Rice says U.S. couldn't have prevented 9-11 attacks

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Thursday that President Bush received a CIA briefing five weeks before Sept. 11, 2001,that included, even in its title, details about al-Qaida's desire to strike inside the U.S., but she insisted the attacks couldn't have been prevented. Later, the commission investigating the assaults met behind closed doors for nearly four hours with former President Bill Clinton.

As Rice publicly defended the Bush administration's actions against al-Qaida in the months leading up to the suicide hijackings, she faced fresh and contentious questioning about an Aug. 6, 2001, CIA briefing prepared for Bush titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Commissioners said it also included a specific warning of hijackings.

Rice insisted the briefing, delivered shortly after Bush began a month-long vacation in Crawford, Texas, wasn't a warning. She said it contained only vague suspicions and historic information. Most intelligence focused on overseas threats, she also said.

But some commissioners vehemently disagreed, and all 10 members of the panel want the White House to release the full briefing to the public, according to Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman who is the commission's vice chairman.

"Because it has been so much of a focus of testimony and comment," Hamilton said after the hearing, "we think it should be released to the American people and we'll push ... very hard."

The White House has been fighting release of the briefing for years, but there were signs Thursday that it may finally yield.

"Our hope and intention at this point is to be able to declassify the document," said Sean McCormack, a National Security Council spokesman, although he would not offer a timetable or predict an ultimate decision.

Clinton's appearance was private. It was previously known that he would answer the commission's questions, although the timing was not made public until after his appearance. A spokesman for the former president said Clinton "answered all their questions and believed it was a very constructive meeting."

A person familiar with the session said Clinton told commissioners he didn't order retaliatory strikes after al-Qaida's bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 because he could not get "a clear, firm judgment of responsibility" from U.S. intelligence before he left office in January 2001, according to the Associated Press.

A formal statement issued by the commission Thursday said the panel "found the former president forthcoming and responsive to its questions. We appreciate the excellent cooperation he and his associates have given to us."

With characteristic enthusiasm, Clinton stayed an hour longer than planned and sometimes answered questions that had not been asked, commissioners reported. He even took time off from finishing his memoirs to study and prepare for his testimony, reviewing relevant documents and discussing the issues with former aides, one longtime associate said.

Bush is to appear in private after the White House last week agreed he would submit to questioning only if Vice President Dick Cheney appears at his side.

Rice's testimony Thursday was viewed as crucial by commissioners because she, more than anyone else, was the person at the White House in charge of coordinating the government's scattered national security agencies to prevent such attacks.

"You're the national security adviser to the president of the United States," Commissioner Tim Roemer, a Democrat, said.

"The buck may stop with the president (but) the buck certainly goes directly through you," added Roemer, a former Indiana congressman who served on the House Intelligence Committee.

Rice's testimony also gave the White House its last chance to put to rest, publicly before the commission, allegations of neglect first raised March 21 by former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who served Bush, Clinton and two other presidents. Bush has made his record on terrorism the cornerstone of his re-election campaign, using controversial images of the attacks in his earliest television advertisements.

During Rice's almost three-hour appearance Thursday, attention on the Aug. 6, 2001, briefing - known as a PDB, which is short for "President's Daily Briefing" - began during a testy exchange with Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democrat.

"Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the Aug. 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country?" Ben-Veniste asked. "And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB."

Before Ben-Veniste cut her short, Rice responded: "I believe the title was `Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'"

The two interrupted each other more than a dozen times during the exchange, but Rice later added, "Commissioner, this was not a warning. This was a historic memo - historical memo prepared by the (CIA) because the president was asking questions about what we knew ... "

Ben-Veniste fired back: "Well, if you are willing - if you were willing to declassify that document, then others can make up their minds about it."

Bob Kerrey, a Democratic former senator from Nebraska, later said the briefing included the following line: "The FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."

Rice said it simply indicated the FBI "observed some suspicious activity" and that airline security officials received a warning.

But she also said a lack of specific intelligence pointing to the time, date, target and mode of attack made it impossible to defend against the hijackers.

"I know that had we thought that there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it," she said earlier.

At the center of a storm brewing for more than two weeks, Rice on Thursday consistently stressed before the packed hearing room on Capitol Hill that the Bush White House was fully engaged against al-Qaida.

She also repeatedly suggested the administration was hampered because it had been in office for only 233 days before the attacks.

And she emphasized longstanding problems, both legally and culturally, in getting the FBI and CIA to share information.

She also said there was no "silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks."

Although forceful, Rice's sworn and much-anticipated testimony, which followed weeks of resistance by the White House, seemed to do little to resolve questions in the minds of some commissioners who say they believe the deaths of about 3,000 people that day could have been prevented.

It also did little to reconcile some of the Bush administration's version of events that transpired prior to the attacks with contradictory versions raised in the testimony of other witnesses and in some of the commission's own written findings to date. In many instances Thursday, as with the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential briefing, those disputes only seemed to intensify.

Clarke has argued - in interviews, a memoir and his own testimony before the commission - that Bush and Rice did not treat the al-Qaida threat urgently enough until it was too late.

Republican commission members were generally more friendly in their questioning of Rice Thursday, sometimes using their questions to allow her to rebut Clarke or giving her a chance to address perceived systemic problems.

"While it's certainly a lot more fun to be doing the, `Who-struck-John,' and pointing fingers," said Commissioner John Lehman, " ... the real business of this commission is to learn the lessons" that will prevent future attacks.

The 233 days Bush was in office prior to the suicide hijackings included several weeks during the summer of 2001 when intelligence warnings about impending attacks reached historic volume_a period commissioners and intelligence insiders have come to call "the summer of threat."

The White House's actions, or alleged inactions, during that period have become a crucial area of focus. Rice tried hard to counter Clarke's portrayal.

"The president of the United States had us at battle stations during this period," she said.

As part of what is now a familiar mantra, she said those defenses included "steps through the FAA to warn of potential hijackings" and placing all 56 FBI field offices on high alert.

"Throughout the period of heightened threat information, we worked hard on multiple fronts to detect, protect against, and disrupt any terrorist plans or operations that might lead to an attack," she said.

But Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, another Democrat, said records gathered by commission investigators contradicted Rice's claims.

Of the FBI's alleged, nationwide push, Gorelick said flatly, "We have no record of that." She called any warnings sent out by the FBI "feckless," adding that local FBI chiefs around the nation had "no knowledge" of the heightened level of alert.

As for Rice's claims about the FAA, Gorelick said Transportation Secretary Leon Mineta "had no idea of the threat," adding that the top security official at the Federal Aviation Administration also "had no idea" about intelligence reports warning of catastrophic attacks.

And Gorelick said Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, "was briefed, but there is no evidence of any activity by him about this."

Rice Thursday also acknowledged there was no mention of al-Qaida during 33 Cabinet-level meetings of the so-called national security "principals" in the Bush White House prior to the attacks, even as the summer of threat was in full swing.

But she said that such meetings probably wouldn't have mattered.

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