meeting in which I was told there was an impending attack and I refused to respond,” Rice said.
We know that she didn’t respond. We know that. The question is why she did not respond. Let’s review. On July 5th, the CIA briefed Ashcroft that attacks were imminent, that the planning stages had concluded, and that their would be little further warning. Five days later, the DCI and his counterterrorism chief were alarmed enough to drop by the White House uninvited, and:
warn[] Rice in the starkest terms of the prospects for attack, she brushed them off, Woodward reiterated Monday. He told NBC’s “Today” show that Black told him the two men were so emphatic, it amounted to “holding a gun to her head” and doing everything except pulling the trigger.
Black reportedly laid out secret intercepts and other data “showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaida would soon attack the United States.” Tenet was so worried that he called Rice from his car and asked to see her right away, the book said.
“Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice,” Woodward wrote of the session. “She was polite, but they felt the brush-off.”
Two days after this, Ashcroft, who had already been similarly briefed by the CIA, told the acting FBI Director to stop bothering him with briefings about al-Qaeda. Here’s the relevant testimony from the 9/11 Commission:
BEN-VENISTE: You had some seven or eight meetings with the attorney general?
PICKARD: Somewhere in that number. I have the exact number, but I don’t know the total.
BEN-VENISTE: And according to the statement that our staff took from you, you said that you would start each meeting discussing either counterterrorism or counterintelligence. At the same time the threat level was going up and was very high. Mr. Watson had come to you and said that the CIA was very concerned that there would be an attack. You said that you told the attorney general this fact repeatedly in these meetings. Is that correct?
PICKARD: I told him at least on two occasions.
BEN-VENISTE: And you told the staff according to this statement that Mr. Ashcroft told you that he did not want to hear about this anymore. Is that correct?
PICKARD: That is correct.
The date for the relevant meeting is pegged to July 12, 2001 in Chapter 8, footnote 52 of the report.
More about Condi’s non-recollection of the July 10 impromptu briefing from Tenet and Black:
Rice referred to the session as “the supposed meeting” and noted that it is not part of the independent Sept. 11 Commission’s report.
“I remember that George was very worried and he expressed that,” Rice told reporters. “We were all very worried because the threat reporting was quite intense. The problem was that it was also quite nebulous.”
But…and this is the real mystery…you DID NOTHING. No one warned the public. No meeting of principals occurred. The DCI felt like you had blown him off. The CIA made another attempt to get the President’s attention on August 6th, when they gave him a quite explict PDB entitled Bin-Laden Determined to Strike in the United States. He responded by clearing brush. And then, when a plane crashed into the World Trade Center and the President called you to find out what was happening, you allowed him to leave the conversation under the impression that it was likely the result of a lousy pilot. After all the warnings. After you were told that attacks were imminent, their planning was complete, that it was unlikely that there would any further warnings, that they intended to carry out attacks and hijackings in this country, you allowed the President to go ahead a read a book about a pet goat to elementary school children. There were more known hijackings in the sky. That had been known for over forty minutes before your phone call with the President. And you let him get off the phone under the impression that the ‘accident’ at the WTC was most likely the result of a terrible pilot.
What’s more, you tried to hide the evidence of the August 6th memo (until it was leaked) and were able to convince Tenet and Black to withhold evidence of their meeting with you on July 10th. The Commission never learned of it.
If you want people to believe the official story about 9/11, you are going to have to do a lot better than this. You don’t remember? Then you don’t belong in the service of our nation.