Full text of Rice’s testimony Q&A

BEN-VENISTE: I want to ask you some questions about the August 6, 2001, PDB. We had been advised in writing by CIA on March 19, 2004, that the August 6th PDB was prepared and self-generated by a CIA employee. Following Director Tenet’s testimony on March 26th before us, the CIA clarified its version of events, saying that questions by the president prompted them to prepare the August 6th PDB.

Now, you have said to us in our meeting together earlier in February, that the president directed the CIA to prepare the August 6th PDB.

The extraordinary high terrorist attack threat level in the summer of 2001 is well-documented. And Richard Clarke’s testimony about the possibility of an attack against the United States homeland was repeatedly discussed from May to August within the intelligence community, and that is well-documented.

You acknowledged to us in your interview of February 7, 2004, that Richard Clarke told you that al-Qaida cells were in the United States.

Did you tell the president, at any time prior to August 6th, of the existence of al-Qaida cells in the United States?

RICE: First of all, yes, the August 6th PDB was in response to questions of the president — and that since he asked that this be done. It was not a particular threat report. And there was historical information in there about various aspects of al-Qaida’s operations.

Dick Clarke had told me, I think in a memorandum — I remember it as being only a line or two — that there were al-Qaida cells in the United States.

Now, the question is, what did we need to do about that?

And I also understood that that was what the FBI was doing, that the FBI was pursuing these al-Qaida cells. I believe in the August 6th memorandum it says that there were 70 full field investigations under way of these cells. And so there was no recommendation that we do something about this; the FBI was pursuing it.

I really don’t remember, Commissioner, whether I discussed this with the president. …

BEN-VENISTE: Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States. …

This particular PDB had a long section on what bin Laden had wanted to do — speculative, much of it — in ’97, ’98; that he had, in fact, liked the results of the 1993 bombing. …

Yahoo! News – EXIT STRATEGY: FIRE THEM ALL By Richard Reeves

As smart and alone as she is in her job, [Condoleezza Rice] made a huge mistake in answering questions from commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, the combative little lawyer who was a majority (Democratic) counsel during the Watergate hearings 30 years ago.

Ben-Veniste questioned her about the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) of Aug. 6, 2001, and in her nervous answer she blurted out the classified title: ”Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” Ben-Veniste knew that, but could not say it because he and other commissioners had been allowed to see parts of the memo on condition that they not reveal its title or contents. Rice, in effect, declassified that title on her own. Many reasonable people will interpret the lack of follow-up — she lamely said follow-up was not part of her job — as stupidity and incompetence.

But that is now the hallmark of this administration: stupidity and ignorant incompetence — in gathering, interpreting and following up pre-9/11 intelligence, and in going to war in Iraq. …

There are a lot of patriots in this administration who should be fired for their incompetence and unwillingness to recognize it, admit it, adjust to reality — and then move on. That list includes National Security Adviser Rice; Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, whose Iraq analyses now look laughable or deliberately deceptive; Dynamic Don Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, whose mind and mouth move too fast for his own good; Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has shown himself to have no significant policy input; and Vice President Richard Cheney, a huckster with contempt for the rights and consent of the governed, a man who feels he has no responsibility to facts. …

9/11 Hoax: Media Shock over PDB bin Laden Warning

According to Mr. Clinton’s public comments two years ago, he knew bin Laden wanted to strike America as far back as 1996.

Explaining why he declined an offer from Sudan for bin Laden’s extradition, Clinton revealed, “At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him — though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.”

If President Clinton was so unconcerned about the prospect that bin Laden wanted to commit crimes against America that he couldn’t be bothered to extradite him, how was a PDB briefing that merely restated that ancient fact supposed to set Bush’s hair on fire?

Still, don’t look for the press to come clean on the earlier Clinton warning. They’ve kept his tape-recorded confession on the topic bottled up for more than two years now. No point in spoiling a perfectly good election year hoax with the truth.

Note how a conservative ”news” site undermines this story with words like ”hoax” — how is this information a ‘hoax’? That same site tries to equate Clinton in 1996 with Bush in 2001, though in the 5 intervening years the attack on the USS Cole and various ”millenium threats” occurred.

Don’t forget: Bush was on a 5 (FIVE!) week vacation before 9/11. Time to retire him to the ranch permanently. mjh

Mercury News | 04/09/2004 | Rice testimony narrows focus By David Von Drehle, Washington Post

Among Democrats, many believed that Rice’s testimony had pushed the trail of blame directly to George Bush. “Just one month before terrorists claimed the lives of 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was on a 30-day vacation in Crawford, Texas,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. “He was informed by his national security team that Al-Qaida operatives in the United States had the ability to hijack passenger airplanes.”

Cummings was referring to one of the hot spots of Rice’s testimony: She tangled with commission Democrats over the nature of a highly classified briefing Bush received Aug. 6, 2001. Ben-Veniste characterized the briefing as a dire warning of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s desire to strike America. He underscored his point in one of the day’s most dramatic — and tense — exchanges.

“And I ask you whether you recall the title of that” briefing, Ben-Veniste said.

“I believe the title was, `Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States,’ ” Rice answered.

“It did not warn of attacks inside the United States,” she said. “It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.”

Let’s see that briefing. Why would the daily briefing, with such a prescient title, be an historical report? mjh

Cool, Calm Condoleezza Rice by Tom Shales, washingtonpost.com

Rice clashed with Democrats Richard Ben-Veniste and Bob Kerrey. It’s a tossup who was more hostile. ”Please don’t filibuster me,” Kerrey admonished Rice as she rattled on. ”It’s not fair. I have been polite, I’ve been courteous.” …

It wouldn’t be unthinkable to call the Bush administration the most vindictive since that of Richard M. Nixon. Rice, however, puts the nicest possible face on that vindictiveness and is easily one of the administration’s most effective communicators. She’s also among the least likely to come off as fanatical, cranky, intemperate, or possessed by the delusion that she and God are on a first-name basis.

The Buck Doesn’t Stop By Richard Cohen

It is not heads the American people want, it is humility. That is what’s so lacking in the Bush administration. The real reason — the terribly secret reason — the administration was oh-so-slow to recognize the terrorist threat was precisely the quality so abundant in Rumsfeld: smugness. The Bushies knew it all. The very fact that the Clinton team told them to make terrorism job one led them to denigrate it: What did those Clinton jerks know?

But from the president on down, no one in this administration ever admits a mistake or concedes having been wrong. Dick Cheney, whose slogan should be ”Wrong Where It Matters,” nonetheless takes to the stump to lambaste John Kerry. After all, the vice president is the very man who warned us, assured us, promised us that we must go to war with Iraq because, among other things, that nation had an ongoing nuclear weapons program. None has yet been found — and no apology from Cheney has yet been issued. He was mistaken or dishonest. We await his choice.

What is so perturbing about this administration is not that no one of note has resigned or been fired — and some of them certainty deserve the ax — but that there is not the slightest hint that anyone (except Colin Powell) appreciates that mistakes were made not out of sheer bad luck but because the assumptions, driven by ideology, were so bad. …

In another country, some officials would quit in shame. In this one they can’t even quit being smug.

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I have my doubts about ‘Liberal Radio‘ (NPR notwithstanding). Still, I wish them luck; Franken and Garofalo can be hilarious. mjh