It’s interesting to note the headline of this NYT’s piece:
Records Show Tenet Briefed Rice on Al Qaeda Threat
Which then goes on to detail that yes she was briefed, AND concerned about the information given to her:
Mr. Tenet told members of the Sept. 11 commission about the July 10 meeting when they interviewed him in early 2004
You mean the commission that was never briefed about the meeting….my, how quickly things change.
but committee members said the former C.I.A. director never indicated he had left the White House with the impression that he had been ignored.
“Tenet never told us that he was brushed off,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic member of the commission. “We certainly would have followed that up.”
This Washington Post article expands on the Commission meeting:
According to three people present at the session, including Ben-Veniste, Tenet believed that Rice responded seriously to what she had been told. “We particularly questioned him about whether he had the sense that Dr. Rice and the others on the White House side understood the gravity of what he was telling them,” said Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor. “He said that they believed that they did. . . . We asked him further whether Dr. Rice just shrugged this off, and he said he did not have such an impression.”
But you see, after a few years grudges appear and it now seems quite likely that Mr. Tenet’s shined through for Woodward.
Mr. McCormack said the records showed that, far from ignoring Mr. Tenet’s warnings, Ms. Rice acted on the intelligence and requested that Mr. Tenet make the same presentation to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Atttorney General John Ashcroft.
But Mr. Ashcroft said by telephone on Monday evening that he never received a briefing that summer from Mr. Tenet.
“Frankly, I’m disappointed that I didn’t get that kind of briefing,” he said. “I’m surprised he didn’t think it was important enough to come by and tell me.”
Another woopsie…
And then there is this July 5th meeting which Sister Toldjah found in this article:
Rebuffing descriptions in the book that she was inattentive, Rice said she was concerned enough about a potential attack in the United States — even without specific intelligence warnings — that she had a meeting on July 5, 2001, with White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. to urge him to hold a terrorism intelligence briefing for the Federal Aviation Administration and other domestic agencies.
National Security Council counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke also attended the July 5 meeting, she said. In addition, she asked that then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft be shown the terrorism threat reporting, since the Justice Department oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI then held several briefings with their special agents, she said.
But guess what, those two paragraphs are now gone from the article. No idea why the Post decided the get rid of those two paragraphs but I found the same kind of info here:
She said the Bush administration nonetheless was worried about possible terror attacks on US soil at the time and had organised a meeting on July 5, five days before the alleged meeting with Tenet described by Woodward, with Andrew Card, then White House chief of staff.
The secretary of state said the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which holds authority over US aviation safety, notably took part in this meeting. “I called Andy Card and I asked him to join me … because I did not have the authority over the domestic agencies,” Rice said.
This book, the Foley scandal, the NIE leak….all coming within weeks of each other and a few weeks out of the election.
No coincidences here….sigh.
Other’s Blogging:
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Eh hemmm…speaking of Ashcroft, did anyone catch him on O’Reilley last night? He revealed that at least one of the documents that Sandy Burger stuffed down his pants was the Millenium Plot after-action report! Comments?
Interesting. :ponder_tb:
Carol