National Security Rice-a-Roni

Extracts of testimony by Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Assistant To The President For National Security Affairs, before the 911 Commission on Thursday, April 8, 2004:

MS. RICE: ... I think that concern about what I might have known or we might have known was provoked by some statements that I made in a press conference.

I was in a press conference to try and describe the August 6th memo, which I've talked about here in my opening remarks and which I talked about with you in the private session. And I said at one point that this was a historical memo, that it was not based on new threat information, and I said no one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon -- I'm paraphrasing now -- into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile.

...

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB.

MS. RICE: I believe the title was "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States"...

... 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...

... The fact is that this August 6th PDB was in response to the President's questions about whether or not something might happen or something might be planned by al Qaeda inside the United States. He asked because all of the threat reporting, or the threat reporting that was actionable, was about the threats abroad, not about the United States.

This particular PDB had a long section on what bin Laden had wanted to do -- speculative, much of it -- in '97, '98, that he had in fact liked the results of the 1993 bombing. It had a number of discussions of -- it had a discussion of whether or not they might use hijacking to try and free a prisoner who was being held in the United States, Rassam. It reported that the FBI had full field investigations underway. And we checked on the issue of whether or not there was something going on with surveillance of buildings, and we were told, I believe, that the issue was the courthouse in which this might take place.

Commissioner, this was not a warning. This was a historic memo -- historical memo prepared by the agency because the President was asking questions about what we knew about the inside.

Now here is Rice's tune on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, Sunday, August 8, 2004:

RUSSERT: ... many people were scared out of their wits on Monday, cynical on Tuesday and befuddled by Wednesday [after the terror alert was raised to orange for sites in New York, Washington and New Jersey].

MS. RICE: The government has a duty to warn when we find information that is more specific than the sort of general warnings that have been out there....The president's made that commitment....Tom Ridge has made that commitment. All of us have. And starting on a week ago Friday and going through the weekend, we began to get important intelligence from some of the people that were being rounded up in these raids in Pakistan....

Some raids produced physical evidence, all in the context of a pre-election threat that we had talked about before. And so, while it was not imminent, it did give a time frame that suggested some urgency....

The decision was made that you had no choice but to warn people that their buildings had been cased.

[Though some of the reports came from 2000 and 2001], perhaps some of them had been updated. But whether they had or not, we know that al Qaeda meticulously plans over a number of years. The casings for the East Africa Embassy bombings which were done in 1998 had been done five years before.

Based on information from people picked up in raids and knowing about terrorists who were thought to be plotting against the United States made it imperative that the nation be warned.

The good thing is that we don't have a situation like we had before 9/11, where the information was not being shared. This was in some way textbook for the sharing of information that was coming in from the field, coming in from liaison with Pakistan.

Dear Dr. Rice, The thing you had on August 6, 2001 WAS SHARED, it was in your hands. Just say you failed to do your job in 2001, and/or that the terror alerts this week were way, way overblown, since they were based on "historical information". You are apparently incapable of parsing national security information. Sincerely, Deep Blade

Meanwhile, an important Pakistani intelligence asset has been burned in the process. I don't know how Rice can keep her job.

Thanks to Harry Shearer on Le Show for un-dissonancing this cognitive dissonance.