Last week, the New York Daily News highlighted what appeared to be one of the most important revelations in [tag]Bob Woodward[/tag]’s new book, “[tag]State of Denial[/tag].” As the paper noted, on July 10, 2001, almost exactly two months before 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet and his counterterrorism head Cofer Black sought an urgent meeting with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. They reportedly sought authorization to kill Osama bin Laden, but were discouraged when Rice gave them the brush-off.
As it happens, the meeting was even more important than that.
On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.
“Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away…. He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action…. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment — covert, military, whatever — to thwart bin Laden.
Black recalls, “The only thing we didn’t do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head.” Rice disagreed, and said Bush saw no need to “swat at flies.” A month later, Bush received a PDB alerting him to the fact that bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States, which was treated with the same level of interest (which is to say, none).
The meeting, which has not been reported before, is incredibly important for two reasons.
First, for several years, all we’ve heard is that the intelligence community failed to “connect the dots” before 9/11. This meeting suggests the opposite; officials did connect the dots, in time, and brought their conclusions to the White House. Rice, tragically, failed to recognize the seriousness of the threat. We have all paid a dear price for the mistake.
Second, Rice and other administration officials neglected to mention anything about this meeting the 9/11 Commission.
Members of the Sept. 11 commission said Sunday they were alarmed that they were told nothing about a July 2001 White House meeting at which George J. Tenet, then director of central intelligence, is reported to have warned Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, about an imminent attack by Al Qaeda and failed to persuade her to take action.
“None of this was shared with us in hours of private interviews, including interviews under oath, nor do we have any paper on this,” said Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic member of the commission and a former congressman from Indiana. “I’m deeply disturbed by this. I’m furious.”
Another Democratic commissioner, the former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, said the staff of the Sept. 11 commission was polled in recent days on the disclosures in Mr. Woodward’s book and agreed that the meeting “was never mentioned to us.”
This isn’t just another example of the Bush gang choosing secrecy over disclosure. Peter Rundlet, counsel to the 9/11 Commission, explained, “At a minimum, the withholding of information about this meeting is an outrage. Very possibly, someone committed a crime. And worst of all, they failed to stop the plot.” (emphasis added)
Greg Mitchell, editor of E&P, suggested today that if Rice is wrong, and she intentionally kept this meeting secret from the 9/11 Commission, she may have to resign.