The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [152]
In mid-June, following reports in the media that Israel’s prime minister Ariel Sharon was within days due to visit President Bush at the White House, bin Laden bombarded KSM with requests for the operation to be activated at once. The MBC television team had been told during their recent visit that the coming strike would be “a big gift for the intifada.”
A strike coinciding with the Sharon trip—not least when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had pointedly received no invitation from the White House—must have seemed highly desirable. KSM, however, again persuaded bin Laden that precipitate action would be ill-advised.
All this was terrible tradecraft, amateurish folly that could have doomed the 9/11 plan to failure.
IN WASHINGTON, meanwhile, Richard Clarke still pressed in vain for expeditious action. Fearing that he was becoming “like Captain Ahab with bin Laden as the White Whale,” he had long since thought he should consider finding other work. Yet he was still there at the end of May, still worrying.
A recently released Commission staff note, written following a review of National Security Council files, observes that it was clear that “Clarke was driving process in the new Bush Administration, not Condi Rice or Steve Hadley. Not much was going on at their level against AQ. Highest levels of government were not engaged, were not driving the process.”
“When these attacks occur, as they likely will,” Clarke wrote Rice on May 29, “we will wonder what more we could have done to stop them.”
The following day, Rice asked George Tenet and CIA colleagues to assess the gravity of the danger. On a scale of one to ten, she was told, it rated a seven.
Two weeks later, a report reached the CIA that KSM was “recruiting people to travel to the United States to meet with colleagues already there.” On June 21, with the wave of threat information continuing, the intelligence agencies—and the military in the Middle East—went on high alert. As the month ended, with the July 4 holiday approaching, the National Security Agency intercepted terrorist traffic indicating that something “very, very, very, very big” was imminent. Clarke duly advised Rice.
The holiday passed without incident, but the anxiety remained. On July 10, according to Tenet, his counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black, delivered a threat assessment that made his hair stand on end. With Black and the head of the bin Laden unit at his side, the director rushed immediately to see Rice at the White House. There followed a deeply unsatisfactory encounter—one the 9/11 Commission Report failed to mention.
The CIA chiefs told Rice flatly: “There will be a significant terrorist attack in the coming weeks or months.” The bin Laden unit head went through the bald facts of the intelligence. His colleagues described CIA ploys that might disrupt and delay the attack. Then they urged immediate decisions on measures that would tackle the overall problem. The slow, plodding deliberations of the deputy secretaries were taking too long.
Rice asked Richard Clarke, who was also present, whether he agreed. Clarke, according to Tenet, “put his elbows on his knees and his head fell into his hands and he gave an exasperated yes.” “The President,” Tenet told Rice, “needed to align his policy with the new reality.” Rice assured them that Bush would do that.
She did not convince the deputation from the CIA. According to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, writing in 2006, they “felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off.… Rice had seemed focused on other administration priorities, especially the ballistic missile defense system that Bush had campaigned on. She was in a different place.… No immediate action meant great