Crispy Rice Treats - Part X
From the Lehman Segment of the Rice Testimony:LEHMAN: Dr. Rice, I'd like to ask you whether you agree with the testimony we had from Mr. Clarke that, when asked whether if all of his recommendations during the transition or during the period when his, quote, hair was on fire, had been followed immediately, would it have prevented 9/11, he said no. Do you agree with that?Well, there's nothing like firing up a softball to get started! Maybe Lehman fell asleep and missed that Clarke had been discredited hours ago.
RICE: I agree completely with that.
LEHMAN: In a way, one of the criticisms that has been made _ or one of the, perhaps, excuses for an inefficient hand-off of power at the change, the transition, is, indeed, something we're going to be looking into in depth.Important point is made here: because of the challenge of the election went all the way to the Supreme Court, there was a delay in getting the administration transitioned. Another byproduct of that is that a number of agency heads were retained from the Clinton agency that should not have been kept.
Because of the circumstances of the election, it was the shortest handover in memory. But in many ways, really, it was the longest handover, certainly in my memory. Because while the Cabinet changed, virtually all of the national and domestic security agencies and executive action agencies remained the same _ combination of political appointees from the previous administration and career appointees _ CIA, FBI, JCS, the CTC, the Counter-Terrorism Center, the DIA, the NSA, the director of operations in CIA, the director of intelligence.
LEHMAN: So you really up almost until, with the exception of the INS head leaving and there be an acting, and Louis Freeh leaving in June, you essentially had the same government.
Now, that raises two questions in my mind.
One, a whole series of questions. What were you told by this short transition from Mr. Berger and associates and the long transition leading up to 9/11 by those officials about a number of key issues?
And I'd like to ask them quickly in turn.
And the other is, I'm struck by the continuity of the policies rather than the differences.
And both of these sets of questions are really directed toward what I think is the real purpose of this commission.
While it's certainly a lot more fun to be doing the, Who struck John? and pointing fingers as which policy was more urgent or more important, so forth, the real business of this commission is to learn the lessons and to find the ways to fix those dysfunctions. And that's why we have unanimity and true nonpartisanship on this commission. So that's what's behind the rhetoric that's behind the questioning that we have.
First, during the short or long transition, were you told before the summer that there were functioning Al Qaida cells in the United States?
RICE: In the memorandum that Dick Clarke sent me on January 25th, he mentions sleeper cells. There is no mention or recommendation of anything that needs to be done about them. And the FBI was pursuing them.
And usually when things come to me, it's because I'm supposed to do something about it, and there was no indication that the FBI was not adequately pursuing the sleeper cells.
As an experienced adminsitrator myself, I know that one of the worst things executives can do is get in the way of existing functions. I'm convinced that Rice believed that the FBI had the al Qaeda cell situation in hand. And why shouldn't she believe that? They are the FBI afterall; the only other law enforcement agency with a similar legendary reputation is the LAPD.
LEHMAN: Were you told that there were numerous young Arab males in flight training, had taken flight training, were in flight training?Rapid fire questions that essential boil down to: let's blame the Clinton transition team for not telling us everything we needed to know. Interesting, but not overly useful.
RICE: I was not. And I'm not sure that that was known at the center.
LEHMAN: Were you told that the U.S. Marshal program had been changed to drop any U.S. marshals on domestic flights?
RICE: I was not told that.
LEHMAN: Were you told that the red team in FAA _ the red teams for 10 years had reported their hard data that the U.S. airport security system never got higher than 20 percent effective and was usually down around 10 percent for 10 straight years?
RICE: To the best of my recollection, I was not told that.
LEHMAN: Were you aware that INS had been lobbying for years to get the airlines to drop the transit without visa loophole that enabled terrorists and illegals to simply buy a ticket through the transit-without- visa-waiver and pay the airlines extra money and come in?
RICE: I learned about that after September 11th.
LEHMAN: Were you aware that the INS had quietly, internally, halved its internal security enforcement budget?
RICE: I was not made aware of that. I don't remember being made aware of that, no.
LEHMAN: Were you aware that it was the U.S. government established policy not to question or oppose the sanctuary policies of New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, San Diego for political reasons, which policy in those cities prohibited the local police from cooperating at all with federal immigration authorities?
RICE: I do not believe I was aware of that.
LEHMAN: Were you aware _ to shift a little bit to Saudi Arabia _ were you aware of the program that was well established that allowed Saudi citizens to get visas without interviews?
RICE: I learned of that after 9/11.
LEHMAN: Were you aware of the activities of the Saudi ministry of religious affairs here in the United States during that transition?
RICE: I believe that only after September 11th did the full extent of what was going on with the ministry of religious affairs became evident.
LEHMAN: Were you aware of the extensive activities of the Saudi government in supporting over 300 radical teaching schools and mosques around the country, including right here in the United States?
RICE: I believe we've learned a great deal more about this and addressed it with the Saudi government since 9/11.
LEHMAN: Were you aware at the time of the fact that Saudi Arabia had and were you told that they had in their custody the CFO and the closest confidant of Al Qaida _ of Osama bin Laden, and refused direct access to the United States?
RICE: I don't remember anything of that kind.
LEHMAN: Were you aware that they would not cooperate and give us access to the perpetrators of the Khobar Towers attack?
RICE: I was very involved in issues concerning Khobar Towers and our relations with several governments concerning Khobar Towers.
LEHMAN: As a last question, tell us what you really recommend we should address our attentions to to fix this as the highest priority. Not just moving boxes around, but what can you tell us in public here that we could do, since we are outside the legislature and outside the executive branch and can bring the focus of attention for change? Tell us what you recommend we do.Well, somebody got around to asking Dr. Rice for her recommendations. Impressive.
RICE: My greatest concern is that, as September 11th recedes from memory, that we will begin to unlearn the lessons of what we've learned.
RICE: And I think this commission can be very important in helping us to focus on those lessons and then to make sure that the structures of government reflect those lessons, because those structures of government now are going to have to last us for a very long time.
I think we've done, under the president's leadership, we've done extremely important structural change. We've reorganized the government in a greater way than has been done since the 1947 National Security Act created the Department of Defense, the CIA and the National Security Council.
I think that we need to _ we have a major reorganization of the FBI, where Bob Mueller is trying very hard not to just move boxes but to change incentives, to change culture. Those are all very hard things to do.
I think there have been very important changes made between the CIA and FBI. Yes, everybody knew that they had trouble sharing, but in fact, we had legal restrictions to their sharing. And George Tenet and Louis Freeh and others have worked very hard at that. But until the Patriot Act, we couldn't do what we needed to do.
And now I hear people who question the need for the Patriot Act, question whether or not the Patriot Act is infringing on our civil liberties. I think that you can address this hard question of the balance that we as an open society need to achieve between the protection of our country and the need to remain the open society, the welcoming society that we are. And I think you're in a better position to address that than anyone.
And I do want you to know that when you have addressed it, the president is not going to just be interested in the recommendations. I think he's going to be interested in knowing how we can press forward in ways that will make us safer.
The other thing that I hope you will do is to take a look back again at the question that keeps arising. I think Senator Gorton was going after this question. I've heard Senator Kerrey talk about it, which is, you know, the country, like democracies do, waited and waited and waited as this threat gathered.
Mark's Remarks
Yes, due to the spirit of bipartisanship that Bush wanted to bring in, as well as the stupid election dispute (again, for you hamsters, Bush WON every recount, and it was your boy Gore who wanted votes thrown out, esp. those of servicemen and women), some folks from the Clinton regime were held over, and some of these probably should have been cast aside. However, due to the crying of a hamster, the transfer of power was interfered with and delayed. Thanks Al, really.
Now, back to the rest of the testimony....
Matt is spot on in his views that Rice, from all she was briefed on and was shown, believed the FBI had a handle on the cells in the US and was doing their utmost. After all, it is the friggin FBI....
Matt then says that the rapid fire questions were meant to discredit and blame the Clinton team....I really do not think that was the purpose, but a nice byproduct. I think the purpose here was to illustrate that no matter what libs would like to believe, the people in government are not omniscient...they do not get every bit of information, and sometimes that leads to some of the missteps that had gone on....I think what Lehman awas trying to establish was that there were a lot of things that simply were not deemed important enough by ANYONE to brief Dr. Rice about at the time, and that Dr. Rice trusted that those who were in charge of such incidents as discussed in the "rapid fire" were doing their best to oversee it. You cannot be everywhere at once, especially in the huge animal of the US government.
Lehman ended the questioning appropriately, asking what had been done and what could be further done. Lehman gets it...Sadly, the next sad gasbag does not.
