Everyone with a pulse has written and/or spoken at great length about Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission. The Center for American Progress, as usual, has done all of the heavy lifting and has prepared the most comprehensive fact-checking work I can imagine. I strongly recommend checking out CAP’s work on this.
I don’t have anything unique to add to the matter, but wanted to share a couple of thoughts anyway.
After watching the hearing (on tape) and reading the transcript, I find it hard to see how Rice has done anything to help the White House’s case. Her answers weren’t significantly different than those she’s shared on Meet the Press. Commission members (to varying degrees) quizzed her on what she knew and did before 9/11, and Rice placed blame elsewhere for every breakdown.
If there was one overarching observation I had, it’s that her entire appearance was an exercise on buck-passing on a grand scale.
It seemed most of Rice’s answers could fit into one of five standard responses: It wasn’t my job to do that, it was Richard Clarke’s responsibility, it was the CIA’s fault, it was the FBI’s fault, it was the Clinton administration’s fault. (Add in a sprinkling of “I don’t remember,” “I was not told that,” and “I was not made aware of that,” and you’ve got the whole two-and-a-half hours.)
I went into yesterday with a set of unanswered questions, but I came away with a far different one: What in the world does Rice consider her job to be?
While the exchange over the Aug. 6 President’s Daily Briefing was probably the most important substantive point of yesterday’s hearing, I found two sentences from Rice more telling than anything else.
“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.”
Like others, I found this extraordinary. In fact, she repeated a similar sentiment on a couple of occasions yesterday, including this gem:
“I don’t remember the al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.”
I just can’t wrap my head around this. The White House national security advisor is informed that terrorist cells are already in the United States, they want to attack, they’ve attacked before, and there’s increased “chatter” throughout the intelligence community about a “very, very, very, very big uproar” coming up, but Rice was waiting for word — from whom, she doesn’t say — about what she’s supposed to do about it.
If I’m the president, and I hear my NSA say this, I immediately ask her to resign. It’s as if her argument for self defense is boiled down to, “Don’t blame me; I just work here.” In this age of terrorist threats, Rice’s approach just won’t do.
Slate’s Fred Kaplan picked up on the same problem.
Rice revealed, if unwittingly, the roots — or at least some roots — of failure. Why did she need a recommendation to do something? Couldn’t she make recommendations herself? Wasn’t that her job? Given the huge spike of traffic about a possible attack (several officials have used the phrase “hair on fire” to describe the demeanor of those issuing the warnings), should she have been satisfied with the lack of any sign that the FBI wasn’t tracking down the cells? Shouldn’t she have asked for positive evidence that it was tracking them down?
Former Democratic Rep. Tim Roemer posed the question directly: Wasn’t it your responsibility to make sure that the word went down the chain, that orders were followed up by action?
Just as the Bush administration has declined to admit any mistakes, Condi Rice declined to take any responsibility.
The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber added:
Rice even went so far as to say she “wasn’t asked” by Clarke’s counterterrorism group or the FBI to take additional action in response to the rise in chatter. Lady, you’re the national security adviser! Is it really much of a defense to say you never got any specific instructions from the people below you on the organizational depth chart? At the very least, why not press them to see what kind of instructions they might offer if they were going to offer instructions?
Funny, Rice never got around to explaining this.