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Rice’s Testimony

Rice’s Testimony

Last updated on: April 9, 2004 at 8:00 am by Fred Clark

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Rice’s Testimony 2004-04-09T08:00:13-04:00 Fred Clark

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If you haven't already seen it, I recommend you check out the excellent and thorough analysis of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's appearance yesterday before the Sept. 11 commission from the Center for American Progress.

The center offers detailed fact checks of both Rice's opening statement and of her full testimony.

Despite the center's good work, I found the details of Rice's testimony less troubling than the general thrust of her three-hour appearance. She argued, essentially, that the attacks on America of Sept. 11, 2001 — and similar attacks in the future — were inevitable. The attacks occurred, she argued, because of the structural and bureaucratic divisions between America's various security and intelligence-gathering institutions.

Rice presented a strong case that what America desperately needs is some mechanism for overcoming such divisions, some means of coordinating all of these disparate security factions.

As Fred Kaplan notes in Slate, such a mechanism already exists. It's called the office of the national security adviser:

One clear inference can be drawn from Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission this morning: She has been a bad national security adviser — passive, sluggish and either unable or unwilling to tie the loose strands of the bureaucracy into a sensible vision or policy. In short, she has not done what national security advisers are supposed to do. …

Rice's central point [Thursday] morning, especially in her opening statement, was that nobody could have stopped the 9/11 attacks. The problem, she argued, was cultural (a democratic aversion to domestic intelligence gathering) and structural (the bureaucratic schisms between the FBI and the CIA, among others). But this is the analysis of a political scientist, not a policymaker. Culture and bureaucracies form the backdrop against which officials perceive threats, devise options, and make choices. It is good that Rice, a political scientist by training, recognized that this backdrop can place blinders and constraints on decision-makers. But her job as a high-ranking decision-maker is to strip away the blinders and maneuver around the constraints. This is especially so given that she is the one decision-maker who is supposed to coordinate the views of the various agencies and present them as a coherent picture to the president of the United States. Her testimony today provides disturbing evidence that she failed at this task — failed even to understand that it was part of her job description.

Some other observations about Rice's testimony yesterday (quotes are taken from this transcript):

*** Breaking a swat**

I was delighted to hear former Sen. Bob Kerrey demolish one of the Bush administration's favorite anecdote/talking-points regarding President Bush's alleged Big-Picture approach to al-Qaida. Rice had related this same anecdote to nearly every television news program, but she repeated it again yesterday in her opening statement:

We also moved to develop a new and comprehensive strategy to try and eliminate the al-Qaida network. President Bush understood the threat and the 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.

In order for one to grow tired of swatting flies, it seems it would be necessary first for one to have taken at least one swat at one fly. Yet according to this anecdote, President Bush expressed his "tiredness" before he had even begun to swat. Here's the exchange between Kerrey and Rice:

KERREY. You've used the phrase a number of times and I'm hoping with my question to disabuse you of using it in the future, you said the president was tired of swatting flies. Can you tell me one example where the president swatted a fly when it came to al-Qaida prior to 9/11?

RICE. I think what the president was speaking to —

KERREY. No, what fly had he swatted?

RICE. Well, the disruptions abroad was what he was really focusing on. When the C.I.A. would go after Abu(?) —

KERREY. No, no. He hadn't swatted —

RICE. — or go after this guy. That was what was meant.

KERREY. Dr. Rice, we only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?

*** Why is Bob Kerrey so angry?**

Throughout the commission's public hearings, not just yesterday, Kerrey has seemed angrier than his colleagues. I had chalked this up to a matter of temperament, but after watching Jon Stewart display a similar anger last night on The Daily Show, I think there may be more to it.

I was still thinking of Kerrey as a Nebraskan. But for the past three years, he has been serving as the president of The New School in New York City. Like Stewart, Kerrey is a New Yorker. He's angry for a very good reason.

*** A nonpartisan commission**

The commission has, of course, not conducted itself in an entirely nonpartisan manner. Madeleine Albright and Richard Armitage, for instance, faced very different questions from different commissioners. Yet overall, the commission has been far less partisan than I had expected it to be. I expected far more moments like the awful low point when Jim Thompson sat there waving a Fox News release at Richard Clarke. (To his credit, somewhat, Thompson at least had the dignity to look ashamed of himself, even before Clarke dope-slapped him into an awkward silence.)

The commission seemed particularly unified yesterday. I think this was a result of Rice's reluctance and stonewalling in the face of their repeated requests that she testify in public and under oath.

*** Declassifying the PDB**

I don't think Rice intended for the commissioners to walk away from yesterday's session convinced that they would soon be in possession of the declassified Presidential Daily Briefing from Aug. 6, 2001.

Yet as soon as she provided a slight opening for commissioners to suggest that this document be declassified, they pounced. Members of both parties slid quickly from requesting, to presuming, that the document will be declassified. I'm not sure she agreed to this, but she didn't disagree, and the commissioners ran with that.

It says something about the supposedly "unprecedented cooperation" the commission has received from the Bush administration that they're forced to rely on such tactics in order to gain access to documents that their mandate requires them to review.

*** Diana Dean and Colleen Rowley**

Another misfire seemed to be Rice's lengthy praise of Diana Dean, the veteran customs agent who helped to unravel the millennium bomb plot during the Clinton administration. Richard Clarke had suggested that this plot was thwarted in part because of Clinton's aggressive "shaking the trees" response to the alarming reports at that time.

Rice seemed to want both to minimize any credit the Clinton administration might get for stopping this attack and to explain, in response to Clarke, why the Bush administration did not bother "shaking the trees." The plot was foiled, she said,

… because a very alert customs agent named Diana Dean and her colleagues sniffed something about Rassam. They saw that something was wrong. They tried to apprehend him. He tried to run. They then apprehended him, found that there was bomb-making material and a map of Los Angeles. Now, at that point you have pretty clear indication that you've got a problem inside the United States. I don't think it was shaking the trees that produced the breakthrough in the millennium plot. It was that you got a — Dick Clarke would say a lucky break. I would say you got an alert Customs agent who got it right.

The problem with recounting this story is that Diana Dean brings to mind another "alert … agent who got it right": Colleen Rowley. She was the FBI agent whose frantic warnings before 9/11 went unheeded.

The similarities between Dean and Rowley are striking. So are the differences — particularly the different responses they received from their superiors, and the very different outcomes of the terrorist plots they encountered.

The story also indicates, according to Rice herself despite her repeated assertions to the contrary throughout the hearing, that since at least the apprehension of Ahmed Ressam on Dec. 14, 1999, there was clear evidence that al-Qaida sought to attack the United States on its own soil. (Or, as the title of the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB put it: "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.")

UPDATE: Alan S. in comments points us to this detailed post from Dave Neiwert of Orcinus that explores more of the contrast between what happened after Diana Dean did her job and what didn't happen after Colleen Rowley did hers.

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