Posted on 10/02/2006 7:18:33 AM PDT by 300magnum
SHANNON, Ireland - 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.
"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.
Rice was President Bush's national security adviser in 2001, when Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial" outlines a July 10 meeting among Rice, Tenet and the CIA's top counterterror officer.
"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.
Speaking to reporters en route to Saudi Arabia and other stops in the Middle East, Rice said she met with Tenet daily at that point, and has no memory of the wake-up call from Tenet described in the book.
"It kind of doesn't ring true that you have to shock me into something I was very involved in," Rice said.
There was near constant discussion of possible attacks overseas, and high alarm, Rice said.
The meeting between Tenet, Rice and Cofer Black of the CIA was not mentioned in the reports from several investigations of the Sept. 11 attacks, but Woodward wrote that it stood out in the minds of Tenet and Black as the "starkest warning they had given the White House" on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his network.
Tenet asked for the meeting after receiving a disturbing briefing from Black, according to the book.
But though Tenet and Black warned 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."
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."
Rice, who was promoted to secretary of state in Bush's second term, also said she never argued that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should be fired. The book's suggestion that Rumsfeld would not take her calls is "ludicrous," Rice said.
Rumsfeld and Rice are not close, and he is often considered her rival in administration decision making. Woodward wrote that then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card twice tried to get Bush to sack Rumsfeld and replace him with Bush family counselor James A. Baker III, and that both then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rice backed the plan.
Woodward interviewed Rice for his new book.
Rice's latest Middle East trip is focused on strengthening support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other moderate Arab leaders after a series of setbacks for democratic and moderate forces in the region.
Her trip includes visits to allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt and a meeting of other friendly nations that ring the Persian Gulf, before visits to Israel and the West Bank.
Rice is looking for new ways to improve Abbas' standing in his standoff with Hamas radicals trounced Abbas' secular Fatah Party in Palestinian elections in January. Abbas was elected separately and retains his position, but he has been hamstrung by the divided government and a cutoff of Western aid.
The Bush administration and Israel are increasingly convinced Hamas will crumble, and look to Abbas to capitalize. Rice may ask other countries to do more to bolster Abbas' security forces, and she hopes to breathe life into stalled agreements and talks that would help Palestinians move more freely across their borders with Israel.
Iran's nuclear ambitions will also be part of Rice's discussions, as an unofficial deadline passes this week for Iran to heed a U.N. Security Council demand to shelve disputed nuclear activities.
Rice said Sunday she may close her trip Friday with a meeting of world powers in Europe to look at what to do next. The United States wants to press for U.N. Security Council sanctions, but it is not clear she has full support from other permanent members of the council.
So why didn't George Tenet mention this during the 911 hearings?
You know, something just occurred to me, we should be worried that Berger not only took OUT critical documents, he could have ADDED marginal notes to others that he left...
http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Security_Forces
Listening to all the Media hysteria over Bob Woodward's latest attempt to be the new Kitty Kelly, one is struck by just how wrong the Drive By Media is on every aspect of the Iraq War. Given how utterly wrong he got Iraq, one has to assume he simply made up large protions of the book to fit preconcieved partisan opinions
Here is the raw data on Iraq. Seems Bob Woodward latest work is simply a regurgitation of every falsehood, half truth and exaggeration present by the Junk Media on Iraq since 2003.
In a vain attempt to falsely validate preconceived notions, Mr Woodward demonstrated how the Left has managed to be wrong on every aspect of the Iraq War. Mr Woodward's central thesis is that attacks are "as high as they have ever been". Perhaps that is true. Even if true those attacks are getting less and less effective. If conditions are worsening why were the Iraqis taking higher monthly casualties in 2004 and 2005 with a smaller force?
Simply put BW, like the rest of the American Political Left is full of it. They have had their minds made up about Iraq from even before the war started. In his latest work it is clear Mr Woodward simply went to find people who would say what he wanted to hear. It is also becoming apparent that when he did not hear what he wanted, Mr Woodward simply misquoting the source to put his Democrat Party Masters spin on the data. Apparently this current book is his act of atonement to the DC Establishment for writing a fairly balanced book on President Bush last time.
If you chart the data at the sources above, you see a base line of violence. While the violence ebbs and flows the base line is steady at 65 Coalition casualties a month. The Iraqis are averaging a steady 200 casualties a month. No sustained rise in baseline casualties to validate the "Iraq is heading for Civil War" Democrat Media Machine spin.
What is particularly significant about the Iraqi Security Forces casualties is they are averaging the same casualty levels with a much larger force. As of Aug 2006 there is a 300,000 Iraqi security force in the field with about 5,000 being added a month. By the end of the year the Iraqi Security Forces will be complete fielded. Right now out of 18 provinces in Iraq only 2 are considered "not ready" for transition to Iraqi control. Of course the two provinces are Anbar, the province along the Syrian border and Basrah the Shi'a stronghold along the border with Iran. Yet even in both those areas significant progress has been made just in September 2006 alone.
In Anbar the Iraqi tribes have entered into an agreement to work with the Iraqi Government to root out the foreign terrorist groups. In Basrah, the British and Iraqi forces just started operations to crack down on the Shi'a militias.
Iraq: British, Iraq troops begin Basra mission
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1709154/posts
Most Tribes in Anbar Agree to Unite Against Insurgents (The NY Times is deeply saddened)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1703582/posts
This data totally undercuts the spin presented by Bob Woodward, and other Democrat Party propagandists, that Iraq is "heading for Civil War" or is "spinning out of control".
What Woodward et all seem to fixate on is Iraqi Civilian casualties. What they forget is a terrorist or a militia member killed in intra tribal gang warfare is considered "an Iraqi civilian casualty". So when you hear a news story that says "40 bodies discovered around Baghdad" MOST of them are probably casualties from gang on gang violence. While that violence is an on growing crises we and the Iraqis will have to deal with, it is not a fundamental threat to the long term survival of the Iraqi Government.
Obviously the immediate counter the Leftist propagandists will claim is that ;We are not making fast enough progress" That is nonsense.
Look at the data on Iraqi security forces. More and more of the job is being taken up by Iraqi forces. 2 of 18 Providence have been turned over to complete Iraqi control. Out of 18 Iraqi provinces all but 2 are at least partially under Iraqi control All the progress in the war is on our side. The enemy is making no progress. Time is on our side, not theirs.
Another factor on Iraq the Leftists fails to grasp is how the war in Iraq has fundamentally changed in the last 6 months. Because the external Terrorist threat has been significantly reduced, we are able to focus on other lesser threats. Witness what the British down south, and the US in the Baghdad region, are doing. They are working with the Iraqis to weed out the gangs and militia that sprung up in the wake of Saddam's fall.
Counter Insurgency is slow, painful work. But the progress is all on our side. The "Insurgents" has demonstrated no ability to politically or militarily evolve. Guerrilla war strategy consists of 3 phases.
1. Stage one: very small unit harassment actions.
2. Stage two: continuation of state one with an evolution to large units actions. Development of larger and large geographic areas fully under Guerrilla control.
3. Stage three: conventional warfare between large units.
The Terrorists are still stuck in stage one of Guerrilla Warfare. They can wreck stuff and kill people they cannot grow. They cannot take and hold ground or engage in anything beyond small scale hit and run attacks.
Their failure to develop a shadow political structure to act as a polar opposite to the Iraqi Government is their fatal flaw. They simply lack the structure or local support network needed to move beyond state one
The claims and assumptions stated as "fact" by Mr Woodward on Iraq are fraudulent. Considering he has got just about everything on Iraq completely wrong in his recent public statements, one has to wonder just what else he make up for this book?
Monica's dress and Bubba.
Nothing new under the sun!!
Unless the predictions of attacks were specific as hell, they weren't telling her anything she didn't already know. If they did not say "Al Qaeda is going to crash planes into the WTC", they didn't say anything significant IMO.
Berger did nothing wrong. He was just sloppy.
/s
That's a possibility that I considered also. On the heels of Rathergate, Berger pants would have needed a "non-forged" signature.
If they had information that was that specific and the white house didn't care, they should have gone to the media with it. They don't seem to have any problem running to the media with secrets that will harm the president.
"So why didn't George Tenet mention this during the 911 hearings?"
I suspect that Tenet was briefed by Black but never passed along the "urgent" warning to Rice (must have slipped his mind), so now that Woodward has dug up a claim by Black, Tenet has to cover his ass by throwing the blame on Condi.
Bob Woodward is a liar and Bob Woodward is in a "State of Denial" about being a liar. Bob Woodward can't help it, he's a victim of his own writing.......
Exactly right. I'll never understand why he got off so easy on something so serious with a mere wrist slap.
Forensic scientists can "date" ink on paper and distinguish an old writing from a fresh one.
Yep, it's a lot safer to make evidence disappear than to create new evidence that is evidence of a new crime in itself.
Bob Woodward is a liar, but so is George Tenet.
Tenet was a clintonoid, and remained a clintonoid. He worked hard to undermine the Iraq war, and he worked hard to undermine Bush.
Once again, we see how unwise Bush was to leave him in office. And he is STILL leaving a crowd of traitors in the CIA where they can continue their dirty work.
The FBI has been quieter, but it is also still mostly controlled by clintonoids, and Bush has done nothing to repair the damage. Sooner or later the FBI will bite him again, too.
You have two men trying to save their legacy as failures in supervising intelligence gathering and a Sec. of State who wants to preserve her credibility.
I don't know how this will be resolved. Perhaps Woodward has been loose with the truth. We all know he didn't talk to Casey on his deathbed as he alleged in one book.
Tenet and Cofer could deny it--but that wouldn't help their legacy as much as leaving the mess on Condi's doorstep.
I'm somewhat non-plussed by her falling back on the "I have no memory of that" defense. I suspect that notes are taken at these meetings. Who would want to rely on memory on something like meetings about important subjects? So her denial is somewhat a non-denial.
Another factor on Iraq the Leftists fails to grasp is how the war in Iraq has fundamentally changed in the last 6 months. Because the external Terrorist threat has been significantly reduced, we are able to focus on other lesser threats. Witness what the British down south, and the US in the Baghdad region, are doing. They are working with the Iraqis to weed out the gangs and militia that sprung up in the wake of Saddam's fall.
As I read it the exterior terrorist threat is reduced because "exterior" terrorists were attracted to Iraq to die. We killed a goodly number and picked up their cell phones and laptops. And I think that this was Rumsfeld's strategery, flypaper or what have you, and the time is coming to reveal that the administration did indeed have a secret strategy for mopping up loose terrorists after Afghanistan. The strategy was necessarily secret and critics out of the loop say the admin has none or blame Rumsfeld for what they do not understand.
I look at Condi's denial here as some thing Hilarity would say. Remember the case of the missing WH FBI files? "I just don't recall," "I just couldn't say." Condi wants to run for President and she is pulling a HRC on the public here. Although, I find Condi to be a much more credible person than HRC.
Boy, I'm sure glad Bush let Negroponte force out Goss at CIA and re-instate the failed Cofer Black.
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