Homeland Security

DATE=4/8/2004

TYPE=ENGLISH PROGRAMS REPORT

TITLE=RICE / TERRORISM

NUMBER=4-0159

BYLINE=KENT KLEIN / SUSAN YACKEE

PHONE=203-4260 (KLEIN)

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

ENGLISH PROGRAMS REPORT

Inserts are available in Dalet - SOD/English News Now/Reports

TEXT: U-S National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice says there was no "silver bullet," or instant solution, that could have prevented the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Ms. Rice testified under oath to the independent commission investigating those attacks. She disputed allegations the Bush administration did not make terrorism an urgent priority before the incident.

Ms. Rice said the United States had been "effectively blind" before the attacks. She says it took September 11th to put the country "on war footing."

ACT #1 RICE

For more than 20 years, the terrorist threat gathered, and America's response, across several administrations of both parties, was insufficient. Historically, democratic societies have been slow to react to gathering threats, tending instead to wait to confront threats until they are too dangerous to ignore, or until it is too late.

END ACT

Ms. Rice's longtime friend and colleague Kiron (KYE-run) Skinner, is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She says the United States was just starting to address the threat of terrorism when the September-eleventh attacks took place.

ACT #2 SKINNER

Most of this time we were still fighting the Cold War, but beginning to put the building blocks in place to deal with a new trans-national threat. It takes time to put everything together. An external shock like September eleventh crystallized all of these various pieces, and so, to say that nothing was being done is to really misunderstand the U-S's role in the international system over several decades.

END ACT

Several commissioners on the 10-member panel pressed Ms. Rice about a classified memo presented to President Bush on August 6th, 2001, which allegedly contains references to a possible al-Qaida attack on U-S soil.

Ms. Rice denied the memo contained specific threats. She said all intelligence received prior to the September 11th attacks was what she called "frustratingly vague," and appeared aimed at U-S interests overseas.

P-J Crowley was a special assistant to President Bill Clinton for national security affairs. He says that memo will be the focus of further scrutiny.

ACT #3 CROWLEY

Most of the focus, I think, will be on this August sixth intelligence briefing to the President. One of the commissioners basically de-classified the title of what is called the Presidential Daily Brief. Its title was Bin Laden Determined to Attack the United States, which, to an extent, contradicts suggestions by Dr. Rice that the threat information was just focusing on the possibility of an attack overseas.

END ACT

Ms. Rice also directly disputed sworn testimony from former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who says the Bush administration largely ignored the threat of al-Qaida before the attacks and was obsessed with Iraq afterwards.

Under questioning about what could have been done to prevent the attacks, Ms. Rice said September 11th underscored the need for major structural reform in U-S intelligence departments, including improved communication between the F-B-I and C-I-A.

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