Will the 9/11 Commission ignore this story?
Julian Borger, Guardian: A senior terrorism expert said yesterday that he had delivered a final desperate warning of an inevitable terrorist attack to Condoleezza Rice five days before al-Qaida struck New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington. On the eve of the national security
adviser's public appearance today to defend the Bush
administration's record before the commission studying
the September 11 attacks, Gary Hart, a former
Democratic presidential candidate who co-chaired an
earlier three-year public study of the threats to US
security in the 21st century, told the Guardian his
warning had been ignored.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1188133,00.html
Rice faces accusation on eve of testimony
Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday April 8, 2004
The Guardian
A senior terrorism expert said yesterday that he had
delivered a final desperate warning of an inevitable
terrorist attack to Condoleezza Rice five days before
al-Qaida struck New York's World Trade Centre and the
Pentagon in Washington.
On the eve of the national security adviser's public
appearance today to defend the Bush administration's
record before the commission studying the September 11
attacks, Gary Hart, a former Democratic presidential
candidate who co-chaired an earlier three-year public
study of the threats to US security in the 21st
century, told the Guardian his warning had been
ignored.
"She [Rice] said: 'I'll discuss it with the
vice-president'," Mr Hart said; but he felt the
response was a brush-off.
"All I can say is she didn't feel the degree of
urgency I thought was necessary," he said. He said he
has known Ms Rice for 20 years, since she had
volunteered to work on his Colorado Senate campaign.
Ms Rice will speak under oath for more than two hours
to the national commission examining whether more
could have been done to prevent the September 11
attacks. She is expected to make a detailed rebuttal
of the allegations by Richard Clarke, a former White
House chief counter- terrorist adviser, that the Bush
team virtually ignored the al-Qaida threat because of
its fixations on Iraq and strategic missile defence.
Mr Hart's comments add weight to Mr Clarke's argument
and make Ms Rice's task even harder.
Together with Warren Rudman, a veteran Republican
politician, Mr Hart chaired the US commission on
national security/21st century, which was established
by President Bill Clinton in October 1998 and told to
report to the incoming president in early 2001.
That report predicted: "America will become
increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our
homeland [and] Americans will likely die on American
soil, possibly in large numbers."
It recommended a national homeland security agency.
To the surprise of the 14 commissioners, Mr Hart said,
the recommendations were ignored. The post of homeland
security adviser was established in the White House
only after the September 11 attacks.
"We were not just another federal commission. This was
supposed to be - and was - the most comprehensive
review of US national security since 1947," Mr Hart
said in Denver, where he now works for an
international law firm.
He said that in the first week of February 2001 he and
other commissioners briefed Ms Rice, the secretary of
defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and the secretary of state,
Colin Powell, to convey their fears personally.
"They were respectful and attentive, interested in
what we were saying" - but nothing was done .
In early May 2001, when Congress was contemplating
legislation to establish a homeland security agency,
President Bush publicly called on it to shelve the
issue while it was considered by Mr Cheney.
But the senior White House national security officials
did not meet to discuss the terrorist threat until the
first week of September.
"Imagine eight months before Pearl Harbor, an
officially designated group of 14 Americans had told
Roosevelt that the Japanese would attack some place
somewhere and Roosevelt did nothing," Mr Hart said.
He complained that the September 11 commission had not
asked him or his former colleagues to testify.
But Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the commission,
said it had read the Hart-Rudman report, its staff had
talked to some of Mr Hart's fellow commissioners, and
might talk to Mr Hart himself.