‘No silver bullet’ that could have prevented 9/11, Rice testifies

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The following are excerpts of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice’s testimony yesterday before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States:

The terrorist threat to our nation did not emerge on September 11, 2001. Long before that day, radical, freedom-hating terrorists declared war on America and on the civilized world. The attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the rise of al Qaeda and the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on American installations in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, the East Africa bombings of 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 — these and other atrocities were part of a sustained, systematic campaign to spread devastation and chaos and to murder innocent Americans.

The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them. For more than 20 years, the terrorist threat gathered, and America’s response across several administrations of both parties was insufficient. …

After President Bush was elected, we were briefed by the Clinton administration on many national security issues during the transition. …

President Bush retained George Tenet as director of central intelligence, and Louis Freeh remained the director of the FBI. And I took the unusual step of retaining Dick Clarke and the entire Clinton administration’s counterterrorism team on the [National Security Council] staff.

I knew Dick Clarke to be an expert in his field, as well as an experienced crisis manager. Our goal was to ensure continuity of operations while we developed new policies.

At the beginning of the administration, President Bush revived the practice of meeting with the director of central intelligence almost every day in the Oval Office, meetings which I attended, along with the vice president and the chief of staff. At these meetings, the president received up-to-date intelligence and asked questions of his most senior intelligence officials.

From January 20 through September 10, the president received at these daily meetings more than 40 briefing items on al Qaeda, and 13 of those were in response to questions he or his top advisers posed. …

We also moved to develop a new and comprehensive strategy to try and eliminate the al Qaeda network. President Bush understood the threat, and he understood its importance. He made clear to us that he did not want to respond to al Qaeda one attack at a time. He told me he was tired of swatting flies.

This new strategy was developed over the spring and summer of 2001 and was approved by the president’s senior national security officials on September 4. It was the very first major national security policy directive of the Bush administration — not Russia, not missile defense, not Iraq, but the elimination of al Qaeda. …

The strategy set as a goal the elimination of the al Qaeda network and threat and ordered the leadership of relevant U.S. departments and agencies to make the elimination of al Qaeda a high priority and to use all aspects of our national power — intelligence, financial, diplomatic and military — to meet that goal. …

While we were developing this new strategy to deal with al Qaeda, we also made decisions on a number of specific anti-al Qaeda initiatives that had been proposed by Dick Clarke to me in an early memorandum after we had taken office.

Many of these ideas had been deferred by the last administration, and some had been on the table since 1998. …

When threat reporting increased during the spring and summer of 2001, we moved the U.S. government at all levels to a high state of alert and activity. …

The threat reporting that we received in the spring and summer of 2001 was not specific as to time, nor place, nor manner of attack. Almost all of the reports focused on al Qaeda activities outside the United States, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. In fact, the information that was specific enough to be actionable referred to terrorist operations overseas.

Most often, though, the threat reporting was frustratingly vague. Let me read you some of the actual chatter that was picked up in that spring and summer:

“Unbelievable news coming in weeks,” said one.

“Big event — there will be a very, very, very, very big uproar.”

“There will be attacks in the near future.”

Troubling, yes. But they don’t tell us when; they don’t tell us where; they don’t tell us who; and they don’t tell us how.

In this context, I want to address in some detail one of the briefing items that we did receive, since its content has been frequently mischaracterized.

On Aug. 6, 2001, the president’s intelligence briefing included a response to questions that he had earlier raised about any al Qaeda intentions to strike our homeland.

The briefing team reviewed past intelligence reporting, mostly dating from the 1990s, regarding possible al Qaeda plans to attack inside the United States. It referred to uncorroborated reporting, from 1998, that a terrorist might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft in an attempt to blackmail the government into releasing U.S.-held terrorists who had participated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

This briefing item was not prompted by any specific threat information. And it did not raise the possibility that terrorists might use airplanes as missiles. …

And on July 5th, Chief of Staff Andy Card and I met with Dick Clarke, and I asked Dick to make sure that domestic agencies were aware of the heightened threat period and were taking appropriate steps to respond, even though we did not have specific threats to the homeland.

Later that same day, Clarke convened a special meeting of his [Counterterrorism Security Group], as well as representatives from the [Federal Aviation Administration, the Immigration and Naturalization Service], Customs and the Coast Guard. At that meeting, these agencies were asked to take additional measures to increase security and surveillance.

Throughout the period of heightened threat information, we worked hard on multiple fronts to detect, protect against and disrupt any terrorist plans or operations that might lead to an attack.

For instance, the Department of Defense issued at least five urgent warnings to U.S. military forces that al Qaeda might be planning a near-term attack and placed our military forces in certain regions on heightened alert. …

The FBI issued at least three nationwide warnings to federal, state and law-enforcement agencies and specifically stated that … attacks against the homeland could not be ruled out. The FBI tasked all 56 of its U.S. field offices to increase surveillance of known suspects of terrorists and to reach out to known informants who might have information on terrorist activities.

The FAA issued at least five civil aviation security information circulars to all U.S. airlines and airport security personnel, including specific warnings about the possibility of hijacking.

The CIA worked around-the-clock to disrupt threats worldwide. Agency officials launched a wide-ranging disruption effort against al Qaeda in more than 20 countries. …

This is a brief sample of our intense activity in the high threat period of the summer of 2001. Yet, as your hearings have shown, there was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

In hindsight, if anything might have helped stop 9/11, it would have been better information about threats inside the United States — something made very difficult by structural and legal impediments that prevented the collection and sharing of information by our law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. …

Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste: Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 [presidential daily briefing] warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

Miss Rice: I believe the title was, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” Now, the —

Mr. Ben-Veniste: Thank you.

Miss Rice: No, Mr. Ben-Veniste —

Mr. Ben-Veniste: I will get into the —

Miss Rice: I would like to finish my point here.

Mr. Ben-Veniste: I didn’t know there was a point.

Miss Rice: Given that — you asked me whether or not it warned of attacks.

Mr. Ben-Veniste: I asked you what the title was.

Miss Rice: You said, did it not warn of attacks. It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States. …

Commissioner Bob Kerrey: You said the president was tired of swatting flies. Can you tell me one example where the president swatted a fly when it came to al Qaeda prior to 9/11?

Miss Rice: I think what the president was speaking to was —

Mr. Kerrey: No, no. What fly had he swatted?

Miss Rice: Well, the disruptions abroad was what he was really focusing on —

Mr. Kerrey: No, no —

Miss Rice: — when the CIA would go after Abu Zubaydah —

Mr. Kerrey: He hadn’t swatted —

Miss Rice: — or go after this guy —

Mr. Kerrey: Dr. Rice, we didn’t —

Miss Rice: That was what was meant.

Mr. Kerrey: We only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn’t swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?

Miss Rice: We swatted at — I think he felt that what the agency was doing was going after individual terrorists here and there, and that’s what he meant by swatting flies. It was simply a figure of speech.

Mr. Kerrey: Well, I think it’s an unfortunate figure of speech because I think, especially after the attack on the Cole on the 12th of October, 2000, it would not have been swatting a fly. It would not have been — we did not need to wait to get a strategic plan.

Dick Clarke had in his memo on the 20th of January overt military operations. He turned that memo around in 24 hours, Dr. Clarke. There were a lot of plans in place in the Clinton administration — military plans in the Clinton administration. … So I just — why didn’t we respond to the Cole?

Miss Rice: Well, we —

Mr. Kerrey: Why didn’t we swat that fly?

Miss Rice: I believe that there’s a question of whether or not you respond in a tactical sense or whether you respond in a strategic sense; whether or not you decide that you’re going to respond to every attack with minimal use of military force and go after every — on a kind of tit-for-tat basis.

By the way, in that memo, Dick Clarke talks about not doing this tit-for-tat, doing this on the time of our choosing.

I’m aware, Mr. Kerrey, of a speech that you gave at that time that said that perhaps the best thing that we could do to respond to the Cole and to the memories was to do something about the threat of Saddam Hussein.

That’s a strategic view … and we took a strategic view. We didn’t take a tactical view. I mean, it was really — quite frankly, I was blown away when I read the speech, because it’s a brilliant speech.