Blame game: the Democrats' search for 9/11 'contradictions'

National Review, May 3, 2004 by Byron York

IN the weeks since former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke began promoting his anti-Bush book, Against All Enemies, it has become commonplace for the president's critics to say there are "contradictions" or "inconsistencies" in the Bush administration's defense of its actions in the days leading up to the 9/11 attacks. The talk became so intense that Thomas Kean, the Republican chairman of the 9/11 investigating commission, virtually demanded that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice testify "under the penalty of perjury." The New York Times reported that the chairman was moved to act because of "discrepancies" between Rice's statements and Clarke's.

Yet after Rice testified, Clarke himself declared, "I don't see that there are a lot of factual problems with what Dr. Rice said." Appearing on ABC News, where he is a paid analyst, Clarke added, "There were one or two minor points here or there that I think are probably wrong. But overall, I think she corroborated what I said."

Given all the accusations that had been made, a fair-minded observer might be moved to ask, "What's going on? Are there contradictions, or not?" And the answer is, mostly not. To begin with, much of the arguing about contradictions and discrepancies was simply rhetorical. Arguing from the same set of facts, administration critics said Bush did not do enough to fight terrorism before 9/11, while the president's defenders said he did. Other controversies involved more invective than argument, as when Clarke, making the rounds of TV talk shows, said, "President Bush did nothing [about terrorism] prior to September 11." No one who was trying to seriously portray the administration's position on terrorism would have said that.

Still, some of the talk of "contradictions" was based in fact, or at least what appeared to be fact. Much of the controversy stemmed from a story that appeared in the Washington Post in late March headlined, "Neither Silent Nor a Public Witness; Presidential Adviser Rice Becomes a 9/11 Focal Point as Contradictions Appear." Reporters Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank listed a number of apparent conflicts between statements Rice had made and those made by Clarke and other administration officials. The top three "contradictions" involved conflicting answers to the following questions: 1) Did the White House's pre-9/11 antiterrorism policy include military options? 2) Did the now-famous August 6, 2001, briefing of the president about al-Qaeda come as a result of Bush's questions, or was it brought to him unbidden by worried CIA officials? And 3) Was the administration's war planning for Iraq done at the expense of the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan?

First, the military strategy. In an op-ed in the Washington Post on March 22, Rice wrote that "our [pre-9/11] 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." But when Jamie Gorelick, a Democratic member of the 9/11 commission, asked State Department official Richard Armitage if that was true, Armitage said, "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11."

Some of the president's opponents quickly seized Armitage's statement as evidence that Rice had lied, but it appears Rice was correct. When she appeared before the commission, Rice made public parts of the still-classified National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD), the anti-terrorism plan that was ready for Bush's signature shortly before 9/11. The NSPD directed the secretary of defense to "ensure that the contingency planning process include plans: against al-Qaeda and associated terrorist facilities in Afghanistan, including leadership, commandcontrol-communications, training, and logistics facilities; against Taliban targets in Afghanistan, including leadership, command-control, air and air defense, ground forces, and logistics; to eliminate weapons of mass destruction which al-Qaeda and associated terrorist groups may acquire or manufacture, including those stored in underground bunkers." That was a significant change from President Clinton's anti-terror plan, which called on the military mostly to help with logistics in the law-enforcement fight against terrorism. Once Rice released the actual words of the Bush directive, accusations of "contradictions" on the issue disappeared.

Next, the August 6, 2001, briefing of the president. The question was whether concerned CIA officials tried to warn a basically unworried president about the threat of terrorism, or whether the president himself wanted answers about alQaeda. In her private meeting with the commission in February, Rice said the briefing came about because the president had asked questions. But on March 24, Democratic commissioner Richard Ben Veniste said the commission had learned from the CIA itself that the briefing "was initiated by individuals within the CIA and not as a direct request from the national security adviser."