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 Condoleezza Rice Briefing On Pre-9/11 Intelligence May 16, 2002 1618EDT RICE: Good afternoon. I'm going to give you a chronology of the events that occurred during the spring and summer of 2001, but I want to start with a little definitional work. When we talk about threats, they come in many varieties. Very often we have uncorroborated information. Sometimes we have corroborated but very general information. But I can tell you that it is almost never the case that we have information that is specific as to time, place or method of attack. In the period starting in December 2000, the intelligence community started reporting increase in traffic concerning terrorist activities. In the April-May time frame, there was specific threat reporting about Al Qaeda attacks against U.S. targets or interests that might be in the works. Now, there was a clear concern that something was up, that something was coming, but it was principally focused overseas. The areas of most concern were the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and Europe. In the June time frame, arrests for the millennium plot--there was testimony by the participants in the millennium plot that Abu Zubaydah had said that there might be interest in attacking the United States. And this comes out of testimony that was there as a result of the millennium plot. And then on June 26, there was a threat spike, and as a result, again focusing overseas, the State Department issued a worldwide caution. Again, that was June 26, and you probably remember that caution. Now, the FAA was also concerned of threats to U.S. citizens, such as airline hijackings, and therefore issued an information circular that--and an information circular goes out to private carriers from law enforcement--saying that we have a concern. The areas of most concern were the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and Europe. In the June time frame, arrests for the millennium plot--there was testimony by the participants in the millennium plot that Abu Zubaydah had said that there might be interest in attacking the United States. And this comes out of testimony that was there as a result of the millennium plot. That was a June 22 information circular. At the end of June, there was a status of threat and action meeting that the--what we call the counterterrorism security group. It is a group that is interagency, that meets under the direction of an NSC special assistant, Dick Clarke at that time. There was a meeting that and Dick Clarke reported to me that steps were being taken by the CSG. On July 2, as a result of some of that work, the FBI released a message saying that, there are threats to be worried about overseas, but we cannot--while we cannot foresee attacks domestically, we cannot rule them out. This is an inlet (ph). And again, an inlet (ph) goes out to law enforcement from the FBI. On July 2, the FAA issued another IC saying that, Ressam--again associated with the millennium plot--said that there was an intention of using explosives in an airport terminal. This was a very specific IC. On July 5, the threat reporting had become sufficiently robust, though, not, again, very specific, but sufficiently robust. There was a lot of chatter in the system. That in his morning meeting, the president asked me to go back and to see what was being done about all of the chatter that was there. Andy Card and I met that afternoon with Dick Clarke, and Dick Clarke informed us that he had already had a meeting of the CSG Core Group, and that he was holding another meeting that afternoon that would be focused on threats and that would bring the domestic agencies into the CSG. On July 6, the CSG core players met again, because there was concern about--very high concern--about potential attacks in past Turkey, Rome, and they acted to go so far as to suspend nonessential travel of U.S. counterterrorism staff. So this is a period in which, again, of potential attacks overseas were heightened enough that there was almost daily meeting now, sometimes twice a day, of either the CSG or it's subgroups. Contingency planning was done on how to deal with multiple simultaneous attacks around the world. The period in mid-July was a point of another major threat spike. And it all related to the G-8 summit that was coming up. And in fact, there was specific threat information about the president. There was a lot of work done with liaison on services abroad. In fact, the CIA went on what I think you would call a full-court press to try and deal with these potential attacks and, indeed, managed, through these intelligence activities and liaison activities, to disrupt attacks in Paris, Turkey, and Rome. On July 18, the FAA issued another IC saying that there were ongoing terrorist threats overseas, and that, although there were no specific threats directed at civil aviation, they told the airlines, ;We urge you to use the highest level of caution.'' On July 18, also, the FBI issued another inlet on the millennium plot conviction, reiterating its July 2 message, saying ;We're concerned about threats as a result of the millennium plot conviction.'' At the end of July, the FAA issued another IC which said, ;There's no specific target, no credible info of attack to U.S. civil aviation interests, but terror groups are known to be planning and training for hijackings, and we ask you therefore to use caution.'' Throughout July and August, several times a week, there were meetings of the CSG reviewing the information at hand. There was no specific new information that came in in that period of time, after the end of July and sort of in August, leading up to September. But the agencies were still at a heightened state of alert, particularly overseas. I think, the military actually had dropped its state of alert. But everybody was still on a heightened state of alert. On August 1, the FBI issued another inlet on the upcoming third East Africa bombing anniversary and, again, reiterated the message that had been in the July 2 inlet. Now, on August 6, the president received a presidential daily briefing which was not a warning briefing but an analytic report. This analytic report, which did not have warning information in it of the kind that said, ;They are talking about an attack against so forth or so on,'' it was an analytic report that talked about UBL's methods of operation, talked about what he had done historically, in 1997, in 1998. It mentioned hijacking, but hijacking in the traditional sense and, in a sense, said that the most important and most likely thing was that they would take over an airliner, holding passengers and demand the release of one of their operatives. And the blind sheik was mentioned by name, even though he's not an operative of Al Qaeda, but as somebody who might be bargained in this way. I want to reiterate: It was not a warning. There was no specific time, place or method mentioned. What you have seen in the run-up that I've talked about is that the FAA was reacting to the same kind of generalized information about a potential hijacking as a method that Al Qaeda might employ, but no specific information saying that they were planning such an attack at a particular time. There is one other FAA IC in this period issued on August 16, where the FAA issued an IC on disguised weapons. They were concerned about some reports that the terrorists had made breakthroughs in cell phones, key chains and pens as weapons. There are a number of other ICs that were also issued. We don't think they were germane to this, but I'm sure you can get the full record of all of the ICs that were released from Transportation. I want to reiterate that, during this time, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence was that this was an attack that was likely to take place overseas. The State Department, the Defense Department were on very high states of alert. The embassies have very clear protocols on how to button up. So does the military. That was done, But at home, while there was much less reporting or chatter about something at home, people were thinking about the U.S. And the FBI was involved in a number of investigations of potential Al Qaeda personnel operating in the United States. That's my opening, and I'll take questions. QUESTION: Why didn't the American public know about these facts before they got on planes in the summer and the fall of last year? RICE: It is always, as you've learned since September 11, a question of how good the information is and whether or not putting the information out is a responsible thing to do. I've emphasized that this was the most generalized kind of information: There was no time, there was no place, there was no method of attack. It simply said, these are people who train and seem to talk possibly about hijackings. That you would have risked shutting down the American civil aviation system with such generalized information, I think, you would have had to think five, six, seven times about that, very, very hard. Steps were taken. And I'm sure security steps were taken. But you have to realize that when you're dealing with something this general, there's a limit to the amount that you can do. Again, the FAA asked security personnel, ground personnel, to have a heightened state of alert, because there were tensions in the Middle East. QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) RICE: There were tensions that were leading to terrorists who had sympathies with those Middle East events. There were various trials going on, and it was the association with all that was going on that said, ;Look, these are people who talk from time-to-time about--and train for hijacking, you should take a look at your security procedures and, you know, and try to respond.'' But this was very generalized information. QUESTION: Specifically, after this August 6 analytic report briefing that the president had, what did he do, what did other people in the administration do? What did he make of it? What action was taken? And why didn't he ever tell the American people about it? RICE: Well, the action was being taken. Because if you notice what is briefed to him in kind of a summary way--and I should say, he had said to his briefer, ;I'd like you from time to time to time to give me summaries of what you know about potential attacks.'' And this was an analytic piece that tried to bring together several threads--''In 1997, they talked about this,'' ;In 1998 they talked about that,'' ;It's been known that maybe they want to try and release the blind sheik.'' I mean, that was the character of it. And so the actions were being taken in response to the generalized information that was being reported here, too. And the president was aware that there were ongoing efforts that were being taken. QUESTION: Any specific information just prior to August 6 that raised concerns about hijacking of U.S. planes? RICE: Again, this was generalized information that put together the fact that there were terrorist groups who were unhappy things that were going on in the Middle East as well as Al Qaeda operatives, which we've been watching for a long time, that there was more chatter than usual and that we knew that they were people who might try a hijacking. But, you know, again, that terrorism and hijacking might be associated is not rocket science. QUESTION: Why shouldn't this be seen as an intelligence failure, that you were unable to predict something happening here? RICE: I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking. You take a plane--people were worried they might blow one up, but they were mostly worried that they might try to take a plane and use it for release of the blind sheik or some of their own people. But I think that there is always a fine balance, but even in retrospect, even in hindsight, there was nothing in what was briefed to the president that would suggest that you would go out and say to the American people, ;Look, I just read that terrorists might hijack an aircraft.'' They've been--they talk about hijacking an aircraft once in a while but have no specifics about when, where, under what circumstances. QUESTION: This analytic report that the president received, sounds like it wasn't his ordinary morning brief. Was it something that he had requested because of the various elements that had come up? Was it something you had requested? And was the hijacking mentioned here based on any new intelligence that had been developed between these meetings that you mentioned in July 5-6 time frame? Or was it simply--did it come out of the Philippines experience? RICE: It was actually summarizing the kind of intelligence that they'd been acting on--I mean, I think it's a little strong to actually call it intelligence--the interpretation that was there that these were people who might try hijacking. It was--very often, as a part of his normal brief, he will get things that have been prepared for him because he's asked for a specific kind of document. RICE: And as I said, he frequently says, ;You know, I'd like to see everything you know about X,'' or ;I'd like you to summarize,'' because as you can imagine you get intelligence in little snippets. It's helpful from time to time to put it together. QUESTION: And does this also include then the unified FBI findings because, of course, the Phoneix Memo had been through the FBI in July. Did it include concerns about Moussaoui, and how much did this bring in the other agencies? RICE: This did not include the issues that you've just talked about. It did not. QUESTION: Was that a failure to your mind? Should it have? RICE: Let me just speak to the Moussaoui and the so-called Phoenix memorandum. As you might imagine, a lot of things are prepared within agencies. They're distributed internally. They're worked internally. It's unusual that anything like that would get to the president. He doesn't recall seeing anything. I don't recall seeing anything of this kind. QUESTION: How about Phoenix or on Moussaoui? RICE: On either--prior to September 11. But I've asked George Tenet, and I've asked Bob Mueller, and I've asked my own people to spend some time really going in depth and seeing whether or not it was possible that it got to the president. QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) had suggested that the information about hijackings was so vague and so general, that you could read it from the podium without any danger to sources and methods. Could you read us those couple of lines about hijackings? RICE: I'm not going to read you the couple of lines, but I will tell that it was very vague. The one piece that had any texture at all was that it might be for the purpose of freeing an operative like the blind sheik. But again, most of what people were acting on was, these were terrorists groups that who were dissatisfied. RICE: We had reasons to believe that there was more chatter, more talk of attacks. Hijackings seemed one possibility. They train and seem to be interested in that, but nothing more specific than that. QUESTION: I've been led to believe that hijacking was actually a minor part of that briefing. You're suggesting it was an analytical look at all of the kinds of things that Al Qaeda was considering and working on. RICE: I would say that most of it was actually historical. It was not a catalogue of ;They might use this, they might use this, they might use this, they might use that.'' That was not the character. But it was mostly historical, going back to things that happened in '97, things that happened in '98, kind of methods of operation in the embassy bombings, might they return to some of those methods. It was that kind of thing. QUESTION: Two questions. No discussions at all then in this analytical briefing about either the information during the investigation in the Philippines about possibly flying a plane into the CIA building or the investigation overseas about possibly flying a plane into the Eiffel Tower? No analytical information discussing those operations at all? And, B, you know that you would not be here today if it weren't eight months after the attack we hear for the first time that, even a general sense, the word ;hijacking'' and ;Al Qaeda'' was before the president prior to September 11. Why is it that in all the questioning of administration officials--the president, the vice president, yourself and others--did you have any hint, did you have any clue, that nobody simply said, ;You know, we didn't. There was this general talk once of hijacking, but we looked into it, it had nothing to do with this, there was no connection.'' RICE: This all came out as a result of our preparations to help the committees on the Hill that are getting ready to review the events. It wasn't, you know, frankly, it didn't pop to the front of people's minds, because it's one report among very, very many that you get. And so it's out of that review that it became clear that this was there. I will say that, again, hijacking before 9-11 and hijacking after 9-11 do mean two very, very different things. MORE... |
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