I don’t feel like digging up a source this morning because I have tried in the past and been frustrated. But I distinctly recall reading about a meeting that occurred right after 9/11 between the foreign policy principles where Dick Cheney essentially offered to act as commander-in-chief on Bush’s behalf. My best guess is that I read this in Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, which may be why I can never find it in a google search. The 9/11 Commission concluded (and then suppressed the information) that on the morning of 9/11 the Vice-President ordered the downing of passenger airlines without ever consulting the President (who was reading a story about a pet goat and then fleeing for his life). It’s clear that, at least up until 9/11, the President was treated as a mere figurehead. When Cheney offered to take control of our response to 9/11, Bush bristled and insisted that he would be the ‘decider’.
We can see more evidence that the national security apparatus didn’t take Bush seriously prior to 9/11 from George Tenet’s new book. Here is how Bob Woodward puts it in his review:
In much more vivid and emotional detail than previously reported, Tenet writes that he had received intelligence that day, July 10, 2001, about the threat from al-Qaeda that “literally made my hair stand on end.”
According to At the Center of the Storm, Tenet picked up the phone, insisted on meeting with Rice about the threat from al-Qaeda, and raced to the White House with his counter-terrorism deputy, Cofer Black, and a briefer known only as “Rich B.”
“There will be a significant terrorist attack in the coming weeks or months,” Rich B. told Rice, and the attack would be “spectacular.” Black added, “This country needs to go on a war footing now.” He said that President Bush should give the CIA new covert action authorities to go after Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization.
We know Rice’s response was to do nothing. We know she would later tell us, “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people…would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.” But there is a greater question.
Though Tenet was meeting almost daily with President Bush to give him an intelligence briefing and an update on threat reports — “extraordinary access,” he labels it — by his own account he did not take the request for action “now” directly to the president.
On the surface, this doesn’t add up. If Tenet was meeting with the President ‘almost daily’ then why was there an urgent need to make a special trip to the White House to talk to Rice? Tenet explains:
“Because the United States government doesn’t work that way,” Tenet replied. “The president is not the action officer. You bring the action to the national security adviser and people who set the table for the president to decide on policies they’re going to implement.”
And Woodward has a rational reaction.
Whoa! That’s a startling admission. I’m pretty certain that President Bush or any president, for that matter, would consider himself or herself the action officer when it comes to protecting the country from terrorism. I can already see the 2008 presidential candidates promising, “I will be your action officer on terrorism and security.”
Now, to be fair, Tenet did eventually supply Bush with the information he needed. But, it wasn’t until nearly a month later.
Bin Laden determined to strike in US
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US.
…FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.
The real issue here is about how this information was handled vis-a-vis the President. Tenet felt there was an urgent need to do something pro-active to avert an advanced plot that was immanent. He met on a constant basis with the President but didn’t feel like it was appropriate (or, perhaps, that it would be fruitful) to raise this issue with Bush directly. Instead of doing this, he went to Rice. And when Rice did nothing, he put the information in Bush’s daily intelligence briefing. What concerns me here is not that the government did nothing, but that the President was seen as such an irrelevant figure and that Tenet did not consider him an ‘action officer’ who might actually do anything about the threat.
It helps explain why, after 9/11, Cheney offered to become de facto commander-in-chief.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It certainly was appropriate for Tenet to go to the National Security Adviser (at the time, Rice) with this alarming intelligence. There’s no question that Rice should have been directing a response. But, Tenet was also (at least, ostensibly) briefing the President on a near daily basis about threat assessments. The fact that he didn’t mention that his ‘hair was standing on end’ is unfathomable unless Tenet didn’t trust Bush with that kind of information. And what does that tell us about our President?
