Thank you. I understand, Dr. Rice, that you’ve an
opening statement. Your prepared statement, of
course, will be entered into the record in full,
and we look forward to — if it it’s a summary
statement, that’s fine. Dr. Rice.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I thank the Commission for arranging this
special session. I thank you for helping us to
find a way to meet the nation’s need to learn
all that we can about the September 11th
attacks, while preserving important
constitutional principles.
The Commission, and those who appear before
it, have a vital charge. We owe it to those that
we lost, and to their loved ones, and to our
country, to learn all that we can about that
tragic day, and the events that led to it. Many
of the families of the victims are here today,
and I want to thank them for their contributions
to this Commission’s work.
The terrorist threat to our nation did not emerge
on September 11th, 2001. Long before that day,
radical, freedom-hating terrorists declared war
on America and on the civilized world: the
attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in
1983; the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985;
the rise of al-Qaida and the bombing of the
World Trade Center in 1993; the attacks on
American installations in Saudi Arabia in 1995
and 1996; the East Africa [embassy] bombings
of 1998; the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
These and other atrocities were part of a
sustained, systematic campaign to spread
devastation and chaos and to murder innocent
Americans.
The terrorists were at war with us, but we were
not yet at war with them. For more than 20
years, the terrorist threat gathered, and
America’s response across several
Administrations of both parties was insufficient.
Historically, democratic societies have been
slow to react to gathering threats, tending
instead to wait to confront threats until they
are too dangerous to ignore, or until it is too
late. Despite the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915
and continued German harassment of American
shipping, the United States did not enter the
First World War until two years later. Despite
Nazi Germany’s repeated violations of the
Versailles Treaty and provocations throughout
the mid-1930s, the Western democracies did
not take action until 1939. The U.S. government
did not act against the growing threat from
Imperial Japan until it became all too evident at
Pearl Harbor. And, tragically, for all the
language of war spoken before September 11th,
this country simply was not on war footing.
Since then, America has been at war. And under
President Bush’s leadership, we will remain at
war until the terrorist threat to our nation is
ended. The world has changed so much that it
is hard to remember what our lives were like
before that day. But I do want to describe some
of the actions that were taken by the
Administration prior to September 11th.
After President Bush was elected, we were
briefed by the Clinton Administration on many
national security issues during the transition.
The President-elect and I were briefed by
George Tenet on terrorism and on the al-Qaida
network. Members of Sandy Berger’s NSC
[National Security Council] staff briefed me,
along with other members of the national
security team, on counterterrorism and
al-Qaida. This briefing lasted for about an hour,
and it reviewed the Clinton Administration’s
counterterrorism approach and the various
counterterrorism activities then under way.
Sandy and I personally discussed a variety of
other topics, including North Korea, Iraq, the
Middle East, and the Balkans.
Because of these briefings and because we
had watched the rise of al-Qaida over many
years, we understood that the network posed
a serious threat to the United States. We
wanted to ensure that there was no respite in
the fight against al-Qaida. On an operational
level, therefore, we decided immediately to
continue to pursue the Clinton Administration’s
covert action authorities and other efforts to
fight the network. President Bush retained
George Tenet as Director of Central
Intelligence, and Louis Freeh remained the
Director of the FBI. And I took the unusual step
of retaining Dick Clarke and the entire Clinton
Administration’s counterterrorism team on the
NSC staff. I knew Dick Clarke to be an expert
in his field, as well as an experienced crisis
manager. Our goal was to ensure continuity of
operations while we developed new policies.
At the beginning of the Administration,
President Bush revived the practice of meeting
with the Director of Central Intelligence almost
every day in the Oval Office — meetings
which I attended, along with the Vice
President and the Chief of Staff. At these
meetings, the President received up-to-date
intelligence and asked questions of his most
senior intelligence officials. From January 20th
through September 10th, the President
received at these daily meetings more than
40 briefing items on al-Qaida, and 13 of those
were in response to questions he or his top
advisers posed. In addition to seeing DCI
Tenet almost every morning, I generally spoke
by telephone to co-ordinate policy at 7:15
with secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld on a
variety of topics. And I also met and spoke
regularly with the DCI about al-Qaida and
terrorism.
Of course, we did have other responsibilities.
President Bush had set a broad foreign policy
agenda. We were determined to confront the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
We were improving Americans’ — America’s
relations with the world’s great powers. We
had to change an Iraq policy that was making
no progress against a hostile regime which
regularly shot at U.S. planes enforcing U.N.
Security Council Resolutions. And we had to
deal with the occasional crisis; for instance,
when the crew of a Navy plane was detained
in China for 11 days.
We also moved to develop a new and
comprehensive strategy to try and eliminate
the al-Qaida network. President Bush
understood the threat, and he understood its
importance. He made clear to us that he did
not want to respond to al-Qaida one attack
at a time. He told me he was “tired of swatting
flies.” This new strategy was developed over
the spring and summer of 2001, and was
approved by the President’s senior national
security officials on September 4th. It was the
very first major national security policy
directive of the Bush Administration — not
Russia, not missile defense, not Iraq, but the
elimination of al-Qaida.
Although this National Security Presidential
Directive was originally a highly classified
document, we’ve arranged for portions of it
to be declassified to help the Commission
in its work, and I will describe some of it
today. The strategy set as a goal the
elimination of the al-Qaida network and
threat and ordered the leadership of relevant
U.S. departments and agencies to make the
elimination of al-Qaida a high priority and to
use all aspects of our national power
– intelligence, financial, diplomatic, and military
– to meet that goal. And it gave Cabinet
secretaries and department heads specific
responsibilities. For instance:
– It directed the Secretary of State to work with
other countries to end all sanctuaries given to
al-Qaida.
– It directed the secretaries of the Treasury
and State to work with foreign governments to
seize or freeze assets and holdings of
al-Qaida’s and its benefactors.
– It directed the Central Intelligence ? the
Director of Central Intelligence to prepare an
aggressive program of covert activities to
disrupt al-Qaida and provide assistance to
anti-Taliban groups operating in Afghanistan.
– It tasked the Director of OMB [Office of
Management and Budget] with ensuring that
sufficient funds were available in budgets
over the next five years to meet the goals
laid out in the strategy.
And it directed the Secretary of Defense to
– and I quote — “ensure that contingency
planning processes include plans against
al-Qaida and associated terrorist facilities
in Afghanistan, including leadership,
command-control and communications,
training and logistics facilities; and against
Taliban targets in Afghanistan, including
leadership, command-control, air and air
defense, ground forces and logistics; and to
eliminate weapons of mass destruction
which al-Qaida and associated terrorist
groups may acquire or manufacture, including
those stored in underground bunkers.
This was a change from the prior strategy
– Presidential Decision Directive 62, signed in
1998, which ordered the Secretary of Defense
to provide transportation to bring individual
terrorists to the U.S. for trial, to protect DOD
forces overseas, and to be prepared to
respond to terrorist and weapons of mass
destruction incidents.
More importantly, we recognized that no
counterterrorism strategy could succeed in
isolation. As you know from the Pakistan and
Afghanistan strategy documents that we have
made available to the Commission, our
counterterrorism strategy was a part of a
broader package of strategies that addressed
the complexities of the region.
Integrating our counterterrorism and regional
strategies was the most difficult and the most
important aspect of the new strategy to get
right. Al-Qaida was both a client of and a
patron to the Taliban, which in turn was
supported by Pakistan. Those relationships
provided al-Qaida with a powerful umbrella of
protection, and we had to sever that. This was
not easy.
Not that we hadn’t tried. Within a month of
taking office, President Bush sent a strong,
private message to President Musharraf,
urging him to use his influence with the
Taliban to bring bin Laden to justice and to
close down al-Qaida training camps.
Secretary Powell actively urged the
Pakistanis, including Musharraf himself, to
abandon support for the Taliban. I remember
well meeting with the Pakistani Foreign
Minister – and I think I referred to this meeting
in my private meeting with you — in my office
on June of 2001. And I delivered what I
considered to be a very tough message.
He met that message with a rote answer and
with an expressionless response.
America’s al-Qaida policy wasn’t working
because our Afghanistan policy wasn’t
working. And our Afghanistan policy wasn’t
working because our Pakistan policy wasn’t
working. We recognized that America’s
counterterrorism policy had to be connected
to our regional strategies and to our overall
foreign policy.
To address these problems, I had to made sure
that key regional experts were involved, not
just counterterrorism experts. I brought in
Zalmay Khalilzad, an expert on Afghanistan
who, as a senior diplomat in the 1980s, had
worked closely with the Afghan Mujahedeen,
helping them to turn back the Soviet invasion.
I also ensured the participation of the NSC
experts on South Asia, as well as the
Secretary of State and his regional
specialists. Together, we developed a new
strategic approach to Afghanistan. Instead of
the intense focus on the Northern Alliance,
we emphasized the importance of the south
– the social and political heartland of the
country. Our new approach to Pakistan
combined the use of carrots and sticks to
persuade Pakistan to drop its support for the
Taliban. And we began to change our
approach to India to preserve stability on the
continent.
While we were developing this new strategy
to deal with al-Qaida, we also made decisions
on a number of specific anti-al-Qaida
initiatives that had been proposed by Dick
Clarke to me in an early memorandum after we
had taken office. Many of these ideas had
been deferred by the last Administration, and
some had been on the table since 1998. We
increased counterterrorism assistance to
Uzbekistan; we bolstered the Treasur[y]
Department’s activities to track and seiz
e terrorist assets; we increased funding for
counterterrorism activities across several
agencies; and we moved to arm Predator
unmanned surveillance vehicles for action
against al-Qaida.
When threat reporting increased during the
spring and summer of 2001, we moved the U.S.
government at all levels to a high state of
alert and activity. Let me clear up any
confusion about the relationship between the
development of our new strategy and the
actions that we took to respond to the threats
of the summer. Policy development and crisis
management require different approaches.
Throughout this period, we did both
simultaneously.
For the essential crisis management task, we
depended on the Counterterrorism Security
Group, chaired by Dick Clarke, to be the
interagency nerve center. The CSG consisted
of senior counterterrorism experts from the
CIA, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the
Defense Department (including the Joint
Chiefs of Staff), the State Department, and the
Secret Service. The CSG had met regularly for
many years, and its members had worked
through numerous periods of heightened
threat activity. As threat information
increased, the CSG met more frequently,
sometimes daily, to review and analyze the
threat reporting and to coordinate actions in
response. CSG members also had ready
access to their Cabinet secretaries and could
raise any concerns that they had at the
highest levels.
The threat reporting that we received in the
spring and summer of 2001 was not specific
as to time, nor place, nor manner of attack.
Almost all of the reports focused on al-Qaida
activities outside the United States, especially
in the Middle East and in North Africa. In fact,
the information that was specific enough to be
actionable referred to terrorist operations
overseas. Most often, though, the threat
reporting was frustratingly vague. Let me read
you some of the actual chatter that was
picked up in that spring and summer:
– “Unbelievable news coming in weeks,” said
one.
– “Big event — there will be a very, very, very,
very big uproar.”
– “There will be attacks in the near future.”
Troubling, yes. But they don’t tell us when;
they don’t tell us where; they don’t tell us
who; and they don’t tell us how.
In this context, I want to address in some
detail one of the briefing items that we did
receive, since its content has been frequently
mischaracterized. On August 6th, 2001, the
President’s intelligence briefing included a
response to questions that he had earlier
raised about any al-Qaida intentions to strike
our homeland. The briefing team reviewed past
intelligence reporting, mostly dating from the
1990s, regarding possible al-Qaida plans to
attack inside the United States. It referred to
uncorroborated reporting that from 1998 that a
terrorist might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft
in an attempt to blackmail the government into
releasing U.S.-held terrorists who had
participated in the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing. This briefing item was not prompted
by any specific threat information. And it did
not raise the possibility that terrorists might
use airplanes as missiles.
Despite the fact that the vast majority of threat
information we received was focused
overseas, I was concerned about possible
threats inside the United States. And on July
5th, Chief of Staff Andy Card and I met with
Dick Clarke, and I asked Dick to make sure
that domestic agencies were aware of the
heightened threat period and were taking
appropriate steps to respond, even though we
did not have specific threats to the homeland.
Later that same day, Clarke convened a
special meeting of his CSG, as well as
representatives from the FAA [verify Federal
Aviation Administration], the INS [Immigration
and Naturalization], [U.S.] Customs, and the
Coast Guard. At that meeting, these agencies
were asked to take additional measures to
increase security and surveillance.
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. For instance:
– The Department of Defense issued at least
five urgent warnings to U.S. military forces that
al-Qaida might be planning a near-term attack,
and placed our military forces in certain
regions on heightened alert.
– The State Department issued at least four
urgent security advisories and public
worldwide cautions on terrorist threats,
enhanced security measures at certain
embassies, and warned the Taliban that they
would be held responsible for any al-Qaida
attack on U.S. interests.
– The FBI issued at least three nationwide
warnings to federal, state, and law
enforcement agencies, and specifically stated
that, “although the vast majority of the
information indicated overseas targets, attacks
against the homeland could not be ruled out.”
– The FBI tasked all 56 of its U.S. Field Offices
to increase surveillance of known [or
suspected] terrorists and reach out to known
informants who might have information on
terrorist activities.
– The FAA issued at least five Civil Aviation
Security Information Circulars to all U.S. airlines
and airport security personnel, including
specific warnings about the possibility of
hijacking.
– The CIA worked round the clock to disrupt
threats worldwide. Agency officials launched
a wide-ranging disruption effort against
al-Qaida in more than 20 countries.
– And during this period, the Vice President,
the Director — Director Tenet, and members of
my staff called senior foreign officials
requesting that they increase their intelligence
assistance and report to us any relevant
threat information.
This is a brief sample of our intense activity in
the high threat period of the summer of 2001.
Yet, as your hearings have shown, there was
no “silver bullet” that could have prevented the
9/11 attacks. In hindsight, if anything might
have helped stop 9/11, it would have been
better information about threats inside the
United States, something made very difficult
by structural and legal impediments that
prevented the collection and sharing of
information by our law enforcement and
intelligence agencies.
So the attacks came. A band of vicious
terrorists tried to decapitate our government,
destroy our financial system, and break the
spirit of America. And as an officer of
government on duty that day, I will never
forget the sorrow and the anger that I felt, nor
will I forget the courage and resilience of the
American people, nor the leadership of the
President that day.
Now we have an opportunity and an obligation
to move forward together. Bold and
comprehensive changes are somewhat
– sometimes only possible in the wake of
catastrophic events, events which create a
new consensus that allows us to transcend
old ways of thinking and acting. And just as
World War II led to a fundamental
reorganization of our national defense
structure and the creation of the National
Security Council, so has September 11th made
possible sweeping changes in the ways we
protect our homeland.
President Bush is leading the country during
this time of crisis and change. He has unified
and streamlined our efforts to secure the
American homeland by creating the
Department of Homeland Security, established
a new center to integrate and analyze threat
information — terrorist threat information,
directed the transformation of the FBI into an
agency dedicated to fighting terror, broken
down the bureaucratic walls and legal barriers
that prevent the sharing of vital information
between our domestic law enforcement and
foreign intelligence agencies, and, working
with the Congress, given officials new tools,
such as the PATRIOT Act, to find and stop
terrorists. And he has done this in a way that
is consistent with protecting America’s
cherished civil liberties and with preserving
our character as a free and open society.
But the President recognizes that our work is
far from complete. More structural reform will
likely be necessary. Our intelligence gathering
and analysis have improved dramatically in the
last two years, but they must be stronger still.
The President and all of us in his
administration welcome new ideas and fresh
thinking. We are eager to do whatever it is
that will help to protect the American people.
And we look forward to receiving this
Commission’s recommendations.
We are at war and our security as a nation
depends on winning that war. We must and we
will do everything we can to harden terrorist
targets within the United States. Dedicated law
enforcement and security professionals
continue to risk their lives everyday to make
us all safer, and we owe them a debt of
gratitude. And let’s remember that those
charged with protecting us from attack have to
be right 100% of the time. To inflict devastation
on a massive scale, the terrorists only have to
succeed once. And we know that they are
trying every day.
That is why we must address the source of the
problem. We must stay on the offensive to find
and defeat the terrorists wherever they live,
hide, and plot around the world. If we learned
anything from September 11th, it is that we
cannot wait while dangers gather. After the
September 11th attacks, our nation faced hard
choices. We could fight a narrow war against
al-Qaida and the Taliban, or we could fight a
broad war against a global menace. We could
seek a narrow victory or we could work for a
lasting peace and a better world.
President Bush has chosen the bolder course.
He recognizes that the war on terror is a broad
war. Under his leadership, the United States
and our allies are disrupting terrorist
operations, cutting off their funding, and
hunting down terrorists one-by-one. Their
world is getting smaller. The terrorists have
lost a home-base and training camps in
Afghanistan. The governments of Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia now pursue them with energy
and force.
We are confronting the nexus between terror
and weapons of mass destruction. We are
working to stop the spread of deadly weapons
and to prevent them from getting into the hands
of terrorists, seizing dangerous materials in
transit, where necessary. Because we acted in
Iraq, Saddam Hussein will never again use
weapons of mass destruction against his
people or his neighbors. And we have
convinced Libya to give up all of its weapons
of mass destruction-related programs and
materials.
And as we attack the threat at its source, we
are also addressing its roots. Thanks to the
bravery and skill of our men and women in
uniform, we have removed from power two of
the world’s most brutal regimes — sources of
violence, and fear, and instability in the
world’s most dangerous region. Today, along
with many allies, we are helping the people of
Iraq and Afghanistan to build free societies.
And we are working with the people of the
Middle East to spread the blessings of liberty
and democracy as alternatives to instability
and hatred and terror.
This work is hard and it is dangerous, yet it is
worthy of our effort and sacrifice. The defeat
of terror and the success of freedom in those
nations will serve the interests of our nation
and inspire hope and encourage reform
throughout the greater Middle East.
In the aftermath of September the 11th, those
were the right choices for America to make
– the only choices that can ensure the safety
of our nation for decades to come.
Thank you very much. And now I’m happy to
take your questions.
Condoleezza Rice-Opening Statement to the 9/11
Commission -2005.04.02 11:07
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