The Bush administration was taken unawares by the scale of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but recognized from the start the threat posed by al-Qaeda, U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
She said that U.S. President George W. Bush was briefed on al-Qaeda 40 times by the CIA director in the first eight months of his term, one-third of them in response to his own queries about the terrorist network.
In a long-awaited appearance before the commission investigating the 2001 attacks, Ms. Rice testified under oath that fighting terrorism was the focus of the first national security policy formulated by the Bush administration, in spite of other looming responsibilities.
"President Bush had set a broad foreign policy agenda," she said in her televised opening remarks.
U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is sworn in Thursday before testifying to the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks in Washington. (Dennis Cook/AP)
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"We also moved to develop a new and comprehensive strategy to eliminate the al-Qaeda terrorist network. It was the very first major national security policy directive of the Bush Administration — not Russia, not missile defence, not Iraq, but the elimination of al-Qaeda."
"America's al-Qaeda policy wasn't working because our Afghanistan policy wasn't working," she said. "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."
| Condoleezza Rice | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Age | 49; born Nov. 14, 1954. |
| Birthplace | Birmingham, Ala. |
| Education | Bachelor of arts, political science, University of Denver, 1974; master of arts, University of Notre Dame, 1975; Ph.D., Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, 1981. |
| Experience | National security adviser, National Security Council, 2001-present; Hoover Senior Fellow and professor of political science, Stanford University, 1981-1999; provost, Stanford University, 1993-99; director-senior director, Soviet and East European Affairs, National Security Council, special assistant to the president for national security affairs, 1989-1991; special assistant to the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1986. |
| Books | Co-author, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed, 1995; co-author, The Gorbachev Era, 1986; author, Uncertain Allegiance — The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1984. |
| Family | Single. |
| Quote | "I want the American people to know the story of what we did before 9-11 and what we're continuing to do now." |
| Associated Press | |
Speaking before an audience that included people who had lost relatives in the terrorist attacks, Ms. Rice said that terrorists were able to strike the heart of the United States because of the long-standing democratic reluctance to act before threats become too large to ignore.
Citing U.S. slowness to enter both the First World War and the Second World War, Ms. Rice said that terrorists had been targeting the United States for decades without a substantive response.
"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," she said.
"Tragically, for all the language of war spoken before Sept. 11, this country simply was not on a war footing."
Ms. Rice's appearance — carried live on all three major U.S. networks, cable news shows and local stations around the world — was strongly resisted by the White House, on the basis that it violated the constitutional separation between the branches of government. Ms. Rice, the most senior member of the Bush team to defend the administration's actions, originally spoke to the commission privately and only later agreed to testify publicly.
Thursday's appearance came only after intense public pressure on the White House, which was attacked by a former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke for focusing too much on Iraq and thereby neglecting the fight against al-Qaeda.
Ms. Rice denied that the administration had looked for excuses to blame Iraq for the attacks, saying instead that the inner circle had considered both Iraq and Iran as the possible sources for the "sophisticated" attacks.
She said that the issue of Iraq was raised by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and pressed by his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.
"Given that this was a global war on terror, should we look not just at Afghanistan but should we look at doing something against Iraq? There was a discussion of that," Ms. Rice testified. "The President listened to all his advisers. I can tell you that when he went around the table and asked his advisers what he should do, not a single one of his principal advisers advised doing anything against Iraq. It was all to Afghanistan,"
She acknowledged that "contingency plans" were crafted in case Iraq tried to take advantage of the chaos in the United States. But she disputed the accusation that Mr. Bush was determined to blame Iraq and asked Mr. Clarke for evidence to back up that belief.
"I'm quite certain the President never pushed anyone to twist the facts," she said.
Mr. Clarke, who resigned from the administration a little over a year ago and has written a book about his experiences there and in the Clinton administration, has claimed that Bush officials, and Ms. Rice in particular, did not consider al-Qaeda an urgent priority before the attacks.
On the contrary, Ms. Rice testified, the administration took the unusual step of keeping the Clinton-era CIA chief, FBI head and "the entire Clinton administration's counterterrorism team" at the NSC.
"We also moved to develop a new and comprehensive strategy to eliminate the al-Qaeda terrorist 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-Qaeda one attack at a time. He told me he was 'tired of swatting flies.' "
Analysts say that Ms. Rice's testimony could have significant implications for the brewing presidential election, in which Mr. Bush is running largely on his national security credentials.
