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April 09, 2004

Condi Speaks

I'm reviewing the transcript of Condoleeza Rice's remarks and questioning before the 9/11 Commission yesterday, and I thought I'd post a few observations about the hearing and the commissioners.

Commissioner Ben-Veniste, based on what I saw yesterday and read today, would do the country a favor by recusing himself. He had a very limited time to ask questions (about which more later), and he chose to use that time asking questions intended to advance his political viewpoint rather than advancing the Commission's understanding of the events leading up to 9/11. His first question wasn't too bad, although he spent entirely too much time prefacing it; still, it's not unfair to ask if Rice briefed the President about existing al Qaeda cells inside the United States. Question two, on the other hand, was pure political posturing. Ben-Veniste has seen the 6 August PDB, and he therefore knows if it warned of possible attacks inside the United States. And apparently it doesn't, because he didn't contradict Rice when she told him it did no such thing, although he didn't want to hear that because he was more interested in getting the apparently-damning report title ("Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States") than in actually gaining any substantive information. (The administration decision to declassify this report is probably a wise one, as long as it doesn't reveal sources or methods. If it says what Rice claims, Ben-Veniste will be confirmed as nothing but a partisan hack.) Question three has Ben-Veniste again returning to the title of the report, as if the title is more relevant to resolving questions than the substance of the report, but other than that the best he can do is that the report about Bin Laden provided no reassuring information, but there were no specifics about pending attacks. What a scoop! Then Ben-Veniste wants to know if the President was alarmed or motivated to take action by this report. Now I suppose it's possible that the report, if it's put into the public sphere, will show that it should have, but right now we're dealing strictly with innuendo and feelings. Isn't it a little more important to ask what actions were taken, rather than if people were worried? Ben-Veniste's final question isn't terrible, but it is awfully silly. If the President had pushed for the CIA and FBI to push any information about terrorism to their respective directors, Tenet and Freeh would have been overwhelmed. Ben-Veniste would have done a lot better to address the systemic question of how we can better structure our intelligence agencies to catch information that we missed at the time. But I have no confidence, based on Ben-Veniste's questions, that he really is as interested in solving problems as he is in fixing blame.

Commissioner Fielding, on the other hand, seems to be going in the right direction. He asks what the administration did prior to 9/11 to address the structural problems inherent in intelligence-gathering. Here Rice basically tries to excuse the administration because they'd only been in office for 233 days. While that's true, I don't see anything in Rice's testimony that suggests the administration was on track to make the necessary changes even if 9/11 had not occurred. She confirms this herself when she notes the problem is not solved yet. Nor am I convinced, based on her testimony, that the right changes are likely to be made in the future, although perhaps she was just offering a one-over-the-world look at the changes. Still, this is one of the most important issues in intelligence, and I have yet to see any evidence the administration is doing the right things to fix the problems. Fielding next gets into the question of whether enough attention was paid to the threat spike during the summer of 2001, when the administration did not convene principals' meetings to address the threat. Donald Sensing points out that principals' meetings aren't all they're cracked up to be, but I'll offer a slightly contrarian view. While the principals often are more a factor of oversight, when they do meet about something, it does send a message to everyone about what they consider important. When you convene the Cabinet to talk about homeland security, for example, people in those agencies understand that the President is hearing about what's happening in that area, and so they can safely conclude he thinks it's important. So there is some value to principals' meetings, if they're used properly, and I therefore don't think Fielding was wrong to ask the question. But I think Rice is correct that shaking the trees still harder wasn't likely to provide the break necessary to stop the attacks. Armed Liberal takes a look at where the rubber meets the road in homeland defense; hint: it's not in the Oval Office.

Commissioner Gorelick hammers away again on the question of principals, which I think was a waste of her limited time, but I can understand the frustration. It's hard to accept that the President still only gets 24 hours a day to work, and so his time ends up being very carefully apportioned among everyone who's demanding it. And sometimes he ends up spending too much time in the wrong places, and not enough with the appropriate people. Gorelick has something when she asks why the President wasn't talking more with the director of the FBI when the U.S. was facing a domestic threat. Indeed, this is probably the first piece of really interesting and valuable information to come out of this hearing, which is a little sad. Rice once again falls back on 'only 233 days,' but while it's true that some things are going to slip through the cracks, it seems Rice needs to either explain why it wasn't necessary to expedite the reforms of the FBI (a tough assignment in the wake of 9/11), or admit that the adminstration's priorities were wrong in this case. Gorelick's final question seems to simply ask if the Bush administration was making any substantive changes to existing Clinton administration plans regarding Afghanistan. I'm not convinced of the value of this, although I suppose it can be argued that, if the plans already existed, the Bush administration could have put them into effect faster, but in the case of military intervention in Afghanistan, this seems implausible. I think Gorelick probably could have asked a better final question.

Commissioner Gorton seems to ask the question that I think sums up the fundamental error (although it is an understandable one) of the Bush administration: didn't they think there was more time to deal with the problem? The answer to that question should be a simple one: yes. If they thought al Qaeda was a bigger problem, they would have brought more resources to bear against it. Instead they viewed it as more problem among many, and so it only received a share of the administration's attention. As Rice notes, the administration had (and has) to address a number of issues, and determining how to best balance available time and issues is probably the biggest challenge of any administration. Now the real question is, was the amount of time the administration devoted to fighting terrorism appropriate based on what they knew prior to 9/11? Unfortunately, Gorton goes off on questions about how the administration approached the problem of the Taliban. Certainly in retrospect the administration would have been wise to go after al Qaeda's bases prior to 9/11 but that would have been political suicide prior to the attacks, so I don't see much value in the Commission focusing on it. It certainly raises the question of whether Gorton isn't playing politics from the other side of the aisle, trying to justify the administration's invasion of Iraq by pointing out the potential value in hitting Afghanistan prior to 9/11. Gorton then asks about whether al Qaeda hasn't hit the U.S. again since 9/11 because they're really damaged, or because they just believe it's easier for them to strike other targets. This is a good question, but it seems a bit outside the Commission's mandate.

Commissioner Kerrey kicks off his remarks with some questioning of our tactics in Iraq. He may be right, but once again this really isn't part of the Commission's mandate, and since he only had ten minutes to question Rice, I don't understand his logic in trying to turn the conversation to Iraq. He then starts grinding Rice about 'swatting flies' and the Bush administration's failure to respond to the USS Cole bombing. On the one hand I can sympathize with those who point out that the Cole was bombed on President Clinton's watch, but on the other hand, since Clinton failed to respond in the time he had available, I think it's fair to ask why the Bush administration didn't respond. Rice's response was, of course, an effective one from a political standpoint, using Kerrey's own past words against him. She also brings up a valid point, that Bush wanted to try to actually eliminate the threat, rather than simply conduct another tit-for-tat reprisal as had been the norm under the Clinton administration. I certainly subscribe to that argument, but I would like to see more evidence that the Bush administration was, in fact, involved in putting together such a plan. Be that as it may, Kerrey then puts forward the thesis that the 9/11 conspiracy could have been rolled up if only the information about Moussaoui and the possibility of al Qaeda personnel training at U.S. flight schools had been placed on Intelink. That's a pretty damning accusation, but the question of the system problem of information transfer between CIA and FBI is certainly a big issue. A more interesting revelation is Kerrey's claim that the FBI had signs of preparations for hijackings. That's a lot more damning, and I suspect that the White House is going to have to face many more very tough (and deservedly so) questions regarding government preparations for potential hijackings. Unfortunately, the All in all, I don't see Kerrey angling for a VP slot or playing heavy politics in his questioning, though, despite what others have said. His initial statement was of questionable value, and his banter with Rice regarding his memo was wasted time (though understandable), but I thought he brought out some good points. Rice handled his questions reasonably well, but there needs to be a lot more investigation of what the FBI knew prior to the attacks.

Reading Commissioner Lehman's laundry list of questions, I'm pleased to see that the Commission does appear to be gathering a lot of data regarding the many flaws in government policies and practices prior to the attacks. Since I believe that the government still does a lot of security-related things poorly, this is a hopeful sign that the Commission may prove to be of great value in our quest to make the government more effective. Although reading some of his questions, it's infuriating to see that the focus is still, too often, on silly security measures ("Were you aware that the FAA up until 9/11 thought it was perfectly permissible to allow four-inch knife blades aboard?" And it still should be. The real problem on 9/11 was that the airlines were told to cooperate with the hijackers, not that the hijackers had weapons.) Lehman's close seemed rather political to me as well, giving Rice a platform to justify the actions the administration has taken since 9/11. This shouldn't be a forum for that.

Commissioner Roemer asks about the question of resignations in the wake of 9/11, continuing a trend of Commissioners asking questions that are valid, but not necessarily what they're being paid to investigate. It is an interesting question, though, as I've often wondered what it would take to get the President to actually fire someone, since 9/11 didn't do it. Roemer also asks why Clarke didn't get an opportunity to brief the President about terrorism. I guess this is a bone of contention between Clarke and the administration, but I'm not convinced that a briefing would have solved the problems we had prior to 9/11 (particularly when Clarke himself says that, even if all his recommendations had been followed, 9/11 would still have happened). Roemer also comes back to the question of the principals' meetings, which I've already discussed. I'll just add that the fact the administration didn't have a principals' meeting regarding terrorism prior to 9/11 does suggest that it wasn't particularly high on their radar screen. Roemer's little grandstanding ("So why aren't you doing something about [terrorism] earlier than August 6th? ") suggests that he's looking to score some political hay here as well. His questions about how effectively the FBI was brought into the attempts to prevent terrorist attacks in the U.S. are good, though. I personally think that what the Commission is exposing more than anything else is that the government simply didn't think a terrorist attack like 9/11 was a real possibility, and so they had their attention focused elsewhere. The question that still remains is, was that defensible based on the available information?

Commissioner Thompson didn't seem to add much to what the other Commissioners had already said, revisiting a number of issues. He did give Rice another opportunity to make some of her talking points, as well as offering up his own take on the value of the principals' meetings. It seems to me that Thompson was looking to pull some of the heat off of the Bush administration with the thrust of his questions, although he did go after Rice about the failure to respond to the Cole. Thompson is correct that Congress had responsibilities for national defense as well, though, so it's possible he was simply trying to address that point rather than being partisan. Or maybe he was trying for both.

Looking at the transcript as a whole, it seems that there wasn't a great deal of value in having Rice testify publicly. While the revelations about the FBI's warning of potential hijackings is certainly interesting, that would have come out in the Commission's report eventually, and I think a number (if not all) of the Commissioners might have been more inclined to ask relevant questions without grandstanding if the cameras hadn't been present. It also would have been nice if the Commission could have had more time to question Rice, although she will meet with them again in private, so perhaps they can ask more relevant questions there.

I look forward to seeing the Commission's report. There is some clear partisanship on the part of some of the Commissioners, but I hope that the other Commissioners will be able to keep the focus of the Commission where it belongs, rather than trying to use it as a witch hunt.

Update: I've corrected my inappropriate use of pronouns in calling Jamie Gorelick 'he.' I guess I've got Kerrey syndrome.

Update 2: Jeff Goldstein notes some poll results in the wake of Rice's testimony. Looks like having her go before the Commission may have been a good idea from a political standpoint.