Condi Denies Woodward Claim

The Secretary of State strongly denied Bob Woodward’s claim that she had been warned in July, 2001 of an imminent attack on the U.S.

Background:

Two months before 9/11, then-CIA Director George Tenet warned Condoleezza Rice of an imminent Al Qaeda attack, but the national security advisor brushed him off, according to Bob Woodward.

A witness to the private meeting related Tenet’s frustration over the exchange: “The only thing we didn’t do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head.”

Update: A 9/11 Commission lawyer suspects a coverup—wants to know why Condi and Tenet never disclosed this alleged meeting.

New York Times:

The book says that Mr. Tenet hurriedly organized the meeting—calling ahead from his car as it traveled to the White House—because he wanted to “shake Rice” into persuading the president to respond to dire intelligence warnings that summer about a terrorist strike. Mr. Woodward writes that Mr. Tenet left the meeting frustrated because “they were not getting through to Rice.”

The disclosures took members of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission by surprise last week. Some questioned whether information about the July 10 meeting was intentionally withheld from the panel.

In interviews Saturday and today, commission members said they were never told about the meeting despite hours of public and private questioning with Ms. Rice, Mr. Tenet and Mr. Black, much of it focused specifically on how the White House had dealt with terrorist threats in the summer of 2001.

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