Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story (31 page)

Eager to uncover the facts about what the administration knew about potential terrorist attacks prior to 9/11, families of the victims pressed for an official investigation. The ten-member September 11 Commission was created by Congress in November 2002, and charged with the job of “providing the nation the most comprehensive examination of the vulnerabilities that made the attacks possible.” The independent, bi-partisan commission was “intended to be unflinching in assigning blame for specific government failures.”

Condi testified before the members in private sessions after the hearings were underway. In the spring of 2004, however, public opinion demanded that she testify in public, which set off a cascade of events that once again put the spotlight on her role as national security advisor. The panel unanimously called for her public appearance, but Condi refused on the grounds that the constitutional powers of the executive branch legally forbade her from doing so. “Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify,” she stated on CBS’
60 Minutes.
“I would really like to do that,” she added, “but there is an important principle here—it is a longstanding principle—that sitting national security advisors do not testify before the Congress.”

The issue of Condi’s public testimony were spurred by the testimony of Richard A. Clarke, a former counter-terrorism official in the Bush and Clinton administrations. Clarke had recently published an exposé of the Bush administration’s actions and inactions regarding al Qaeda leading up to the attacks. In
Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror,
Clarke charged that the administration ignored critical intelligence about the terrorist threat and ultimately inflamed the al Qaeda cause by attacking Iraq. Clarke wrote:

George W. Bush . . . failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat for al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks; and . . . launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide.

Following his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Clarke called for the declassification of government documents from before the attacks as well as other materials. These documents should include, he stressed, Condi’s private testimony before the 9/11 Commission and correspondence that Clarke had had with her and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, while he was serving in the administration.

Pressure mounted for Condi to appear before the commission in public, and on March 30, 2004, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales sent a letter to the commission agreeing to her appearance, pending two conditions. Gonzales required that Condi’s testimony would not set a precedent for future commission requests for testimony by a national security advisor or any other White House official, and that the commission agree in writing that it will not request additional public testimony from any White House official, including Rice. To some observers, Condi’s actions during the controversy forced the administration’s hand to allow her to testify. “Rice herself weakened the administration’s argument against public testimony by granting numerous interviews and stating her own desire to testify,” noted one editorial. Regardless of Condi’s repeated statements on television and in the press that she had nothing to hide, the administration’s claim of executive privilege did not sit well with the public. Bush allowed her to testify before the political damage could go any further.

On April 8, Condi was sworn in before the 9/11 Commission, standing behind the center of a large table that faced the panel. At the beginning of her opening statement, she admitted that the United States had been slow to react to a long-developing terrorist threat before the 9/11 attacks. “The terrorists were at war with us but we were not yet at war with them,” she said. She overviewed several events in history in which the United States was slow to act to looming danger, such as “the growing threat from Imperial Japan until it became all too evident at Pearl Harbor.” She defended the administration’s strategy on terrorism, citing the president’s briefing schedule and her own meetings with intelligence officials, and outlined various initiatives such as bolstering the Treasury Department’s power to track and seize terrorist assets.

The highlight of the testimony surrounded the content of an intelligence memo given to the president on August 6, 2001, which contained information about Osama bin Laden’s plans to attack on U.S. soil. Condi stressed that the memo did not contain new warnings about an impending attack, but was based on “historical information based on old reporting.” She summarized the memo as follows:

The briefing team reviewed past intelligence reporting, mostly dating from the 1990s, regarding possible Al Qaeda plans to attack inside the United States. It referred to uncorroborated reporting that—from 1998—that a terrorist might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft in an attempt to blackmail the government into releasing U.S. held terrorists who had participated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. This briefing item was not prompted by any specific threat information. And it did not raise the possibility that terrorists might use airplanes as missiles.

During the question-and-answer period, Condi stressed that the administration did not anticipate any strikes within the country, but was focused on terrorist activities in other parts of the world. Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste brought the subject back to the memo, however, to point out that its very title pointed to a domestic attack. The sharp exchange began as follows:

BEN-VENISTE: Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the Aug. 6 P.D.B. warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that P.D.B.

RICE: I believe the title was “Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States.” Now, the P.D.B.—

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

RICE: No, Mr. Ben-Veniste—

BEN-VENISTE: I will get into the—

RICE: I would like to finish my point here.

BEN-VENISTE: I didn’t know there was a point.

RICE: Given that—you asked me whether or not it warned of attacks.

BEN-VENISTE: I asked you what the title was.

RICE: You said did it not warn of attacks. It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.

Throughout her testimony, including the heated exchange above, Condi remained calm and steady, just as she had in every other public appearance when discussing the president’s controversial policy on Iraq. Viewers did not witness any attitude or behavior that contrasted with Condi’s previous appearances on television talk shows. And as one reporter observed, war continued to rage in Iraq during her testimony, a reality that concerned Americans as much, if not more, than the dramatic televised hearings. “Although Rice’s testimony produced no bombshells, there were plenty exploding in Iraq even as she spoke,” wrote Tony Karon in
Time
magazine. “The uprising among both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis that has shaken Coalition forces there and thrown U.S. transition plans into crisis may be a more immediate concern on the minds of the American electorate than the increasingly partisan post-mortem over 9/11.”

In June 2004, the 9/11 Commission released a statement that refuted the administration’s argument that the terrorist threat—which president Bush had acknowledged as specifically a threat from al-Qaeda—lay in Iraq. “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States,” stated the report. Critics of the president’s decision to go to war in Iraq found new fuel for their case in this dramatic statement. The commission’s declaration supported the view of those like Scowcroft who did not believe that the war on terrorism should be fought in Iraq, but by that time the war had gone on for fifteen months. As of this writing in January 2005, American casualties in Iraq numbered 1,340, with total coalition deaths numbering 1,491.

During the presidential campaign of 2004, Condi accompanied Bush to several cities, such as a September 2 trip to Columbus in the battleground state of Ohio. In the following weeks leading up to the November 2 election, she made speeches in key states including Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida. “The frequency and location of her speeches differ sharply from those before this election year,” reported the
Washington Post
, “and appear to break with the long-standing precedent that the national security advisor try to avoid overt involvement in the presidential campaign.” A
New York Times
editorial complained that Condi appeared so often “on the campaign trail that she sometimes seemed more like a press secretary than a national security advisor.” Condi refuted these charges, however, stating on the National Public Radio, for example, that she had not stepped across the line in her job. “Of course not,” she told Tavis Smiley. “I’m the national security advisor. I take it as part of my role to talk to the American people. We’re at war. This is a time for those of us who have responsible positions to get out of Washington.”

Although Condi stepped up her speech schedule during the campaign, she did not participate in political events as she had done during the 2000 campaign when she served as Bush’s foreign affairs tutor. In contrast to her 2000 appearances in the “W Is for Women” campaign and as a keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention, she was absent from the 2004 convention in New York City. “By tradition and custom,” explained Sean McCormick, a National Security Council spokesman, “the national security advisor does not actively participate in campaign or political events.”

Two weeks after Bush won the November 2004 election, he expressed his trust in his national security advisor’s competence and admiration of her qualifications by nominating Condi as his next Secretary of State. She would succeed Colin Powell, who had announced his retirement from the cabinet post.

At the White House announcement on November 16, two days after Condi’s fiftieth birthday, she was nearly moved to tears by the president’s proud, heartfelt description of her career and personal background. “During the last four years I’ve relied on her counsel, benefited from her great experience, and appreciated her sound and steady judgment,” Bush said. “And now I’m honored that she has agreed to serve in my Cabinet. The Secretary of State is America’s face to the world. And in Dr. Rice, the world will see the strength, the grace, and the decency of our country.” Referring to Condi’s childhood in Birmingham during the violent era of the Civil Rights struggle, Bush added, “Above all, Dr. Rice has a deep, abiding belief in the value and power of liberty, because she has seen freedom denied and freedom reborn.”

In her remarks, Condi said that it was “humbling” to consider succeeding Colin Powell, and that she would greatly miss working with everyone in the White House. Those comments followed her words of praise for the president:

Thank you, Mr. President. It has been an honor and a privilege to work for you these past four years, in times of crisis, decision and opportunity for our nation. Under your leadership, America is fighting and winning the war on terror. You have marshaled great coalitions that have liberated millions from tyranny, coalitions that are now helping the Iraqi and Afghan people build democracies in the heart of the Muslim world. And you have worked to widen the circle of prosperity and progress in every corner of the world.

Bush also announced that day that Condi’s deputy, Stephen Hadley, would be promoted to national security advisor. Condi’s nomination was part of a flurry of changes in Bush’s cabinet following the election, including resignations from Commerce Secretary Don Evans, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

Prior to Condi’s nomination, there has been one woman (Madeleine Albright) and one black (Colin Powell) Secretary of State in American history. Several European countries weighed in on the prospects of future relations with the United States under Condi’s watch at the State Department. An editorial in Germany’s weekly magazine
Die Zeit
remarked that relations with the United States would probably get better because they couldn’t get worse than they were in the two previous years. Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the German council on Foreign Relations, noted that Condi’s background as an academic rather than as a professional politician were positives, and that her close relationship with the president would be an important change. “With Powell you never knew whether his policies would have influence with the president,” Sandschneider said, “but if Ms. Rice says ‘x,’ you know that the president will also say ‘x.’”