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9-11 Commission gets First Taste of Rice
Kerry: “Needs More Truth”
NEWS ANALYSIS by Konstantin Medvedovsky
After weeks of prodding, National Security
Advisor Condoleezza Rice gave testimony last Thursday before an independent
commission investigating the terrorist attacks of 2001. Under harsh
questioning, she testified that the president was warned a month in advance
that the F.B.I had evidence that terrorists were planning a domestic
hijacking. She further elaborated that as result of the information, 70
investigations were underway of terrorist cells possibly connected with Al
Qaeda.
She went on to detail the level of specifics that the administration was privy
to in advance of September 11th, going so far as to acknowledge that the
president was presented with a special intelligence briefing titled “Bin Laden
Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” Dr. Rice however was careful
to point out that the report was not given high priority by the CIA,
explaining that it was “historical information based on old reporting… there
was no new threat information.”
The hearing became heated at several junctures, as Democratic members of the
commission pressed Rice for more details about the report, and why greater
significance was not placed upon it. Questions are currently rampant about the
accuracy of the report, with the F.B.I. specifically saying that it overstates
the level that their counterterrorism efforts were at prior to September 11th.
Dr. Rice, however, suggested in her testimony that the F.B.I. was already at a
state of special alert, in order to prevent the occurrence of an imminent
terrorist strike on United States soil.
Speaking Thursday, she explained that "The F.B.I. was pursuing these Al Qaeda
cells... I believe in the Aug. 6 memorandum it says there were 70 full-field
investigations under way of these cells. And so there was no recommendation
that we do something about this. The F.B.I was pursuing it."
Former President Bill Clinton also testified on Thursday, with the record of
his questioning remaining sealed. The commission released a statement saying
that Clinton was “forthcoming and responsive” with regards to questions about
what his administration did to prevent possible acts of terrorism.
In testifying, Dr. Rice directly addressed the claims of former
counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, who had made a series of public claims
that the Bush administration completely ignored the threat of terrorist
attacks, and instead wanted to focus its energies on what was then still a
potential conflict with Iraq.
The White House, in response to calls from the commission to declassify the
contents of the report, did so on Saturday, and it largely corroborates what
Dr. Rice said during her testimony. The report is vague on details of exactly
what the F.B.I. was doing outside the number of investigations however. It is
only a page and a half long, and contains no details about the planning of an
attack other than mentioning Osama Bin Laden’s name.
Meanwhile, Democrats have begun attacking the president in earnest for what
they perceive as his failure to take the threat more seriously. Speaking of
the president’s habit of often taking long vacations, Democratic Senator John
Rockefeller IV, of West Virginia, said Thursday that "President Bush received
the now-famous [report] on Aug. 6, while he was on vacation in Texas, yet he
did not return to Washington until Aug. 30.” Rockefeller is the ranking
Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Regarding Mr. Clarke, who has been the target of an intense White House effort
to undermine his credibility, Dr. Rice was far more charitable than other
administration officials. "Dick Clarke is a very, very fine counterterrorism
expert, and that's why I kept him on," she said. "What I wanted Dick Clarke to
do was to manage the crises for us and help us develop a new strategy."
At the same time as defending Clarke however, Dr, Rice also refuted Clarke’s
claims that he was something of an ignored lone voice calling for a greater
emphasis on counterterrorism efforts. "All he needed to do was to say, `I need
time to brief the president on something,' " she said. "But Dick Clarke never
asked me to brief the president on counterterrorism."
As for any blame for the September 11th attacks, Rice explained that the
intelligence failures were the result of the failures of previous
administrations, and that the current president could not be held responsible
for the failures of his predecessors.
What remains to be seen, however, is the effectiveness of the Rice defense of
the administration’s handling of the threat posed by Al Qaeda and other
terrorist groups. Rice spoke eloquently, calling upon a great deal of classic
rhetoric. Whether the public will see her testimony as evasive or satisfactory
is exceptionally difficult to judge, but early polling results from CBS news
would seem to indicate that little was accomplished for the Bush
administration’s case by the Rice testimony.
Six in ten respondents to the CBS news poll said they believed that the
administration had not done all it could to prevent the terror attacks, and
two thirds said they believed the administration was concealing facts from the
public. What these polling results mean, of course, is the subject of much
debate, as the president’s approval rating has been high overall in spite of
such polling in the past.
If the polling noted above is accurate, and if the president’s ratings do not
take an unexpected dip, then this will go down as another in a series of
events which suggests that Bush’s approval ratings remain largely unchanged
despite repeated attacks. We witnessed a similar effect, albeit at a higher
approval level, in the Clinton administration, as approval ratings remained
high in the face of scandal after scandal.
With that in mind, it seems increasingly clear that, for whatever reason, this
administration is also largely impervious to such assaults. The old Clinton
moniker, “It’s the economy, stupid” is proving itself once again to be a more
accurate gauge of public opinion than perhaps any other. The U.S. economy
added 308,000 new jobs in March, a very healthy, if not historic figure, and
the failure of this most recent attack on Bush to stick would seem to reflect
that. |
