"...Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack airplanes to try to free U.S.-held terrorists...."

David Johnston and Eric Schmitt (New York Times):
"...A Congressional inquiry into intelligence activities before Sept. 11 found 12 reports over a seven-year period suggesting that terrorists might use airplanes as weapons..."

Scott Paltrow (Wall Street Journal) via Cooperative Research:
"...Despite official assertions that the U.S. had little reason to suspect before Sept. 11 that airliners would be used as weapons, there is new evidence that the federal government had on several earlier occasions taken elaborate, secret measures to protect special events from just such an attack.
The events that were protected included the 1996 Olympics and President Bush's inauguration in 2001. Planning for similar special protection for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah was under way at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials say...
In the aftermath of those attacks, Bush administration officials have said they received no intelligence warning of such a tactic. "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a May 2002 news briefing.
Yet on several occasions starting in the mid-1990s, U.S. intelligence agencies had passed on information concerning such a possibility, including early plans by al Qaeda officials to use passenger jets as kamikaze weapons, according to records and current and former government officials...
In addition, the plan was used for Mr. Clinton's second inauguration in 1997, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 50th anniversary celebration in Washington in 1999, the Republican and Democratic conventions in 2000 and the Bush inauguration in 2001...
...a stream of intelligence beginning in 1995, which reached the White House, did indicate that terrorists were plotting attacks using hijacked jets...
John F. Lehman, a Republican on the 9/11 Commission and a former secretary of the Navy, agreed that the idea of using aircraft as weapons by crashing them into something wasn't new on Sept. 11. "You can't say that the idea of using them as kamikazes is not something people should have been worried about," Mr. Lehman says in an interview. "The fact is that kamikazes were first used in 1944, so it's not exactly a new concept."
Warning Signs
A look at some intelligence reports in the 1990s that warned of terrorist attacks with airliners: 1994 Eiffel Tower threat: "Algerian Armed Islamic Group terrorists hijacked an Air France flight.and threatened to crash it into the Eiffel Tower." 1995 Bojinka Plot to blow up American jets over the Pacific: "An accomplice of Ramzi Yousef told police in the Philippines [and the FBI] that a variant of the plot involved flying a plane on a suicide mission into CIA headquarters." 1996 Iranian plot to crash Japanese jet in Israel: "A passenger would board the plane in the Far East, commandeer the aircraft, order it to fly over Tel Aviv, and crash the plane into the city." 1998 Alleged plan by al Qaeda-linked terrorists to crash plane into World Trade Center: ".A group, since linked to al-Qa'ida, planned to fly an explosives-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center." Alleged Osama bin Laden plot to crash plane into a U.S. airport: ".Bin Ladin's next operation might involve flying an explosives-laden aircraft into a U.S. airport." 1999 Federal Research Division Report on terrorism: "Suicide bomber(s). could crash-land an aircraft.into the Pentagon.or the White House."..."

Atrios:
"...This echoes her previous statement about this:
I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people…would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.
They may not have had specific intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack using airplanes as missiles. But, she switches mid-sentence between "evidence" and "speculation," implying that no analysts had even "speculated" that hijacked planes could be used as weapons, which is of course completely false. Bob Somerby reminds us:
WOODWARD AND EGGEN: But a 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters.
The report recounts well-known case studies of similar plots, including a 1995 plan by al Qaeda operatives to hijack and crash a dozen U.S. airliners in the South Pacific and pilot a light aircraft into Langley.
“Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida’s Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,” the September 1999 report said..."

Eric Boehlert (Salon.com):
"...A former FBI wiretap translator with top-secret security clearance, who has been called "very credible" by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has told Salon she recently testified to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that the FBI had detailed information prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted. Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available." Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie."...
Edmonds, who is Turkish-American, is a 10-year U.S. citizen who has passed a polygraph examination conducted by FBI investigators. She speaks fluent Farsi, Arabic and Turkish and worked part-time for the FBI...
"President Bush said they had no specific information about Sept. 11, and that's accurate," says Edmonds. "But there was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of 2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat we're facing."
Edmonds testified before 9/11 commission staffers in February for more than three hours, providing detailed information about FBI investigations, documents and dates..."

Also see: Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture) commenting on Altercation; Scott Paltrow (Wall Street Journal) via Big Picture

(being very very very very compassionate here)

"...Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people..."

Sen. Gary Hart interviewed on Salon.com:
"...Hart was co-chair (with former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H.) of the U.S. Commission on National Security, a bipartisan panel that conducted the most thorough investigation of U.S. security challenges since World War II. After completing the report, which warned that a devastating terrorist attack on America was imminent and called for the immediate creation of a Cabinet-level national security agency, and delivering it to President Bush on January 31, 2001, Hart and Rudman personally briefed Rice, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. But, according to Hart, the Bush administration never followed up on the commission's urgent recommendations, even after he repeated them in a private White House meeting with Rice just days before 9/11...
[Sen. Hart:]...I met with Rice not long after the president was in Crawford and being briefed by CIA officials on the possible use of aircraft against American targets. This was all happening in the weeks before 9/11. So I think it's terribly disingenuous for the president of the United States to say, "If somebody had told us they were going to use aircraft against the World Trade Center, we would of course have taken action." I think it's just ridiculous to say, "We're not going to do anything until someone tells us where, when and how."..."

Also see item ABOVE this one.

"...[Rice] said administration officials felt, as a precaution, they could not rule out an attack in the United States, but that if Clarke had any specific information suggesting attacks in the United States, "he never communicated that to anyone."..."

"...All the chatter [before 9/11] was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas..."

"...In response to my request for a presidential initiative, the counterterrorism team, which we had held over from the Clinton administration, suggested several ideas...We adopted several of these ideas. We committed more funding to counterterrorism and intelligence efforts..."

Rice for Bush

"...on NBC Nightly News, [claimed] that the "the president increased counterterrorism funding several-fold" before 9/11..."

Rice for Bush on NBC:
"...the problem was that we were, as a country, somewhat blind to what was happening inside the country.  Because we had had a very big wall between domestic intelligence, domestic collection and — information and what the CIA did.  It was only after September 11th that the country came to terms with the fact that the FBI and the CIA needed to be able to coordinate on collection and on sharing of intelligence in a way that would let us know what was going on in the country..."

Center for American Progress:
"...Meanwhile, the Administration "downgraded terrorism as a priority" and ended such key counterterrorism efforts as the "highly classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States." Among the victims of the Administration's "downgrading of terrorism as a priority" was "a highly classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States," which the White House suspended in the months leading up to 9/11...
As the WP reports on the new documents released by American Progress, "in the early days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI." When congressional Democrats sponsored amendments to substantially increase this funding, the President threatened to veto them, and they were voted down."

Center for American Progress:
"...In reality, the Bush Administration was preparing a FY2003 budget (the first budget fully authored by the new Administration) that proposed serious cuts to key counterterrorism programs. As the 2/28/02 NYT reported, the Bush White House "did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators" and "proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants." Newsweek noted the Administration "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism." See a display of Rice's dishonesty in this American Progress video clip...."

Also see Uggabugga and Atrios

"...In the same article, Rice belittled Clarke's proposals by writing: "The president wanted more than a laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or 'roll back' the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al Qaeda network." Rice asserted that while Clarke and others provided ideas, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." That same day, she said most of Clarke's ideas "had been already tried or rejected in the Clinton administration."..."

Condi Rice to 9/11 Commission:
"...Dick Clarke is a very, very fine counterterrorism expert -- and that's why I kept him on...He had some very good ideas. We acted on them...Dick Clarke -- let me just step back for a second and say we had a very -- we had a very good relationship...
He also had attached the Delenda plan, which is my understanding was developed in 1998, never adopted and, in fact, had some ideas. I said, "Dick, take the ideas that you've put in this think piece, take the ideas that were there in the Delenda plan, put it together into a strategy, not to roll back al Qaeda" -- which had been the goal of the Clinton -- of what Dick Clarke wrote to us -- "but rather to eliminate this threat." And he was to put that strategy together.
But by no means did he ask me to act on a plan. He gave us a series of ideas. We acted on those..."
Compassiongate note: See how Condi phrases it - he did not ask me to "act on a plan"! In other words, he did give her a [Delenda] plan by her own statement.

Center for American Progress:
"...Rice claimed this week that "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." But the 9/11 Commission reported, "On January 25th, 2001, Richard Clarke forwarded his December 2000 strategy paper and a copy of his 1998 Delenda plan to the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice."..."

Frank Rich (New York Times):
"...Last Sunday on "60 Minutes" Ed Bradley dipped a toe into it by noting that there were fewer attacks in the 30-month period leading up to 9/11 than there have been in "the 30 months afterward when you had this war against it."..."

"...Dick Clarke was counterterrorism czar for a long time with a lot of attacks on the United States. What he was doing was--what they were doing apparently was not working. We wanted to do something different..."

Ryan Lizza (TNR):
"...She didn't get a chance to explain how this statement comports with Hadley's insistence that "one of the decisions we made was to keep Mr. Clarke and his counter-terrorism group intact" because "we wanted an experienced team to try and identify the risk, take actions to disrupt the terrorists."..."

Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post):
"...She criticized Clarke for being the architect of failed Clinton administration policies, but also said she retained Clarke so the Bush administration could continue to pursue Clinton's terrorism policies...
Rice implicitly criticized Clarke on CNN on Monday, saying that "he was the counterterrorism czar for a period of the '90s when al Qaeda was strengthening and when the plots that ended up September 11 were being hatched." But in a White House briefing two days later, she said she kept Clarke on the job because "I wanted somebody experienced in that area precisely to carry on the Clinton administration policy." ... "

David Johnston and Eric Schmitt (New York Times):
"...Mr. Clarke was in charge of responding to immediate threats, one senior official said. He had been counterterrorism chief in the Clinton administration, and Ms. Rice had decided to keep him in the job because she wanted continuity. "It was because everyone respected Dick Clarke and knew he was a pile driver," the official said..."

Rice for Bush:
"...In response to my request for a presidential initiative, the counterterrorism team, which we had held over from the Clinton administration, suggested several ideas...We adopted several of these ideas. We committed more funding to counterterrorism and intelligence efforts..."

Talkingpointsmemo:
"...On a more substantive note compare Wilkinson's description of Clarke's pitiful proposal to this one from an August 4th, 2002 article in Time. Note particularly the comment from the "senior Bush administration official" at the end ...
Berger had left the room by the time Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. A senior Bush Administration official denies being handed a formal plan to take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and says Clarke's materials merely dealt with whether the new Administration should take "a more active approach" to the terrorist group. (Rice declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled no briefing at which Berger was present.) Other senior officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda. In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Qaeda was causing trouble-Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Yemen-would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary" where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a nation that had been driven by bloody feuds between ethnic warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a substantial increase in American support for the Northern Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done since 9/11."..."

"...I want to make a very point here, that all of his ideas he presented were not a strategy. This is a president who wanted a comprehensive strategy to go after al Qaeda where it lives, where it hides, where it plots, where it raises money. All the ideas that -- except for one -- that Dick Clarke submitted, this administration did..."

"...what's very interesting is that, of course, Dick Clarke was the counterterrorism czar in 1998 when the embassies were bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar in 2000 when the Cole was bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar for a period of the '90s when al Qaeda was strengthening and when the plots that ended up in September 11 were being hatched..."

Condi Rice to 9/11 Commission:
"...Dick Clarke is a very, very fine counterterrorism expert -- and that's why I kept him on...He had some very good ideas. We acted on them...Dick Clarke -- let me just step back for a second and say we had a very -- we had a very good relationship."

"...As I say, he was the head of counterterrorism for several years there in the '90s, and I didn't notice that they had any great success dealing with the terrorist threat..."

Clarke on CNN:
"...Well, a great deal was done. The administration stopped the al Qaeda attacks in the United States and around the world at the millennium period, they stopped al Qaeda in Bosnia, they stopped al Qaeda from blowing up embassies around the world, they authorized covert lethal action by the CIA against al Qaeda, they retaliated with cruise missile strikes into Afghanistan, they got sanctions against Afghanistan from the United Nations. There was a great deal the administration did, even though at the time, prior to 9/11, al Qaeda had arguably not done a great deal to the United States.
If you look at the eight years of the Clinton administration, al Qaeda was responsible for the deaths of fewer than 50 Americans over those eight years. Contrast that with Ronald Reagan, where 300 Americans were killed in Lebanon and there was no retaliation. Contrast that with the first Bush administration where 260 Americans were killed on Pan-Am 103 and there was no retaliation.
I would argue that for what had actually happened prior to 9/11, the Clinton administration was doing a great deal. In fact, so much that when the Bush people came into office they thought I was a little crazy, a little obsessed with this "little terrorist" [Osama] bin Laden. Why wasn't I focused on Iraqi-sponsored terrorism..."

"...[Bush] wanted a far more effective policy for trying to deal with [terrorism], and that process was in motion throughout the spring..."

Center for American Progress:
"...The Center for American Progress has compiled an exhaustive, day-by-day overview of the Bush administration's public statements on national security, defense and international issues from Jan. 20 to Sept. 10, 2001...While the Bush administration maintains it was focused extensively on terrorism, our analysis of 557 public statements reveals only one mention of al Qaeda by the administration over the 8-month period. Notably, this single mention of al Qaeda was found in a signed notice from President Bush continuing an executive order – issued by President Clinton – prohibiting transactions with the Taliban. Osama bin Laden was mentioned only 19 times during the same period, 17 of which occurred in the context of press briefings or questions from journalists..."

Center for American Progress:
"...Bush said [in May of 2001] that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and 'I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.' Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took place." By comparison, Cheney in 2001 formally convened his Energy Task Force at least 10 separate times, meeting at least 6 times with Enron energy executives.
– Washington Post, 1/20/02 , GAO Report, 8/22/03, AP, 1/8/02..."

Daily Howler:
"...According to Clarke, the threat of terror wasn’t “urgent” for the Bush Admin before 9/11. In this case, Clarke himself told scribes where to go. Yep! He sent them straight to this passage in Woodward:
WOODWARD (page 39): [Bush] acknowledged that bin Laden was not his focus or that of his national security team. “There was a significant difference in my attitude after September 11. I was not on point…I didn’t have that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling.”
Oof! The White House would love to get that one back! Of course, the pundits would have missed it too. But Clarke just keeps bringing it up..."

David Talbot (Salon.com):
"...Former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado also directly told senior Bush officials loudly and clearly that, in his words, "The terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming."
Hart was co-chair (with former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H.) of the U.S. Commission on National Security, a bipartisan panel that conducted the most thorough investigation of U.S. security challenges since World War II. After completing the report, which warned that a devastating terrorist attack on America was imminent and called for the immediate creation of a Cabinet-level national security agency, and delivering it to President Bush on January 31, 2001, Hart and Rudman personally briefed Rice, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. But, according to Hart, the Bush administration never followed up on the commission's urgent recommendations, even after he repeated them in a private White House meeting with Rice just days before 9/11...
[Sen. Hart:] ...George Bush -- and this is often overlooked -- held a press conference or made a public statement on May 5, 2001, calling on Congress not to act and saying he was turning over the whole matter to Dick Cheney. 
So this wasn't just neglect, it was an active position by the administration. He said, "I don't want Congress to do anything until the vice president advises me." We now know from Dick Clarke that Cheney never held a meeting on terrorism, there was never any kind of discussion on the department of homeland security that we had proposed. There was no vice presidential action on this matter. 
In other words, a bipartisan commission of seven Democrats and seven Republicans who had spent two and a half years studying the problem, a group of Americans with a cumulative 300 years in national security affairs, recommended to the president of the United States on a reasonably urgent basis the creation of a Cabinet-level agency to protect our country -- and the president did nothing! 
By the way, when our final report came out in 2001, it did not receive word one in the New York Times. Zero. The Washington Post put it on Page 3 or 4, below the fold..."

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball (Newsweek):
"...In fact, the commission staff released a wealth of new details over the past two days that tend to corroborate Clarke’s basic story: that the Bush White House did not treat Al Qaeda as an “urgent” priority in the months before September 11. In one staff report, the commission stated that deputy CIA director John McLaughlin had told the panel there was “great tension” in the summer of 2001 between the Bush administration policymakers and intelligence officials who believed, like him, “that this was a matter of great urgency.” The report added that two CIA analysts who specialized in monitoring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden “were so worried about an impending disaster that one of them told us that they considered resigning and going public with their concerns.” 
Yet the commission’s staff reports suggest the new Bush administration was moving slowly on many fronts: Clarke himself was upbraided in January 2001 when he asked for an immediate “principals” meeting of cabinet chiefs to develop an urgent new anti-Al Qaeda policy and was told to instead work with a committee of “deputy” chiefs. By the summer of 2001, when this committee had finally drawn up recommendations, many of the "principals" had already departed Washington for their annual vacations and the meeting was not held until Sept. 4, a week before the attacks.
At the time, Clarke said, intelligence warnings of a “spectacular” attack were pouring in at a level higher than anything top intelligence officials had ever seen. Yet at the Pentagon, according to another commission report, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had devoted little time to the issue and some of his aides “told us that they thought the new team was focused on other issues”—such as dissolving an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that was impeding the administration’s plans to develop a new Star Wars antimissile defense system. The commission noted that the Defense Department post that traditionally deals most with counterterrorism, an assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict, hadn’t even been filled at the time that one of the hijacked airlines slammed into the Pentagon.
Clarke himself was so deeply dismayed with the results of the Bush White House policy review on Al Qaeda—and thought it was so ineffective—that he fired off a memo to national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice just before the Sept. 4 meeting of cabinet chiefs. The memo, according to the commission staff, laid out Clarke’s frustrations with the Pentagon and the CIA for resisting his proposals for immediate,  aggressive actions against bin Laden. In the memo, the commission staff stated, Clarke “urged policymakers to imagine a day after a terrorist attack, with hundreds of American dead at home and abroad, and ask themselves what they could have done.” ..."

Talkingpointsmemo:
"...On a more substantive note compare Wilkinson's description of Clarke's pitiful proposal to this one from an August 4th, 2002 article in Time. Note particularly the comment from the "senior Bush administration official" at the end ...
Berger had left the room by the time Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. A senior Bush Administration official denies being handed a formal plan to take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and says Clarke's materials merely dealt with whether the new Administration should take "a more active approach" to the terrorist group. (Rice declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled no briefing at which Berger was present.) Other senior officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda. In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Qaeda was causing trouble-Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Yemen-would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary" where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a nation that had been driven by bloody feuds between ethnic warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a substantial increase in American support for the Northern Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done since 9/11."..."

Talkingpointsmemo:
"...[Outgoing Deputy National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick], who stayed through the first four months of the Bush administration, said, "candidly speaking, I didn't detect" a strong focus on terrorism. "That's not being derogatory. It's just a fact. I didn't detect any activity but what Dick Clarke and the CSG [the Counterterrorism Strategy Group he chaired] were doing." General Hugh Shelton, whose term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff began under Clinton and ended under Bush, concurred. In his view, the Bush administration moved terrorism "farther to the back burner." 
America Unbound, p. 76
Ivo Daalder & James Lindsay..."

"...Through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda -- which was expected to take years. Our strategy marshaled all elements of national power to take down the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures. Our plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived...."

David Johnston and Eric Schmitt (New York Times):
"...There were also no specific new military plans for attacking Qaeda forces or the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Pentagon's priorities that summer were developing a national missile defense plan and conducting a broad strategy and budget review. Military planners had previously offered a comprehensive plan to incorporate military, economic, diplomatic and political activities to pressure the Taliban to expel Al Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden. But the plan was never acted on by either the Clinton or Bush administrations..."

"..."Dr. Rice, early on in the administration started holding daily briefings with the senior directors of the National Security Council, of which he was one. But he refused to attend those meetings, and he was later asked to attend those meetings and he continued to refuse to attend those meetings."...."

Brad Delong:
"...Ms. Rice said, Mr. Clarke was very much involved in the administration's fight against terrorism. "I would not use the word `out of the loop,'... He was in every meeting that was held on terrorism," Ms. Rice said. "All the deputies' meetings, the principals' meeting that was held and so forth, the early meetings after Sept. 11."..."

Atrios:
"...I really just can't even follow all of the Bush admin lies about this stuff. First we have this:
Ms. Rice painted a distinctly different picture of the involvement of Mr. Clarke, who has prompted furious responses since he asserted in a new book and in testimony on Capitol Hill that President Bush did not heed warnings before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"He was in every meeting that was held on terrorism," Ms. Rice said. "All the deputies' meetings, the principals' meeting that was held and so forth, the early meetings after Sept. 11."..."

Atrios:
"...AP 6/28/02 Link:
WASHINGTON - President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions, officials say.
(thanks to ensley)..."

"...Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to..."

Kansas City Star:
"...President Bush's top counterterrorism adviser warned seven days before Sept. 11, 2001, that hundreds of people could die in a strike by al-Qaida.
Richard Clarke also said that the administration was not doing enough to combat the threat, the commission investigating the attacks disclosed Wednesday.
Clarke, who served as a senior White House counterterrorism official under three successive presidents, wrote to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sept. 4, 2001, urging “policy-makers to imagine a day after a terrorist attack, with hundreds of Americans dead at home and abroad, and ask themselves what they could have done earlier,” according to a summary of the letter included in a commission staff report. Clarke cites the same plea in his new book..."

[asserted] "...that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats..."

Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus (Washington Post):
"...The CIA now says that a controversial August 2001 briefing summarizing potential attacks on the U.S. by al-Qaida was not requested by President Bush, as Rice and others had long claimed. The Aug. 6, 2001, document, known as the President's Daily Brief, has been the focus of intense scrutiny because it reported that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden advocated airplane hijackings, that al-Qaida supporters were in the United States and that the group was planning attacks here.
After the existence of the highly classified document was first revealed in news reports in May 2002, Rice held a news conference in which she suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer. But Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic commission member, disclosed at the hearing yesterday that the CIA informed the panel last week that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA..."

"...KING: Clarke says Mr. Bush pressured him the day after the 9/11 attacks to find evidence blaming Iraq and that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other senior officials also wanted to blame Saddam Hussein. White House aides say Mr. Bush and others did initially suspect Iraq but that in the end they followed the evidence.
RICE: He told me Iraq is to the side. We're going after Afghanistan and we're going to eliminate the Taliban and the al Qaeda base in Afghanistan..."

Rice for Bush

"...Not a single National Security Council principal at that meeting recommended to the president going after Iraq. The president thought about it. The next day he told me Iraq is to the side..."

White House

"...The President then advised his NSC Principals on September 17 that Iraq was not on the agenda, and that the initial US response to 9/11 would be to target al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan.
Dick Clarke did prepare a memo for the President regarding links between Iraq and 9/11. He sent this memo to Dr. Rice on September 18, after the President, based on the advice of his DCI that that there was no evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attack, had decided that Iraq would not be a target in our military response for 9/11. Because the President had already made this decision, Steve Hadley returned the memo to Dick Clarke on September 25 asking Clarke to "please update and resubmit," to add any new information that might have appeared. Clarke indicated there was none. So when Clarke sent the memo forward again on September 25, Dr. Rice returned it, not because she did not want the President to read the answer set out in the memo, but because the President had already been provided the answer and had already acted based on it..."

Center for American Progress:
"...According to the Washington Post, "six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2-and-a-half-page document" that "directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq." This is corroborated by a CBS News, which reported on 9/4/02 that five hours after the 9/11 attacks, "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq."  In terms of resources, the Iraq decision had far-reaching effects on the efforts to hunt down Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. As the Boston Globe reported, "the Bush administration is continuing to shift highly specialized intelligence officers from the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to the Iraq crisis."..."

Daily Howler:
"...Here are four of Clarke’s “controversial” charges, along with the supporting material from Woodward’s much-loved book:
Rummy’s targets: Pundits found it hard to believe that Rummy really said it! On September 12, Clarke alleged, the wise old owl was prowling the White House, looking for someone to bomb:
CLARKE (page 31): Later in the day, Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which, he said, had better targets. At first I thought Rumsfeld was joking. But he was serious and the President did not reject out of hand the idea of attacking Iraq.
Pundits wondered if this could be true. They should have studied their Woodward—for example, his account of Camp David on 9/15:
WOODWARD (page 84): When the group reconvened, Rumsfeld asked, Is this the time to attack Iraq? He noted that there would be a big build-up of forces in the region, and he was still deeply worried about the availability of good targets in Afghanistan.
In Bush at War, a string of advisers note that Iraq would provide better targets. (Hence the word “still” in the passage above.) Last weekend, Rumsfeld was asked about Clarke’s troubling claim by Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday. Rummy gave two rambling replies; in the course of his non-answer answers, he never denied making the statement which Clarke records in his book...
...read Woodward—same day:
WOODWARD (page 49): Rumsfeld raised the question of Iraq. Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just al Qaeda? he asked. Rumsfeld was speaking not only for himself when he raised the question. His deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, was committed to a policy that would make Iraq a principal target in the first round of the war on terrorism.
Not that there was anything wrong with it, but that’s what Woodward records! Indeed, Woodward shows Cheney voicing a similar view:
WOODWARD (page 43): “To the extent we define our task broadly,” Cheney said [at a 9/12 NSC meeting], “including those who support terrorism, then we get at states. And it’s easier to find them than it is to find bin Laden.”
Again, rumination on easier targets...
...[Woodward] records Bush’s view on September 17:
WOODWARD (page 98): Bush said he wanted a plan to stabilize Pakistan and protect it against the consequences of supporting the U.S.
As for Saddam Hussein, the president ended the debate. “I believe Iraq was involved, but I’m not going to strike them now. I don’t have the evidence at this point.”
In fact, he didn’t have the evidence, but according to Woodward, he asserted belief..."

Center for American Progress:
"...Britain's former ambassador to the United States is now confirming that nine days after 9/11, President Bush asked for Prime Minister Tony Blair's support in confronting – and potentially attacking – Iraq. The White House has denied that President Bush was focused on Iraq after 9/11, despite the Washington Post confirming the President signed a directive in the days after the attacks ordering the Pentagon to begin drawing up Iraq invasion plans. The British ambassador's charges have already been corroborated by former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. And Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) confirms that the result of the President's focus on Iraq after 9/11 was a loss of focus on the hunt for al Qaeda: Graham said that on a visit to MacDill Air Force Base in February 2002, a senior commander of Central Command told him, "Senator, we have stopped fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq."..."

Center for American Progress:
"...Despite all evidence pointing to al Qaeda and bin Laden as behind the 9/11 attacks, just as Dick Clarke asserted, the Administration immediately discussed invading Iraq. Powell testified that on September 15, 2001, "Iraq was discussed, and Secretary Wolfowitz raised the issue of whether or not Iraq should be considered for action during this time." According to Powell, the President said, "first things first...we'll start with Afghanistan." Powell could not rule out the possibility that Wolfowitz suggested attacking Iraq "instead of Afghanistan."..."

(1 for lying compassion about Bush's position and 1 for lying compassion  about other "National Security Council principal's" positions)

"...The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11..."

Center for American Progress:
"...If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against "nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11." Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that "It is not surprising that people make that connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said "we don't know" if there is a connection...."

"...I don't know what a sense of urgency any greater than the one we had would have caused us to do anything differently. I don't know how...we could have done more. I would like very much to know what more could have been done?..."

Robin Wright (Washington Post):
"...On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday" -- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals. The speech provides telling insight into the administration's thinking on the very day that the United States suffered the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text. .."

Center for American Progress:
"...new evidence has surfaced that the Bush Administration was asleep at the wheel before 9/11. The NYT reports that in the summer of 2001, warnings became "more dire and more specific" and "were communicated repeatedly to the highest levels within the White House." Nevertheless, the Administration's "priorities that summer were developing a national missile defense plan" (evidenced by Rice's plan to make missile defense the national security centerpiece in a speech on 9/11) while "money for fighting terrorism had to be justified against an array of other priorities," including tax cuts. In one instance, the White House threatened to veto an effort to shift $800 million from missile defense into critical counterterrorism programs. Rice's "own focus until Sept. 11 was usually fixed on matters other than terrorism" despite Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger (and others) imploring her to focus on terrorism...."

Center for American Progress:
"...According to Daniel Benjamin's "The Age of Sacred Terror," the Bush White House before 9/11 halted previous multilateral efforts to press various countries to strengthen banking regulations which terrorist networks were abusing...."

Gail Sheehy (New York Observer):
"...[Rumsfeld] said that on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, he was "hosting a meeting for some of the members of Congress."
"Ironically, in the course of the conversation, I stressed how important it was for our country to be adequately prepared for the unexpected," he said.
It is still incredible to the moms that their Secretary of Defense continued to sit in his private dining room at the Pentagon while their husbands were being incinerated in the towers of the World Trade Center. They know this from an account posted on Sept. 11 on the Web site of Christopher Cox, a Republican Congressman from Orange County who is chairman of the House Policy Committee.
"Ironically," Mr. Cox wrote, "just moments before the Department of Defense was hit by a suicide hijacker, Secretary Rumsfeld was describing to me why … Congress has got to give the President the tools he needs to move forward with a defense of America against ballistic missiles."..."

Center for American Progress:
"...President Bush yesterday claimed that "Prior to September the 11th, we thought oceans could protect us." That is a troubling statement from a President, considering that in January of 2001, the U.S. Government's Commission on National Security gave the White House a bipartisan report that warned of an attack on the homeland and urged the new Administration to implement its specific "recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism" (an intelligence warning of a domestic attack was also given to the White House in May of 2001).  Unfortunately, according to Sens. Warren Rudman (R-NH) and Gary Hart (D-CO), the Administration rejected the Commission's report, "preferring to put aside the recommendations." Instead, the White House said it would have Vice President Cheney head up a task force to analyze the threat himself. The Administration then waited five months to officially create the task force, and then failed to convene a single meeting of the task force in the four months before 9/11...."

"...The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11..."

"...so far has refused to provide testimony under oath to the commission that could possibly resolve the contradictions. On Wednesday night, she told reporters, "I would like nothing better in a sense than to be able to go up and do this, but I have a responsibility to maintain what is a long-standing constitutional separation between the executive and the legislative branch." ..."

Rice for Bush