Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9-11 Commission

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Highlights of the Interview:

Conan: Now joining us here in Studio 3A, we're going to be speaking with two terrorism experts who watched today's hearings. Joining us at the moment is Skip Brandon, Harry Brandon, the deputy assistant director in charge of counterterrorism and national security at the FBI in the late '90s, now founding partner of Smith Brandon International, a defense and security consulting firm in Washington.

Thanks very much for joining us today.

Mr. HARRY "SKIP" BRANDON (Smith Brandon International): Yeah, good afternoon.

CONAN: And what was the most important thing you heard today during Condoleezza Rice's testimony?

Mr. BRANDON: You know, this may seem like a small thing, but I think it may be the major issue. What she said was that some of our agencies still are not effectively working together and talking together. The reason I think that's so important, it seems to me that the whole point of the hearings should be not throwing blame necessarily on one administration or another, but simply saying, `How did it happen?' And the most important thing is how do we fix it? How do we make sure it never happens again?

CONAN: Did you have any questions that you didn't hear today? You know, were there--are there questions left unanswered?

Mr. BRANDON: Well, there are always going to be questions left unanswered. We're still debating who killed President Lincoln. This is, unfortunately, kind of the nature of the game. No, but I--it seems to me that--and I go back to this, I keep going to back it--that the focus has to be how do we prevent this? And I don't think anybody really thinks that anybody acted intentionally, that anybody actually did not do anything with malice of forethought. And I know that's kind of a strong statement in a way, but I just keep coming back to how do we make sure that we don't get hit again? (...)

For the full interview see below

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NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

Two weeks after former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke's explosive testimony, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appeared before the 9-11 Commission today. The hearing room on Capitol Hill was crowded with reporters, photographers and television cameras--all the major broadcast networks carried the session live--and with family members of those killed on September the 11th. In her opening statement, the national security adviser said that despite what she called `intense activity' in the summer of 2001, a band of vicious terrorists tried to decapitate our government, destroy our financial system and break the spirit of America.

(Soundbite of hearing)

Condoleezza Rice (National Security Adviser): 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 stopped 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.

CONAN: Later, in sometimes testy exchanges with commissioners, Rice argued that the president and his senior advisers did make al-Qaeda and terrorism a priority and took care to develop a plan designed to eliminate the threat rather than respond tit for tat to each attack.

Over the course of this hour, we'll bring you analysis of what the national security adviser said and didn't say. We'll get reaction from Congress and from family members. And we want to hear your reaction as well. Our telephone number is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address is HYPERLINK totn@npr.org.

We'll begin with a summary of the testimony. NPR intelligence correspondent Mary Louise Kelly has just returned from the hearing room. She joins us here in Studio 3A.

Good to have you, as always.

MARY LOUISE KELLY (NPR Intelligence Correspondent): Nice to be here. Thank you.

CONAN: This could be described in sum, I would think, as a staunch defense of the administration.

KELLY: I think that's absolutely right. I mean, the sort of headline here is that Condoleezza Rice came and she gave no ground. She was emphatic in her defense of the Bush administration and in particular the president personally, that they did everything they could before September 11th. She said President Bush understood the threat and he understood its importance. So--go ahead.

CONAN: I was just going to say, we'll get into more details on this in a few minutes. But specifically, in response to Richard Clarke's testimony, though, she did not seem to offer a point-for-point refutation.

KELLY: No, and that was one thing that we had been led to expect she might do, that she might go through and critique certain points that he had made and offer specific rebuttals. She did not do that. But as I say, she gave a very detailed defense, and she laid out exactly what the Bush administration was doing month by month, agency by agency in its first eight months in office before September 11th.

CONAN: As we mentioned, there were some testy exchanges. This is between Rice and some of the commission members. One was with Richard Ben Veniste. This is the former Watergate prosecutor who's been known for sharp questioning throughout these hearings.

KELLY: Yes, and you certainly heard that. It was one of several Democrats offering very sharp questions. And we had this one exchange which was particularly telling. Let's hear a little bit of that.

(Soundbite of hearing)

Mr. RICHARD BEN VENISTE (9-11 Commission): Did you tell the president at any time prior to August 6th of the existence of al-Qaeda cells in the United States?

Dr. RICE: First, let me just make certain...

Mr. BEN VENISTE: If you could just answer that question because I only have a very limited...

Dr. RICE: Oh, first--I understand, Commissioner, but it's important...

Mr. BEN VENISTE: Did you tell the president?

Dr. RICE: It's important that I also address...

(Soundbite of applause)

Dr. RICE: It's also important, Commissioner, that I address the other issues that you have raised. So I will do it quickly, but if you'll just give me a moment.

Mr. BEN VENISTE: Well, my only question to you is whether you told the president.

Dr. RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but if you'll just give me a moment, I will address fully the questions that you've asked.

Mr. BEN VENISTE: Certainly.

Dr. RICE: First of all, yes, the August 6th PDB was in response to questions from the president. In that sense, he asked that this be done. It was not a particular threat report. And there was historical information in there about various aspects of al-Qaeda's operations. Dick Clarke had told me, I think in a memorandum--I remember it as being only a line or two--that there were al-Qaeda cells in the United States.

Now the question is: What did we need to do about that? And I also understood that that was what the FBI was doing, that the FBI was pursuing these al-Qaeda cells. I believe in the August 6th memorandum, it says that there were 70 field investigations under way of these cells. And so there was no recommendation that we do something about this; the FBI was pursuing it.

I really don't remember, Commissioner, whether I discussed this with the president. I...

Mr. BEN VENISTE: Thank you.

Dr. RICE: ...remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al-Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.

Mr. BEN VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB.

Dr. RICE: I believe the title was: Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States.

Mr. BEN VENISTE: Ab...

Dr. RICE: Now the PDB...

Mr. BEN VENISTE: Thank you.

Dr. RICE: No, Mr. Ben Veniste, you--I...

Mr. BEN VENISTE: I will get into the...

Dr. RICE: I would like to finish my point here.

Mr. BEN VENISTE: I didn't know there was a point.

Dr. RICE: You asked me whether or not it warned of attacks. And...

Mr. BEN VENISTE: I asked you what the title was.

Dr. RICE: You said, `Did it not warn of attacks?' It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information, and it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.

CONAN: Condoleezza Rice in an exchange with Democratic Commissioner Richard Ben Veniste. The PDB to which they referred, the president's daily briefing, of August 6th titled, as we learned today, Mary Louise Kelly, `Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States.' This particular PDB has been the source of a lot of back-and-forth between the commission and the White House all along.

KELLY: It's been very controversial, and we did not know until today publicly what the title was. Ben Veniste, you can hear there that he's a prosecutor. You can hear that in his questioning and the way he's trying to get her to tell us the title. He succeeds; we learn the title, and he carries on with questioning after that, that we didn't get to hear there, in terms of trying to really press her on, `Shouldn't you have known? What else would it have taken?' I think during that questioning, it seemed to me that was the closest we came to seeing Condoleezza Rice sounding just a little bit rattled. We heard some applause there as Ben Veniste sort of went after her. That was applause from families of people who died on September 11th who were in the audience.

We should say that was not the only sharp questioning that she got from Democrats on the panel. There are five Democrats on the panel. Bob Kerrey, a former senator from Nebraska, also had some sharp questions for her, specifically on what President Bush was doing to fight terrorism before September 11th.

(Soundbite of hearing)

Former Senator BOB KERREY (9-11 Commission): 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 of where the president swatted a fly when it came to al-Qaeda prior to 9/11?

Dr. RICE: I think what the president was speaking to was...

Mr. KERREY: No, no. What fly had he swatted?

Dr. RICE: Well, the disruptions abroad was what he was really focusing on...

Mr. KERREY: No, no.

Dr. RICE: ...when the CIA would go after Abu Zubaydah...

Mr. KERREY: He hadn't swatted...

Dr. RICE: ...or go after this guy. And that was what he meant.

Mr. 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?

CONAN: And that referring to the series of points she made repeatedly that really the reason the Bush administration, newly installed Bush administration--she counted out the number of days several times; 232, I think, before 9/11--was trying to develop a strategic approach to eliminate the threat of al-Qaeda rather than respond tit for tat to attacks, for example, as they were referring to in that series of questions, the attack on the USS Cole.

KELLY: That's right. This was a point of contention that we've heard so far throughout the hearings, and it certainly was throughout Rice's testimony today, this idea of whether the Bush administration should have retaliated for the USS Cole; if they had, whether they might have done enough to disrupt al-Qaeda's plans and, therefore, averted September 11th. We heard from Clinton administration officials last week saying, `Yeah, we would have loved to retaliate. We didn't have intelligence that was good enough that it was al-Qaeda to do so. That didn't come until the Bush administration took office.' The Bush team has said, `By the time we were in there, this incident was stale, and,' as you just said there, Neal, `we didn't want to push through this tit-for-tat action. We needed to have a more strategic plan.'

CONAN: And there were a couple of points--you mentioned she did not refute Richard Clarke's testimony point for point, but there were a couple of points of disagreement.

KELLY: That's right. We heard this emerge again in questioning from a Democratic member of the panel, Tim Roemer, a former congressman. He was speaking about the former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, and saying that there was a dispute over whether Clarke was ever actually asking Rice whether he could brief the president.

(Soundbite of hearing)

Dr. RICE: Dick Clarke--let me just step back for a second and say we had a very good relationship...

Former Representative TIM ROEMER (9-11 Commission): Yes, I'd appreciate it if you could be very concise here so I could get to some more issues.

Dr. RICE: ...but all that he needed to do was to say, `I need time to brief the president on something.' But the...

Mr. ROEMER: I think he did say that. Dr. Rice, in a private interview to us, he said...

Dr. RICE: To my--well...

Mr. ROEMER: ...he asked to brief the president of the United States.

Dr. RICE: I have to say, Mr. Roemer, to my recollection, Mr. Clarke...

Mr. ROEMER: You say he didn't.

Dr. RICE: ...never asked me to brief the president on counterterrorism.

CONAN: And that, of course, an exchange with Democrat Roemer and the national security adviser. As the testimony continued, of course, these questions of fact regarding Dick Clarke, she was largely in agreement with him. But most of the questioning, it seemed to me, focused on the pre-9/11 period and the day of 9/11. How much did the hearing address Richard Clarke's other damaging assertion in his testimony and his book that basically the focus on Iraq has really taken away attention and undermined the war on terrorism?

KELLY: Very little of that today, actually, and that's something this particular panel has been, I think, very carefully and studiously avoiding. They see their mandate as looking at September 11th intelligence failures, and they know that Iraq is this entirely other beast that they're worried that if they start focusing on that, then there's just too much information and that they won't be able to get through what they need to get through in terms of assessing what happened on September 11th.

We did hear, though, questions about the intelligence community, how failure to communicate between specific branches of it may have contributed to 9/11. And, of course, that's been a factor with Iraq as well. Rice fairly implicitly--she didn't come right out and say it, but she did talk about that the FBI and the CIA did not communicate as well as they should have before September 11th and that that problem has still not been solved. We heard a little bit of that in an exchange between her and one of the Republican panelists, John Lehman.

(Soundbite of hearing)

Mr. JOHN LEHMAN (9-11 Commission): Were you told that there were numerous young Arab males in flight training, had taken flight training, were in flight training?

Dr. RICE: I was not, and I'm not sure that that was known at the center.

Mr. LEHMAN: Were you told that the US Marshal program had been changed to drop any US Marshals on domestic flights?

Dr. RICE: I was not told that.

Mr. LEHMAN: Were you told that the red team in FAA, the red teams for 10 years had reported their hard data that the US airport security system never got higher than 20 percent effective and was usually down around 10 percent for 10 straight years?

Dr. RICE: To the best of my recollection, I was not told that.

CONAN: Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman in an exchange with Condoleezza Rice in today's testimony. And as she went through that, the purpose of this seemed to be about a whole set of issues that could be called shaking the trees. This is the debate over whether the administration in its early days, before 9/11, paid proper high-level attention to the urgency of the threat from al-Qaeda. Were there enough principals meetings, high-level Cabinet officers-level meetings that might have shaken out the information that Mr. Lehman was referring to there and might have enabled somebody to connect the dots, as we all say?

KELLY: Yes. And Condoleezza Rice I think the sort of conclusion we can draw from her testimony, she seems to feel, no. As we heard at the top of the program, she said there was no silver bullet that would have prevented 9/11. However, she did really focus on this idea that there are structural, legal impediments to sharing of information and that that was, as she put it, the one thing that might have done something to stop September 11th, if we had had different branches of the government speaking to each other and sharing and analyzing information in a better way.

I think we're going to hear a lot more about that. Next week, we have more hearings on law enforcement and intelligence. We'll hear from the former and current heads of the FBI, the former and current attorney general. We'll hear again from the director of Central Intelligence, CIA Chief George Tenet. And I think a lot of these issues are going to come up again in terms of has enough been done to change the intelligence community?

Rice did point to some things that have gotten done. We have a Department of Homeland Security now, which is set up to share information. That didn't exist before September 11th. She pointed to the Patriot Act, that very controversial piece of legislation that the Bush administration has pushed through.

CONAN: And we should point out that we've picked some of the most acrimonious exchanges. Most of the questioning was not as testy as the stuff we played. And there's also going to be another important development next week. At the end of the hearing today, Thomas Kean, the former governor of New Jersey, the chairman of the commission, said he would ask the White House to declassify that PDB, presidential daily briefing, from August 6th, Bin Laden threatens attacks in the United States. So there's something else to look forward to.

 (...)

Conan: Now joining us here in Studio 3A, we're going to be speaking with two terrorism experts who watched today's hearings. Joining us at the moment is Skip Brandon, Harry Brandon, the deputy assistant director in charge of counterterrorism and national security at the FBI in the late '90s, now founding partner of Smith Brandon International, a defense and security consulting firm in Washington.

Thanks very much for joining us today.

Mr. HARRY "SKIP" BRANDON (Smith Brandon International): Yeah, good afternoon.

CONAN: And what was the most important thing you heard today during Condoleezza Rice's testimony?

Mr. BRANDON: You know, this may seem like a small thing, but I think it may be the major issue. What she said was that some of our agencies still are not effectively working together and talking together. The reason I think that's so important, it seems to me that the whole point of the hearings should be not throwing blame necessarily on one administration or another, but simply saying, `How did it happen?' And the most important thing is how do we fix it? How do we make sure it never happens again?

CONAN: Did you have any questions that you didn't hear today? You know, were there--are there questions left unanswered?

Mr. BRANDON: Well, there are always going to be questions left unanswered. We're still debating who killed President Lincoln. This is, unfortunately, kind of the nature of the game. No, but I--it seems to me that--and I go back to this, I keep going to back it--that the focus has to be how do we prevent this? And I don't think anybody really thinks that anybody acted intentionally, that anybody actually did not do anything with malice of forethought. And I know that's kind of a strong statement in a way, but I just keep coming back to how do we make sure that we don't get hit again?

CONAN: Now one of the things she kept talking about today and emphasizing was what she described as structural problems.

Mr. BRANDON: Yeah.

CONAN: And that really refers to the communications difficulties you were talking about earlier.

Mr. BRANDON: Yeah, I think it does. It's not only communications difficulties. She made reference to the fact that intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies were actually prevented from sharing information. Some of those things have been remedied now, we hope. They'd better be. But, apparently, she said--and this is sad to hear--that there still are structural problems. And I'm out now. As a citizen and just like the rest of us, I'm kind of horrified to hear that. That's sad.

CONAN: What about the argument of shaking the trees? You're, obviously, familiar with the FBI. If the director had been summoned to the White House several times and had come back saying...

Mr. BRANDON: Yeah. Yeah.

CONAN: ...`Boy, the president really got on me.'

Mr. BRANDON: Yeah.

CONAN: `We've got to find everything we've got on this,' might that have developed the information that we now know was in the FBI system but at too low a level?

Mr. BRANDON: Sure. Sure. You can always, again, look back--hindsight's wonderful--say had that happened, it might have ramped them up. I do know, though, my old colleagues were very aware of the fact that there were things building. This was not a real secret. My understanding is that the trees were being shaken pretty hard. The sad thing is, as we now know, they didn't have some of the information that they needed. The information simply wasn't moving between agencies, which maybe might have allowed the right tree to be shaken. I think Richard Clarke has said it, and Dr. Rice said it: There isn't any one thing that anybody can point to and say, `If we had done this, we could have prevented it.'

CONAN: Let's get some listener responses. Our number, (800) 989-8255. And we'll speak with Marcia, who's with us from Columbus, Ohio.

MARCIA (Caller): Yeah, I was just calling because I was struck by one thing that--being a small business owner, I was astounded that that seemed to be a reasonable excuse, and that is that Dr. Rice kept saying, `Well, Mr. Clarke didn't tell me what to do with this information.' And as a manager, which she is his manager, he's responsible for bringing information to her, and it's her responsibility to determine what critical information is to be passed up the line.

And so for her to continually say, `Well, yeah, he told us what was going on, but, you know, he didn't really say what to do with it.' Well, that's her job. And if they are still operating in that way, I'm very disturbed because it seemed to me that the information was more than available to the people below the administration, but the upper tiers weren't getting it or conveying it up. And I'm just assuming that maybe that's why there was a failing. But it's not just the FBI and the CIA. I mean, they seemed to be cognizant of what was going on, but it seemed like the administration was waiting for someone under them to tell them what to do with it. And I'm very, very disturbed by that.

CONAN: And...

MARCIA: And it seemed that none of the senators even wanted to address that. I mean, that was her job. That's her job, is to take that information and take it to the president and say, `You know, I think we might want to look at this.'

CONAN: It was interesting, in contrast to Richard Clarke's testimony when he continually said, `I did this, I called this meeting. I went here. I wrote this,' very few I's in the testimony today.

MARCIA: I know. And that really disturbed me because is this how all the administrations work? I mean, do they wait for their underlings to tell them what to do ...(unintelligible) policy?

CONAN: Well, let's get a response from Skip Brandon.

Mr. BRANDON: You know, you make a very, very valid observation, and if, in fact, that is exactly what Dr. Clarke meant, I share your concern. I think it may have been more--and I'm not apologizing for her--and then I'll very briefly say I think it may be more saying, as she did say a couple of times, that the information was not specific. Now of course, that does, in a way, beg the question then, how specific do you have to get? I don't know. The problem we have, though, is not only communication. The problem is--and I was a part of the process for a time--our government doesn't react very fast to much of anything. And we don't react very fast or very well to what-ifs. And unfortunately, although there was specificity, and, obviously, there have been acts of terrorism before, during the summer what Dr. Rice was saying was, `Yeah, it may have been good, but these were kind of what-ifs,' and we just don't do that very well.

CONAN: Marcia, thanks very much.

MARCIA: Thank you.

(...)

CONAN: Bye-bye. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION form NPR News.

And we're speaking with Peter Bergen and with Skip Brandon, a former deputy assistant director in charge of counterterrorism and national security at the FBI. Peter Bergen, of course, the author of "Holy War, Inc."

An e-mail from Don in Washington, DC. `Contrary to what Dr. Rice said, a meeting of the principals to discuss the terrorist threat before September 11th might have made a huge difference. From my vantage point inside a large federal agency, I can tell you what happens when the head of the agency goes to a meeting with the other heads of agencies or with the White House. There's enormous preparation in advance of the meeting in order--so that the head of the agency knows exactly what his/her agency is doing about the issue to be discussed. It's this preparation and fact checking that might have shaken loose some information that, if shared with other agencies' heads, might have rung a bell and helped start to connect the dots.' Skip Brandon.

Mr. BRANDON: Well, that makes a lot of sense, and he's exactly right. I think everybody wishes that maybe some of these things might have occurred, but we're getting into a lot of might haves. I think what we have--and I think what many of us--and I think Peter might even agree with this--had predicted was that we're going to have the same set of facts and we look at the way people understood them and what different interpretations on what should have been done. As a--I would like to think still professional, but former professional anyway, yeah, as I understand, things were really ramping up. There was no question within the various parts of the intelligence and law enforcement community, they felt like that the threat was building. Should there have been a head of agen--you know, a...

CONAN: A principal.

Mr. BRANDON: ...principals' meeting...

CONAN: Yeah.

Mr. BRANDON: ...sure. Wish it had happened, with it had happened. It didn't. Does that mean that we have to change the system and make sure that we do address these things and we don't wait until we have a catastrophe? You bet it does.

(...)

CONAN: OK. We're going to have to cut it short there, but I wanted to thank both of you for coming in today...

Mr. BRANDON: Surely.

CONAN: ...and speaking with us.

Mr. BERGEN: Thank you.

CONAN: Skip Brandon, former deputy assistant director in charge of counterterrorism at the FBI, and we'll all await the recommendations of the commission in terms of what to do to prevent the next one. Peter Bergen, the author of "Holy War, Inc.," a fellow at the New America Foundation, thanks very much for coming in.

Mr. BERGEN: Thank you

CONAN: They both joined us here in Studio 3A.

(...)

We've asked Skip Brandon, the former deputy assistant director in charge of counterterrorism at the FBI, and Peter Bergen, the author of "Holy War, Inc.," a fellow at the New America Foundation, to stay over with us to answer another call or two.

And let's see if we can get Andy on the line. Andy's with us from San Rafael, California.

ANDY (Caller): Hello.

CONAN: Hi there.

ANDY: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I was struck by the absence of accepting any responsibility on Dr. Rice's part. I thought that Clarke, by accepting responsibility and apologizing, made a kind of human connection with the families of the victims and the people at large. But it's as if the Bush administration cannot admit to having done anything wrong. I think that's why we are in such a hell of a mess all by ourselves, and sadly, I think her testimony underscores the underlying arrogance of the administration. I don't want to challenge her on any of the facts, but I think her attitude is fundamentally wrongheaded.

CONAN: What did you think of the tone, Skip Brandon?

Mr. BRANDON: That's a tough one. I'll tell you my personal reaction when 9/11 happened and I'll tell you the reaction of people--a lot of my colleagues who were still on duty, people I talked to was absolutely one of `We have failed, we've failed our country.' I think every one of us felt that way. You have to. Not an act of negligence necessarily, but simply it happened, and when something like that happens, we all failed. We all did. Maybe we didn't hear that today, but I think everybody involved certainly had that feeling of some sort or another.

CONAN: She did speak of the sorrow...

Mr. BRANDON: Yeah.

CONAN: ...and anger at the news of the day. Yes. Andy, thanks very much.

ANDY: Thank you.