Weapons of Mass Discussion

Condi Testifies

Rice's Opening statement from Fox News.

For the essential crisis management task, we depended on the Counterterrorism Security Group chaired by Dick Clarke to be the interagency nerve center. The CSG consisted of senior counterterrorism experts from CIA, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Defense Department (including the Joint Chiefs), the State Department, and the Secret Service. The CSG had met regularly for many years, and its members had worked through numerous periods of heightened threat activity. As threat information increased, the CSG met more frequently, sometimes daily, to review and analyze the threat reporting and to coordinate actions in response. CSG members also had ready access to their Cabinet Secretaries and could raise any concerns they had at the highest levels.

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. More often, it was frustratingly vague. Let me read you some of the actual chatter that we picked up that Spring and Summer:

"Unbelievable news in coming weeks" · "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.

Matt's Chat

I'm not going to comment until a little later...I want to hear more testimony, but I want to post relevant links as I find them.

First Impression: this is a colossal waste of time. It won't change the minds of those who their minds up before the testimony started. Ben Veneste didn't seem to even be listening to the answers Rice was giving...although, I'm listening to the radio, when I watch it tonight my opinion on that may change.

PowerLine is live-blogging with commentary. One point I take from them is that if this Commission is about 9/11, why are we talking about Iraq.

Bob Kerry asked a question about why the Bush Administration didn't take action over the bombing of the USS Cole. Important Fact: The Cole bombing happened during the Clinton administration.

All this applause is really disturbing. On both sides... Further illustrates that this has become politicized and isn't really about fixing the problem.

Mark's Remarks

I caught the last half of the testimony, and have been watching the first half to catch up...here are my impressions of today:

1. This commission has become a useless enterprise, as it has moved away from finding problems and solutions into a political gotcha game, thanks to people like Ben-Vineste and others. Dr. Rice's testimony and her opening statement reflected the desire to get from the commission clear directives, but yet all we are hearing is when did you know this, isn't this your fault......Folks, it was not our government that perpetrated 9/11...it wasn't William J. Clinton or George W. Bush, IT WAS AL QUEDA!!!! And we do not need a group of publicity seeking hacks (like Kerrey and Ben Viniste, among others) playing the Gotcha Game...it is sad, but this commission has sunk to the depths of partisanship, and today's questioning, especially the entrapment measures of Mr. Ben Vineste, showed that. Thankfully, Dr. Rice stood up and was allowed to elaborate and clarify.

2. What in the Blue %^&& does Bob Kerrey's opinion on Iraq have to do with finding the answers to 9/11 questions? Could someone explain that to me...Mr. Kerrey should have been reprimanded by both chairs...it seems he caught the hamster disease of not staying focused on the topic at hand....And, Mr. Kerrey contradicts himself as often as his homonym fellow Democrat, John "the F stands for Flip Flop" Kerry. (for all you folks wondering, homonyms are words that sound alike but are spelled differently)

For instance, today in the Wall Street Journal, I believe, Kerrey (Bob, not John) wrote basically in support of the Iraq War and commended the Administration in tying it to the War on Terror. Yet, in his superfluous and off-topic opening diatribe to Dr. Rice, Mr. Kerrey (Bob, not John, but hey, he was a war hero, too, darnit!) then said military action is not working....could someone explain that one to me? Let me rephrase that, could someone who is not irrational explain that to me (we know who that leaves out)?

3. Dr. Rice did an excellent job in spite of attempts to entrap her. Mr. Ben Vineste's line of questioning was asinine. How many ways did he need the same thing told to him? It was pure entrapment, and I am glad that Dr. Rice did not fall for it. Dr. Rice did well in refuting Mr. Clarke's testimony without seeming vindictive or self-righteous. In fact, she gave praise where appropriate to Mr. Clarke's efforts.

4. Dr. Rice blew away the notion perpetuated by Clarke that the Bush administration did nothing....She laid out what was going on with collaborating evidence/paper trail.

5. Commission members are playing word games and semantics and context games for Gotcha Politics....look at the bantied about Woodward Book quote, where President Bush was quoted (not in context, by the way) by Clarke that he did not have the urgency before Sept. 11 in dealing with al Queda. Dr. Rice read the full context,

Let me begin with the Woodward quote, because that has gotten a lot of press. And I actually think that the quote, put in context, gives a very different picture.

The question that the president was asked by Mr. Woodward was,

Did you want to have bin Laden killed before September 11th? That was the question.

The president said, Well, I hadn't seen a plan to do that. I knew that we needed to _ I think the appropriate word is 'bring him to justice.' And, of course, this is something of a trick question in that notion of self-defense which is appropriate for ...

I think you can see here a president struggling with whether he ought to be talking about pre-9-11 attempts to kill bin Laden. And so, that is the context for this quote.

And, quite frankly, I remember the director sitting here and saying he didn't want to talk about authorities on assassination. I think you can understand the discomfort of the president.

The president goes on. When Bob Woodward says, Well, I don't mean it as a trick question; I'm just trying to your state of mind, the president says, Let me put it this way. I was not - there was a significant difference in my attitude after September 11th. I was not on point, but I knew he was a menace and I knew he was a problem. I knew he was responsible. We felt he was responsible for bombings that had killed Americans. And I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice and would have given the order to do just that.

I have no hesitancy about going after him, but I didn't feel that sense of urgency and my blood was not nearly as boiling. Whose blood was nearly as boiling prior to September 11th?

And it was shown to mean that Sept. 11 was a special event, it galvanized a country and brought INCREASED focus on the problem. Mr. Clarke and the Commission members are taking things out of context, bending context, and for what? To find answers? No....to play the gotcha game...it was evident in the eyes of Ben Vineste and Mr. Kerrey, as well as the Democrat who asked questions before Mr. Thompson...they were not out for truth or explanation, they were out for blood....

And, still, we are looking for answers and solutions.....no thanks or progress done by the 9/11 Commission.....Despite all the Administration has worked with them, giving them unprecedented access, showing how the structural barriers and legal barriers have been removed to allow better cooperation, this Commission still plays to drama and engages in demagoguery and Gotcha politics, even as we still need to find solutions....

So, I leave our readers with this, since maybe they were too busy fuming over the diversion tactics of Kerrey and Ben Vineste and company, here is what Condi says about what has been done to better protect America, here she is responding to a question from Lee Hamilton about better intelligence and information:

Well, Mr. Chairman, I took an oath of office on the day that I took this job to protect and defend. And like most government officials, I take it very seriously. And so, as you might imagine, I've asked myself a thousand times what more we could have done.

I know that, had we thought that there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it. And I know that there was no single thing that might have prevented that attack.

In looking back, I believe that the absence of light, so to speak, on what was going on inside the country, the inability to connect the dots, was really structural. We couldn't be dependent on chance that something might come together.

And the legal impediments and the bureaucratic impediments - but I want to emphasize the legal impediments. To keep the FBI and the CIA from functioning really as one, so that there was no seam between domestic and foreign intelligence, was probably the greatest one.

The director of central intelligence and I think Director Freeh had an excellent relationship. They were trying hard to bridge that seam. I know that Louis Freeh had developed legal attaches abroad to try to help bridge that.

But when it came right down to it, this country, for reasons of history and culture and therefore law, had an allergy to the notion of domestic intelligence, and we were organized on that basis. And it just made it very hard to have all of the pieces come together.

We've made good changes since then. I think that having a Homeland Security Department that can bring together the FAA and the INS and Customs and all of the various agencies is a very important step.

I think that the creation of the terrorism threat information center, which brings together all of the intelligence from various aspects, is a very important step forward.

Clearly, the Patriot Act, which has allowed the kind of sharing, indeed demands the kind of sharing between intelligence agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, is a very big step forward.

And, she closes the answer to the question with something I think people like Bin Vineste and Kerrey, maybe even the whole commission, may be forgetting they need to answer:

I think one thing that we will learn from you is whether the structural work is done.

That is right, Commissioners...quit playing Gotcha Games and get back to figuring out how far we have come, and how far we need to go.....

(Mark's Note--quotes come from transcript of Dr. Rice's full testimony, read it here)