Weapons of Mass Discussion

Crispy Rice Treats - Part VI

From the Fielding Segment of the Rice Testimony:

[FIELDING starts off with a long introduction in which he alludes to solutions.] And what I'd really like you to address right now is what steps were taken by you and the administration, to your knowledge, in the first several months of the administration to assess and address this problem?

RICE: Well, thank you.

We did have a structural problem, and structural problems take some time to address.

We did have a national security policy directive asking the CIA, through the foreign intelligence board, headed by Brent Scowcroft, to review its intelligence activities, the way that it gathered intelligence. And that was a study that was to be completed.

The vice president was, a little later in, I think, in May, tasked by the president to put together a group to look at all of the recommendations that had been made about domestic preparedness and all of the questions associated with that; to take the Gilmore report and the Hart-Rudman report and so forth and to try to make recommendations about what might have been done.

We were in office 233 days. And the kinds of structural changes that have been needed by this country for some time did not get made in that period of time.

I'm told that after the millennium plot was discovered, that there was an after-action report done and that some steps were taken. To my recollection, that was not briefed to us during the transition period or during the threat spike.

But clearly, what needed to be done was that we needed systems in place that would bring all of this together. It is not enough to leave this to chance.

If you look at this period, I think you see that everybody _ the director of the CIA _ Louis Freeh had left, but the key counterterrorism person was a part of Dick Clarke's group.

And with meeting with him and, I'm sure, shaking the trees and doing all of the things that you would want people to do, we were being given reports all the time that they were doing everything they could. But there was a systemic problem in getting that kind of shared intelligence.

One of the first things that Bob Mueller did post-9-11 was to recognize that the issue of prevention meant that you had to break down some of the walls between criminal and counterterrorism, between criminal and intelligence.

RICE: The way that we went about this was to have individual cases where you were trying to build a criminal case, individual offices with responsibility for those cases. Much was not coming to the FBI in a way that it could then engage the policymakers.

So these were big structural reforms. We did some things to try and get the CIA reforming. We did some things to try and get a better sense of how to put all of this together.

But structural reform is hard, and in seven months we didn't have time to make the changes that were necessary. We made them almost immediately after September 11th.

I was taken aback that Fielding is the first person to ask what steps were taken by the administration to fix the problem as they saw the problem after 9/11. The real idea behind this commission is to define the problems that prevented the thwarting of the 9/11 plot and then determine whether or not the changes made to the system are adequate. That is what is important. The goal must be the prevention of future attacks. Fielding gets that. the follwup question proves it:

FIELDING: Well, would you consider the problem as solved today?

RICE: I would not consider the problem solved. I believe that we have made some very important structural changes.

The creation of a Department of Homeland Security is an absolutely critical issue, because the Department of Homeland Security brings together INS and the Customs Department and the border people and all of the people who were scattered _ Customs and Treasury and INS and Justice and so forth _ brings them together in a way that a single secretary is looking after the homeland every day.

He's looking at what infrastructure needs to be protected. He's looking at what state and local governments need to do their work. That is an extremely important innovation.

I hope that he will have the freedom to manage that organization in a way that will make it fully effective, because there are a lot of issues for Congress in how that's managed.

We have created a threat terrorism information center, the TTIC, which does bring together all of the sources of information from all of the intelligence agencies _ the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and the INS and the CIA and the DIA _ so that there's one place where all of this is coming together.

And of course the Patriot Act, which permits the kind of sharing that we need between the CIA and the FBI, is also an important innovation.

But I would be the first to tell you _ I'm a student of institutional change. I know that you get few chances to make really transformative institutional change.

And I think that when we've heard from this commission and others who are working on other pieces of the problem, like, for instance, the issues of intelligence and weapons of mass destruction, that this president will be open to new ideas.

I really don't believe that all of our work is done, despite the tremendous progress that we've made thus far.

I am reassured by Fielding response that the Commission would indeed respond on the issue of whether or not the measures taken have improved the situation. However, that will be buried in the final report when it gets released. There is way too much headline grabbing "Gotcha Politics" in this Commission to make the story be the solutions. Here is a guy who has his head in the game:

FIELDING: It may be solved at the top. We've got to make sure it's solved at the bottom.

RICE: I agree completely.

Thorough review of the process is what is required. This really can't be about blame or the results will be worthless.

Next, Fielding makes a case about the millennium plot and Rice responds with a brilliant analysis of why "shaking trees" didn't break that case; an alert Customs agent (and Customs was NOT on alert) made the right call and we got a lucky break.

[RICE:] I think it actually wasn't by chance, which was Washington's view of it. It was because a very alert customs agent named Diana Dean and her colleagues sniffed something about Ressam. They saw that something was wrong. They tried to apprehend him. He tried to run. They then apprehended him, found that there was bomb-making material and a map of Los Angeles.

Now, at that point, you have pretty clear indication that you've got a problem inside the United States.

I don't think it was shaking the trees that produced the breakthrough in the millennium plot. It was that you got a _ Dick Clarke would say a lucky break _ I would say you got an alert customs agent who got it right.

It takes more than "shaking trees" to break these plots. It is going to take people at all levels of government being sharp and on the ball. It is going to take a solution.

Mark's Remarks

1. Dr. Rice makes a good point: the structure that created the information crisis and the culture that allowed it to continue were not created in 233 days, nor could they be changed in 233 days. Very good and logical point, which I am sure liberals do not get.

And notice, here, as Matt did, that this is the first guy to really dig into: what did you all do after 9/11 to fix this? Isn't that what this commission should be looking at? What the problems were, how they are being fixed, and what more we can do? But no, then bin Vineste and Co. would not earn their Kerry appointments or places at the Dimocrapic table for money. At least one commissioner is not paying the true purpose of this body lip service, and is on the ball!

2. Fielding's analysis and questions are spot on what this commission should be about. He appears to be thinking non partisan and not just mouthing it for press microphones, only to go on the attack to play to the crowd. Fielding is an honorable commissioner, and I think he has the true purposes of this commission at heart.

3. Matt hits it on the head. Too many times in our past we left things to lucky breaks...We cannot afford to do that anymore....we must have solutions in place and steps to better protect ourselves.....because now we are not talking about stopping a single murder, but the possible murder of thousands.....