My only real issue here is the time span....It took 6 months for the administration to actually listen to the information that could have been used to prevent 9/11. Not that is indeed would have. I do find it unfortunate that the person who dropped the ball here, is now the Secratary of State an honestly hope she has better people working for her....than she was herself.
Memo warned of Al Qaeda
Clarke wrote to Rice of threat in January 2001
By JoAnne Allen, Reuters | February 12, 2005
WASHINGTON -- A memo warned the White House at the start of the Bush administration that Al Qaeda represented a threat throughout the Islamic world, a warning that critics said went unheeded by President Bush until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The newly released memo, dated Jan. 25, 2001 -- five days after Bush took office -- was an essential feature of last year's hearings into intelligence failures before the attacks in New York and Washington. A copy of the document was posted on the National Security Archive website yesterday.
The memo, from former counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke to Condoleezza Rice, who was national security adviser at the time, had been described during the hearings, but its full contents had not been disclosed.
Clarke, a holdover from the Clinton administration, had requested an immediate meeting of top national security officials as soon as possible after Bush took office to discuss combating Al Qaeda. He described the network as a threat with broad reach.
''Al Qaeda affects centrally our policies on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia, North Africa, and the [Gulf Arab states]. Leaders in Jordan and Saudi Arabia see Al Qaeda as a direct threat to them," Clarke wrote.
''The strength of the network of organizations limits the scope of support friendly Arab regimes can give to a range of US policies, including Iraq policy and the [Israeli-Palestinian] peace process. We would make a major error if we underestimated the challenge Al Qaeda poses."
The memo also warned of overestimating the stability of moderate regional allies threatened by Al Qaeda.
It recommended that the new administration urgently discuss the Al Qaeda network, including the magnitude of the threat it posed and strategy for dealing with it.
Rice has maintained that she never received any specific warning of an attack by the terrorist organization run by Osama bin Laden. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday the newly released document does not alter the administration's view that it had no specific information on a potential attack and that it was not offered a concrete plan to avert an attack.
The document was declassified April 7, 2004, a day before Rice's testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. It was released recently by the National Security Council to the National Security Archive, a private library of declassified US documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
The meeting on Al Qaeda requested by Clarke did not take place until Sept. 4, 2001.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/wa...d_of_al_qaeda/