CNN Report
Berger: Rice was told about 'urgency' of al Qaeda
Wed Mar 24 14:29:55 2004
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Berger: Rice was told about 'urgency' of al Qaeda

Tenet cites efforts to get bin Laden

11:06 AM MST on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 CNN Report
http://www.fox11az.com/news/other/stories/KMSB_news_berger_032404.b91a1c9e.html

WASHINGTON -- When the Bush administration was entering office, outgoing National Security Adviser Samuel Berger told his replacement, Condoleezza Rice, "she'd be spending more time on terrorism and al Qaeda than any other issue," Berger told the panel investigating the attacks Wednesday.

"I did my best to emphasize the urgency I felt," he said.

"Getting" Osama bin Laden and stopping the al Qaeda network was a "top priority" of the Clinton administration, Berger said.

Clinton felt so strongly that in 2000 he traveled to Pakistan -- against the "adamant advice of the secret service" -- to press President Pervez Musharraf to join the battle against al Qaeda, Berger said.

Wednesday is the second day on which the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, has heard such testimony from key figures in the Bush and Clinton administrations.

On Tuesday, commission members grilled Cabinet secretaries past and present, and faulted both administration for not taking aggressive enough steps to thwart terrorism before 9/11.

Panel member Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democrat, told Berger his appearance was "asymmetrical" because Rice will not appear publicly before the panel.

Rice and White House officials have said there is a standing policy against top Cabinet officials offering such public testimony.

Ben-Veniste listed several panels Berger spoke to while in office, and said none were as important as the 9/11 commission.

Ben-Veniste earlier criticized Rice for not appearing publicly, and some attendees at the panel hearing applauded.

Tenet testifies

Earlier, CIA Director George Tenet told the commission that both the Clinton and Bush administrations took the threat of terrorism seriously and worked actively to disrupt Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization.

"There was no lack of care or focus in the face of one of the greatest dangers our country has ever faced," Tenet said.

In a a staff statement on intelligence released Wednesday, the commission said "no agency did more to attack al Qaeda" than the CIA, but said there was an absence of a "robust, offensive, engagement across the entire U.S. government."

Tenet said the CIA, working with other agencies around the world, disrupted a number of terror plots during the alert leading up to January 1, 2000, celebrations.

But he said that the United States was "not systemically protected" against terrorism before the September 11 attacks.

Tenet said antiterror efforts were complicated because of the failure of various intelligence agencies to integrate data.

If intelligence had been shared among various agencies, "we might have had a chance" to prevent the attacks, he said.

There were "iron-clad regulations" in place preventing such sharing -- including between the criminal and intelligence divisions of the FBI, as well as the CIA -- Tenet said.

But the failure to prevent the attacks was not purely a matter of intelligence sharing, he said.

"We didn't steal the secret that told us what the plot was, we didn't recruit the right people or technically collect the data, notwithstanding enormous effort to do so," Tenet said.

Tenet told the panel that the CIA began focusing on bin Laden in the early 1990s, even before bin Laden emerged as a leader of Islamic terrorist planning. Tenet said the CIA set up a special unit in 1996 to track bin Laden.

The CIA director testified that the terrorism threat changed fundamentally after bin Laden moved his operation in 1996 to Afghanistan, where he was sheltered by the country's Taliban rulers.

He said that in 1999 -- after bin Laden issued a 1998 fatwa calling on Muslims to kill Americans -- the CIA began developing a new plan to develop human and technical resources to use against bin Laden.

He said that the plan was showing results by 2001 and that the CIA network was able to provide a great deal of intelligence to U.S. forces invading Iraq.

Asked whether a U.S. capture or killing of bin Laden would have prevented the attacks, Tenet responded, "I don't believe so. This plot was up and running."

Clarke to appear

Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief in the Bush White House, is to testify Wednesday afternoon before the commission.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage will follow Clarke's testimony.

Clarke has ignited a firestorm with his assertions that the Bush administration failed to recognize pending terror attacks against the United States and that the president focused too much on Iraq after September 11 -- charges that the White House has vigorously disputed.

The release this week of Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," coincided with the public hearings in Washington, adding a new layer of political intrigue to the sessions. The hearings come roughly eight months before the general election. Bush is already lauding his stewardship of the nation's security, while Democrats are questioning it.

At Tuesday's hearing, new light was shed on military strikes that were considered but never executed against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, along with failed diplomatic efforts to thwart terrorism.

Under tough questioning, key figures in the Bush and Clinton administrations testified they did everything they could to protect the United States against terrorism.

That stand was challenged by some commission members, who suggested neither administration was willing to take tough steps until after September 11.

"The fact that it's unpopular, that it's difficult, that our allies are not necessarily with it, shouldn't deter a president who believes that what we have is a serial killer on our hands," thundered commission member Bob Kerrey, a Democrat and former U.S. senator from Nebraska.

Kerrey spoke after former Defense Secretary William Cohen described the challenge of getting world leaders -- and Congress -- to recognize the threat posed by al Qaeda and bin Laden before September 11.

Cohen told the commission that the Clinton administration debated whether to launch airstrikes to kill bin Laden on three occasions in 1998 and 1999, but decided not to because of doubts about the intelligence and concerns about killing civilians.

Allegations addressed

Various speakers addressed Clarke's book directly and indirectly Tuesday.

Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared to be speaking to Clarke's charges when he defended Bush's handling of al Qaeda threats before September 11, saying the president wanted a "thorough, comprehensive" strategy to battle the terror network.

"The president by word and deed made clear his interests and his intense desire to protect the nation from terrorism," Powell said. "He frequently asked us to do more. He decided early on that we needed to be more aggressive in going after terrorism and especially al Qaeda."

Likewise, former Clinton officials defended the antiterrorism policies of their boss.

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