"Clinton was aware of the threat and sometimes he would mention it," Mr. Panetta said. But the "big issues" in the president's first term, he said, were "Russia, Eastern bloc, Middle East peace, human rights, rogue nations and then terrorism."
President Clinton visited Oklahoma City for a memorial service, signaling the political import of the event. "We're going to have to be very, very tough in dealing with this," he declared in an interview.
Mr. Panetta said that plans to reorganize the government's counterterrorismefforts were quickly revived. Senior officials recognized that the United States remained vulnerable to terrorism. The bombing proved to be the work of two Americans, both former soldiers, but if Oklahoma City could be hit, an attack by terrorists of any stripe could "happen at the White House," Mr. Panetta said.
Two months after the bombing, Mr. Clinton ordered the government to intensify the fight against terrorism. The order did not give agencies involved in the fight more money, nor did it end the bureaucratic turf battles among them.
But it did put Mr. bin Laden, who had set up operations in Sudan after leaving Afghanistan in 1991, front and center.
Administration officials say the president [Bush] was concerned about the growing threat and frustrated by the halfhearted efforts to thwart Al Qaeda. In July, Ms. Rice said, Mr. Bush likened the response to the Qaeda threat to "swatting at flies." He said he wanted a plan to "bring this guy down."The [Bush] administration's draft plan for fighting Al Qaeda included a $200 million C.I.A. program that, among other things, would arm the Taliban's enemies. Clinton administration officials had refused to provide significant money and arms to the Northern Alliance, which was composed mostly of ethnic minorities. [Clinton] Officials feared that large-scale support for the rebels would involve the United States too deeply in a civil war and anger Pakistan.
President Bush's national security advisers approved the plan on Sept. 4 [2001], a senior administration official said, and it was to be presented to the president on Sept. 10. (However, the leader of the Northern Alliance was assassinated by Qaeda agents on Sept. 9.) Mr. Bush was traveling on Sept. 10 and did not receive it.
The next day his senior national security aides gathered shortly before 9 a.m. for a staff meeting. At roughly the same moment, a hijacked Boeing 767 was plowing into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
Ummmm...this conflicts with info the WH released...
Contrary to Dick Clarke's assertion that he did not brief senior officials until April 30, the first meeting of Deputies was held on March 7, and Dick Clarke briefed the group on al-Qa'ida. Deputies agreed that a National Security Policy Directive on al-Qa'ida should be prepared.
That would have been less than 6 weeks after the inaugural. Sounds like they hit the ground running to me...they barely had the keys to the executive washrooms by then.
However, the source is the NY Times and not The Washington Times; admin, please correct that.