Uneven Response Seen on Terror in Summer of 2001
The New York Times
April 4, 2004
By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, April 3 - On July 5, 2001, as threats of an impending
terrorist attack against the United States were pouring into Washington,
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Andrew H. Card Jr.,
the president's chief of staff, directed the administration's counterterrorism
office to assemble top officials from many of the country's domestic agencies
for a meeting in the White House Situation Room.
Even though the warnings focused mostly on threats overseas, Ms. Rice and
Mr. Card wanted the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal
Aviation Administration, the Customs Service, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service and other agencies put on alert inside the United
States. Ms. Rice and Mr. Card did not attend the meeting, run by
Richard A. Clarke, the White House counterterrorism coordinator. When the
meeting broke up, several new security advisories were issued,
including an F.A.A. bulletin warning of an increased risk of air hijackings intended
to free terrorists imprisoned in the United States.
That meeting represented a peak moment in the Bush administration's
efforts in the months before Sept. 11, 2001, to prevent a terrorist attack
inside the United States. The issue of whether the meeting and the actions
that preceded and followed it were a reasonable response to the
gathering threat that summer now lies at the heart of the independent
inquiry into the attacks. Ms. Rice will be questioned intensively about
these matters when she appears in public on Thursday for the first time
before the independent commission investigating the 2001 attacks,
members of the commission said.
A review of the Bush administration's deliberations and actions in the
summer of 2001, based on interviews with current and former officials and
an examination of the preliminary findings of the commission, shows
that the White House's impulse to deal more forcefully with terrorist threats
within the United States peaked July 5 and then leveled off until Sept. 11.
The review shows that over that summer, with terror warnings mounting,
the government's response was often scattered and inconsistent as the
new administration struggled to develop a comprehensive strategy
for combating Al Qaeda and other terror organizations.
The warnings during the summer were more dire and more specific
than generally recognized. Descriptions of the threat were communicated
repeatedly to the highest levels within the White House. In more than 40 briefings,
Mr. Bush was told by George J. Tenet, the director of central
intelligence, of threats involving Al Qaeda.
The review suggests that the government never collected in one place
all the information that was flowing into Washington about Al Qaeda and its
interest in using commercial aircraft to carry out attacks, and about extremist
groups' interest in pilot training. A Congressional inquiry into
intelligence activities before Sept. 11 found 12 reports over a seven-year
period suggesting that terrorists might use airplanes as weapons.
There were also no specific new military plans for attacking Qaeda forces
or the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Pentagon's priorities that
summer were developing a national missile defense plan and
conducting a broad strategy and budget review. Military planners had previously
offered a comprehensive plan to incorporate military, economic, diplomatic
and political activities to pressure the Taliban to expel Al Qaeda's
leader, Osama bin Laden. But the plan was never acted on by either
the Clinton or Bush administrations.
Money for fighting terrorism had to be justified against an array of
other priorities, from tax cuts and education to missile defense. The White
House Office of Management and Budget said in a report in August 2001
that counterterrorism programs were having difficulty competing.
Mr. Clarke described the summer of 2001 in his new book, "Against All Enemies,"
and in testimony last month before the commission. He said it
was a time when his own Counterterrorism Security Group within the
White House was at battle stations, but the broader policy deliberations
continued at what he viewed as a plodding pace. Ms. Rice has said
in interviews and recent exchanges with reporters that Mr. Clarke's description
was wrong and that the White House had energetically sought to respond
to terrorist threats as it moved to prepare its strategy to deal with Al
Qaeda.
Ms. Rice has said that Mr. Clarke offered a more positive assessment
of White House actions in a note he sent her on Sept. 15, 2001, four days
after the attacks. Mr. Clarke said in the note, "When the era of national unity
begins to crack in the near future, it is possible that some will start
asking questions like, did the White House do a good job of making sure
that intelligence about terrorist threats got to the F.A.A. and other
domestic law enforcement authorities." He added, "We convened on 5 July
a special meeting of federal law enforcement agencies because we could
not rule out the possibility that the attack would come in the United States."
`A Stressful Summer'
C.I.A. Warnings
With an Overseas Focus
On March 7, 2001, President Bush's national security team,
cautioned by C.I.A. officials and departing aides to President Bill Clinton that
terrorism would be a serious problem, met for the first time to begin
a broad review of the government's approach to Al Qaeda and Afghanistan.
Stephen Hadley, Ms. Rice's deputy, told the Congressional committee,
"The goal was to move beyond the policy of containment, criminal
prosecution and limited retaliation for specific attacks, toward attempting to roll back Al Qaeda."
Other aides said in interviews that the approach was two-pronged
and included a crisis warning effort to deal with immediate threats and
longer-range planning by senior officials to put into place a comprehensive
strategy to eradicate Al Qaeda.
Mr. Clarke was in charge of responding to immediate threats, one senior
official said. He had been counterterrorism chief in the Clinton
administration, and Ms. Rice had decided to keep him in the job
because she wanted continuity. "It was because everyone respected Dick Clarke
and knew he was a pile driver," the official said.
The warnings began almost immediately. In March, the C.I.A. said
that "a group of bin Laden operatives was planning to conduct an unspecified
attack in the United States in April 2001. One operative allegedly resided
in the United States," according to the Congressional report.
The C.I.A. warnings created what the Congressional report called "a stressful summer."
Between May and July, the National Security Agency,
which eavesdrops on communications around the world, reported 33 messages
suggesting "a possibly imminent terrorist attack," according to the
Congressional report, without providing details.
Some warnings seemed highly credible. One intelligence report in May
indicated that Mr. bin Laden's followers were planning to infiltrate the
United States from Canada to carry out an attack using high explosives - a
report that resonated with the arrest in December 1999 of Ahmed
Ressam, who was caught with explosive chemicals trying to enter the country near Seattle.
In June, a C.I.A. report said that important operatives in the bin Laden network
were "disappearing" and that others were preparing for
"martyrdom." In July, the agency was told about an unidentified source
who had recently been in Afghanistan. The source had reported, "Everyone
is talking about an impending attack."
Ms. Rice said that Mr. Tenet delivered many of the warnings directly
to Mr. Bush. "The president was briefed by George Tenet at least 40-some -
40-plus of his briefings dealt in one way or another with Al Qaeda,
or the Al Qaeda threat," she said on March 24 in a meeting with reporters. Mr.
Tenet has said none of the warnings indicated that extremists planned
to fly hijacked commercial aircraft into buildings in the United States.
The warnings seemed to have little impact on the broader policy
reappraisal that continued through the summer. By June, a draft of a presidential
directive authorizing an ambitious covert action plan was circulating
through the upper echelons of the administration, but there seemed little
urgency about putting the plan into effect.
At midsummer, with the bulk of the warnings focused overseas,
Mr. Bush's national security aides ratcheted up efforts to protect American
interests abroad. The C.I.A. identified 30 locations that might be targets
of an attack and sought to disrupt groups of Qaeda followers. The State
Department issued warnings to American travelers abroad.
Mr. Bush's advisers also brought together the leaders of domestic agencies.
Ms. Rice said that she brought them in on July 5, 2001. "Let's make
sure they're buttoning down," she recalled saying. One senior administration
official who attended the meeting of the domestic agencies said the
urgent tone of the summer meetings was clear.
On July 6, Mr. Clarke sent Ms. Rice a previously undisclosed e-mail message
outlining a number of steps agreed on at the meeting, including
efforts to examine the threat of weapons of mass destruction and possible attacks
in Latin America. One senior administration official said Mr.
Clarke wrote that several agencies, including the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the Pentagon,
had been directed to develop what the official said were
"detailed response plans in the event of three to five simultaneous attacks."
Most officials still believed an attack would be aimed at Saudi Arabia or Israel.
One senior F.B.I. official predicted there was a "98 percent"
probability of an attack overseas. But the bureau, which had issued an
advisory on July 2, and the F.A.A., which had issued a warning on June 22,
issued still more advisories after the July 5 meeting.
By July, most of the 19 hijackers who later took part in the Sept. 11
attacks had arrived in the United States, as plans for the hijacking,
meticulously prepared in Germany and elsewhere for nearly three years,
were coming to a final phase, without the knowledge of either the C.I.A.
or the F.B.I.
After the July 5 meeting, Ms. Rice has said, Mr. Bush continued to ask about
any evidence of a domestic attack. C.I.A. officials have said they
decided to prepare a briefing on the possibility of Qaeda operations inside the United State,
including the use of aircraft in terror attacks.
That briefing, on Aug. 6 at Mr. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., was mostly
"historical in nature" and described past efforts to use aircraft in
"hijackings for ransom," rather than as weapons, said one official who has read the briefing material.
As summer wore on, the policy review remained unfinished. In part,
Bush officials have said, they were vexed by diplomatic issues related to
Pakistan and debated a combination of threats and incentives intended
to compel Pakistani leaders to take a tougher stance toward the Taliban.
It was not until Sept. 10 that a group of officials approved a three-phase
strategy that became part of the presidential directive on Al Qaeda,
including a fourfold financing increase for classified operations.
But even then, there seemed little sense of urgency, although it called for the
president to be updated every 120 days and advised senior officials
to make terrorism a top priority. The directive envisioned a three- to five-year
plan. It outlined a diplomatic mission to the Taliban and increased
diplomatic pressure along with covert action. It envisioned military strikes, but
only as a last resort.
Competing for Dollars
Limited Resources
And Counterterrorism
As it was developing a new policy, the Bush White House was
also taking a hard look at the government's existing counterterrorism programs in
the summer of 2001. Between 1998 and 2001, the last fiscal year for which
President Clinton submitted a budget, counterterrorism spending
across all government agencies grew by more than 50 percent, to $9.7 billion.
But the Bush administration slowed the growth of many programs,
and began looking at how to impose a strategic plan on a budget that until then
had been driven largely by events and rapidly evolving threats.
In August 2001, the White House's Office of Management and Budget noted
that "in our environment of constrained resources, critical programs to
combat terrorism have difficulty competing with" traditional programs in
agencies throughout the government "until an emergency throws them
into the spotlight." In the report, issued just weeks before the attacks
led the administration and Congress to pour huge new sums of money into
fighting terrorism and improving domestic security, Mr. Bush proposed
a 7 percent increase in overall spending on counterterrorism programs, a
larger increase than was proposed for any cabinet department or agency
other than education. The proposal included a $245 million increase in
the 2002 budget to protect American embassies.
The report also called for a $6.6 million program to improve intelligence
collection at ports of entry; an additional $10 million, for a total of $76.7
million, to help state and local authorities learn to detect biological warfare
agents; and a $17.3 million increase for a program to help purchase
special equipment for fire departments, emergency medical services
and law enforcement agencies, bringing the cost to $126.7 million.
But on Capitol Hill, the administration put relatively little political
capital behind its proposals, choosing instead to emphasize its plan for a missile
defense system.
When Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who was then chairman
of the Armed Services Committee, sought to transfer money to
counterterrorism from the missile defense program, Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld sent a letter on Sept. 6 2001, , saying he would urge
Mr. Bush to veto the measure. Mr. Levin nonetheless pushed the measure
through the next day on a party-line vote.
Behind the scenes, top officials were developing a plan for a fourfold
increase in spending on classified programs to fight terrorism. White House
officials said the substantial increases in overall counterterrorism spending
in Mr. Bush's first budget showed that the issue was a top priority for
the administration before Sept. 11.
"What the record demonstrates is a substantial and sustained commitment
to combatting terrorism," said Joel Kaplan, deputy director of the Office
of Management and Budget.
Military Options
Missile Defense
And Other Priorities
In the summer of 2001, the military was focused on priorities other than terrorism.
Mr. Rumsfeld, still waiting to fill several top civilian positions, including a
top counterterrorism aide, was consumed with completing a broad
strategic review of defense policies, updating war plans and developing
the national missile defenses.
In private testimony to the commission, Douglas J. Feith, a senior policy aide,
said his first assignment upon arriving in July had been to work on
renouncing the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The military was also seeking to toughen the no-fly operations over southern
and northern Iraq, deal with the forcing down of a Navy spy plane by
China in April, and review options to cut the number of American troops
in Kosovo and Bosnia.
The military's main concern related to terrorism that summer was increasing
protection for troops, ships and bases worldwide, a fear underscored
in October 2000 when Qaeda operatives attacked the destroyer Cole in
Yemen, killing 17 sailors.
In June 2001, American forces in the Persian Gulf region were placed on
heightened alert because of the threat of terrorist attacks. Six ships from
the Navy's Fifth Fleet stationed in Bahrain were put out to sea, out of harm's way.
The broad quadrennial policy review Mr. Rumsfeld conducted in the months
before the attacks was aimed in part at addressing a major
shortcoming: the Defense Department was not organized or trained adequately
to deal with what the military called asymmetric threats, including
terrorist attacks at home or abroad. Yet Mr. Rumsfeld spent little time on
terrorism issues, aides said in interviews. Counterterrorism officials in
the Pentagon told the commission that Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides
"were not especially interested" in their agenda.
Military options against Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts were limited and sketchy,
covering a broad array of options: inserting ground troops,
ordering air strikes, attacking with ship-based cruise missiles.
But the Pentagon was painfully aware that Afghanistan was 8,000 miles from the
United States, a landlocked nation surrounded by neighbors, like Pakistan,
that were unwilling to support military operations against the Taliban.
No specific plans were developed before Sept. 11.
The military had offered a more comprehensive proposal. Just before
the change of administrations, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, prepared a plan to incorporate military,
economic, diplomatic and political activities to pressure the Taliban to
expel Osama bin Laden.
It was never acted on. The Bush White House deferred a recommendation
by Mr. Clarke to aid the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, calling it
premature and saying it excluded Pashtun tribes in the south.
Staff reports issued by the commission indicated that Mr. Rumsfeld
had done nothing to order up new military plans, though his deputy, Paul H.
Wolfowitz, was told by Mr. Hadley in June that the Pentagon would need
to start preparing a fresh approach.
Defense officials said this week that Mr. Rumsfeld had wanted to wait
for Mr. Bush to approve the policy review before ordering new military
options. "To say that the secretary, on his own dime, was going to order a
plan to root out Al Qaeda would have been putting the cart before the
horse," said Larry Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman.
David E. Sanger, Richard W. Stevenson and Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting for this article.
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