“Are we serious about dealing with the al-Qaeda threat?” Richard Clarke to Condoleezza Rice - September 4, 2001
The team's investigators began to match up the information in the senior briefings and they pulled together a timeline of the headlines just from the senior briefings in the northern spring and summer:Richard Clarke was right and of course, Condoleezza Rice, just like her boss, was grossly and tragically, incompetent. And we'll be paying for that incompetence for decades.
"Bin Ladin Planning Multiple Operations" (April 20)and "Bin Ladin Threats Are Real" (June 30)It was especially troubling for Hurley's team to realise how many of the warnings were directed to the desk of one person: Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser. Emails from the National Security Council's counter-terrorism director, Richard Clarke, showed that he had bombarded Rice with messages about terrorist threats. He was trying to get her to focus on the intelligence she should have been reading each morning in the presidential and senior briefings;
"Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack" (May 3)
"Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot" (May 23)
"Bin Ladin's Networks' Plans Advancing" (May 26)
"Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent"(June 23)
"Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats" (June 25)
"Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks" (June 30),
"Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays" (July 2)
Those of us who have paid attention know that Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rice were warned about al-Qaeda by the outgoing Clinton administration virtually from day one. That information was declassified long ago.
We can't get it back, but we can still educate the stupid.
h/t Think Progress
