Here comes Rice!!!

I wish they'd ask more hard hitting questions like the last guy 1hr. back---listening thru internet streaming.

[Edited on 8-4-2004 by Colonel]

why, so she can dance around and not answer it?

Where can I listen to this online? Is there a transcript anywhere yet?

[Edited on 8-4-2004 by John Nada]

He said he thinks we're heading for Civil War if this continues...John Titor anyone?

Originally posted by John Nada
Where can I listen to this online? Is there a transcript anywhere yet?

[Edited on 8-4-2004 by John Nada]

www.nytimes.com...

You have to register for free.

Uh oh this guy is harsh! I like him!

Go here

www.therandirhodesshow.com...

and hit listen live.

Originally posted by Cutwolf
He said he thinks we're heading for Civil War if this continues...John Titor anyone?

Please don't mention that name around me, I wont be responsible for vomiting on you.

It was a bit of sarcasm

Originally posted by Cutwolf
It was a bit of sarcasm

So was mine.

he called her Dr. Clark lol

"A plan that will eliminate this threat not a response to it"Just said. What kind've name is Condaleeza

Hehehe, her voice is wobbling badly. Clear signs of BS.

Hahaha this guy rocks!

he keeps calling her dr. clark

[Edited on 8-4-2004 by Cutwolf]

nice, he called her a liar to her face. About time. Go Bob!!

Rice quote "Do I look like Dr. Clarke?" LOL

Nothing quite like a bunch of self-righteous people trying to cover their own asses.

What a bunch of scumbags.

Admit the screwup, find out the truth, fix the problems and don't ever let something like 9/11 ever happen again. They at least owe us that.

Published: April 8, 2004


(Page 19 of 19)



RICE: Now, I would be speculating, but if you would like, I will go ahead and speculate to say that one of the problems here was there really was nothing that looked like it was going to happen inside the United States. The threat reporting was -- the specific threat reporting was about external threats: about the Persian Gulf, about Israel, about perhaps the Genoa event. It is just not the case that the August 6th memorandum did anything but put together what the CIA decided that they wanted to put together about historical knowledge about what was going on and a few things about what the FBI might be doing. And so, the light was shining abroad. And if you look at what was going -- I was in constant contact to make sure that those things were getting done with the relevant agencies -- with State, with Defense and so forth.

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GORELICK: Now...

RICE: We just have a different view of this.

GORELICK: Yes, I understand that. But I think it's one thing to talk to George Tenet, but he can't tell domestic agencies what to do. Let me finish.

RICE: Yes.

GORELICK: And it is clear that you were worried about the domestic problem, because, after all, your testimony is you asked Dick Clarke to summons the domestic agencies. Now, you say that -- and I think quite rightly -- that the big problem was systemic, that the FBI could not function as it should, and it didn't have the right methods of communicating with the CIA and vice versa. At the outset of the administration, a commission that was chartered by Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two very different people covering pretty much the political spectrum, put together a terrific panel to study the issue of terrorism and report to the new administration as it began. And you took that briefing, I know. That commission said we are going to get hit in the domestic, the United States, and we are going to get hit big; that's number one. And number two, we have big systemic problems. The FBI doesn't work the way it should, and it doesn't communicate with the intelligence community.

GORELICK: Now, you have said to us that your policy review was meant to be comprehensive. You took your time because you wanted to get at the hard issues and have a hard-hitting, comprehensive policy. And yet there is nothing in it about the vast domestic landscape that we were all warned needed so much attention. Can you give me the answer to the question why?

RICE: I would ask the following. We were there for 233 days. There had been recognition for a number of years before -- after the '93 bombing, and certainly after the millennium -- that there were challenges, if I could say it that way, inside the United States, and that there were challenges concerning our domestic agencies and the challenges concerning the FBI and the CIA. We were in office 233 days. It's absolutely the case that we did not begin structural reform of the FBI. Now, the vice president was asked by the president, and that was tasked in May, to put all of this together and to see if he could put together, from all of the recommendations, a program for protection of the homeland against WMD, what else needed to be done. And in fact, he had hired Admiral Steve Abbot to do that work. And it was on that basis that we were able to put together the Homeland Security Council, which Tom Ridge came to head very, very quickly. But I think the question is, why, over all of these years, did we not address the structural problems that were there, with the FBI, with the CIA, the homeland departments being scattered among many different departments?

RICE: And why, given all of the opportunities that we'd had to do it, had we not done it? And I think that the unfortunate -- and I really do think it's extremely tragic -- fact is that sometimes until there is a catastrophic event that forces people to think differently, that forces people to overcome all customs and old culture and old fears about domestic intelligence and the relationship, that you don't get that kind of change. And I want to say just one more thing, if you don't mind, about the issue of high-level attention. The reason that I asked Andy Card to come with me to that meeting with Dick Clarke was that I wanted him to know -- wanted Dick Clarke to know -- that he had the weight not just of the national security advisor, but the weight of the chief of staff if he needed it. I didn't manage the domestic agencies. No national security advisor does. And not once during this period of time did my very experienced crisis manager say to me, You know, I don't think this is getting done in the agencies. I'd really like you to call them together or make a phone call. In fact, after the fact, on September 15th, what Dick Clarke sent me -- and he was my crisis manager -- what he sent me was a memorandum, or an e-mail that said, After national unity begins to break down -- again, I'm paraphrasing -- people will ask, did we do all that we needed to do to arm the domestic agencies, to warn the domestic agencies and to respond to the possibility of domestic threat? That, I think, was his view at the time. And I have to tell you, I think given the circumstances and given the context and given the structures that we had, we did.

GORELICK: Well, I have lots of other questions on this issue. But I am trying to get out what will probably be my third and last question to you. So if we could move through this reasonably quickly. I was struck by your characterization of the NSPD, the policy that you arrived at at the end of the administration, as having the goal of the elimination of Al Qaida. Because as I look at it -- and I thank you for declassifying this this morning, although I would have liked to have known it a little earlier, but I think people will find this interesting reading -- it doesn't call for the elimination of Al Qaida. And it may be a semantic difference, but I don't think so. It calls for the elimination of the Al Qaida threat. And that's a very big difference, because, to me, the elimination of Al Qaida means you're going to go into Afghanistan and you're going to get them. And as I read it, and as I've heard your public statements recently, there was not, I take it, a decision taken in this document to put U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan to get Al Qaida. Is that correct?

RICE: That is correct.

GORELICK: Now, you have pointed out that in this document there is a tasking to the Defense Department for contingency planning as part of this exercise -- contingency planning, and you've listed the goals of the contingency plans. And you have suggested that this takes the policy, with regard to terrorism for our country, to a new level, a more aggressive level. Were you briefed on Operation Infinite Resolve that was put in place in '98 and updated in the year 2000? Because as I read Infinite Resolve, and as our staff reads Infinite Resolve, it was a plan that had been tasked by the Clinton administration to the Defense Department to develop precisely analogous plans. And it was extant at the time.





Dr. Rice Sounds like hamburber helper food

Testimony of Condoleezza Rice Before 9/11 Commission

Published: April 8, 2004


(Page 20 of 20)



GORELICK: Well, I have lots of other questions on this issue. But I am trying to get out what will probably be my third and last question to you. So if we could move through this reasonably quickly. I was struck by your characterization of the NSPD, the policy that you arrived at at the end of the administration, as having the goal of the elimination of Al Qaida. Because as I look at it -- and I thank you for declassifying this this morning, although I would have liked to have known it a little earlier, but I think people will find this interesting reading -- it doesn't call for the elimination of Al Qaida. And it may be a semantic difference, but I don't think so. It calls for the elimination of the Al Qaida threat. And that's a very big difference, because, to me, the elimination of Al Qaida means you're going to go into Afghanistan and you're going to get them. And as I read it, and as I've heard your public statements recently, there was not, I take it, a decision taken in this document to put U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan to get Al Qaida. Is that correct?

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RICE: That is correct.

GORELICK: Now, you have pointed out that in this document there is a tasking to the Defense Department for contingency planning as part of this exercise -- contingency planning, and you've listed the goals of the contingency plans. And you have suggested that this takes the policy, with regard to terrorism for our country, to a new level, a more aggressive level. Were you briefed on Operation Infinite Resolve that was put in place in '98 and updated in the year 2000? Because as I read Infinite Resolve, and as our staff reads Infinite Resolve, it was a plan that had been tasked by the Clinton administration to the Defense Department to develop precisely analogous plans. And it was extant at the time.


GORELICK: And so I ask you -- and there are many, many places where you indicate there are differences between the Clinton program and yours. This one jumps out at me. Was there a material difference between your view of the military assignment and the Clinton administration's extant plan? And if so, what was it?

RICE: Yes, I think that there were significant differences. First of all, Secretary Rumsfeld, I think, has testified that he was briefed on Infinite Resolve. It would have been highly unusual for me to me to be briefed on military plans were we not, in fact, planning to use them for employment. And so I'm not surprised...

GORELICK: Well, except that you were tasking them -- pardon me for interrupting -- you were tasking the military to do something as part of this seven-and-a-half-month process. So it would strike me as likely that you would have wanted to know what the predicate was.

RICE: We were tasking the secretary of defense, who in fact had been briefed on Infinite Resolve, to develop within the context of a broader strategy military plans that were now linked to certain political purposes. I worked in the Pentagon. I worked for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There are plans and plans and plans. And the problem is that unless those plans are engaged by the civilian leadership on behalf of the president, unless those plans have an adequate political basis and political purpose in mind, those plans simply sit and they in fact rarely get used. Now, the whole tortured history of trying to use military power in support of counterterrorism objectives has been, I think, very admirably and adequately discussed by your staff in the military paper.

RICE: And what is quite clear from that paper is that, from the time of Presidential Directive 62, which keeps the Defense Department focused on force protection and rendition of terrorists and so forth, all the way up through the period when we take office, this issue of military plans and how to use military power with counterterrorism objectives just doesn't get addressed. What we were doing was to put together a policy that brought all of the elements together. It tasked the secretary of defense within the context of a plan that really focused not just on Al Qaida and bin Laden, but also on what we might be able to do against the Taliban. And that gave the kind of regional context that might make it possible to use military force more robustly, to work plans in that context. I think without that context, you're just going to have military plans that never get used. I read Sandy Berger -- or saw Sandy Berger's testimony. He talked about the fact whenever they started to look at the use of military plans, the issue of whether you would get regional cooperation always arose. That was precisely what I was saying, when I said that we had to get the regional context right. I am not going to tell thaw we were looking to invade Afghanistan during that seven months. We were not. But we were looking in the context of a plan that gave you a better regional context that looked to eliminate the Al Qaida threat or Al Qaida that looked to eliminate Taliban support for them -- how to use military power within that context.

KEAN: Last follow-up.

GORELICK: In order to keep us to our schedule, I'll just make this comment, and we'll, I think, profitably follow up with you in a private session. PDD 62, which was the presidential directive in the Clinton administration, was not the only way in which the Defense Department was tasked. I mean, Infinite Resolve went well beyond what you describe PDD 62 as doing. That's number one. And number two, however good it might have been to change the text in which the military planning was ongoing, neither I, nor, I think, our staff, can find any functional difference between the two sets of plans. I'll leave it to my colleagues.

RICE: Well, thank you very much. But I continue to believe that unless you can tell the military in the context what it is they're going after and for what purpose, you're going to have military plans that, every time you ask for the briefing, turn out to be unusable.

GORELICK: I'm sure that this debate will continue.

RICE: Yes.

KEAN: Senator Gorton? GORTON: Before 9/11, did any adviser to you, or to your knowledge to this administration or to its predecessor, counsel the kind of all-out war against the Taliban and Al Qaida in Afghanistan that the United States actually conducted after 9/11?

RICE: No, sir. No one counseled an all-out war against Afghanistan of the kind that we did after 9/11.

This is a transcript

the internet feed went down for me