Condoleezza Rice April 8, 2004 Sworn Testimony 9-11 Commission

A lot of al-Qaeda Activity Inside the United States Summer of 2001
I KNEW NOTHING
THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY KNEW A LOT

Sender, Berl & Sons Inc. April 8, 2004

The evidence is sufficient and clear. During the summer of 2001 there was clear cut evidence of al-Qaeda operatives within the United States. This knowledge further included the anticipated use of airplanes as missiles. The President and Dr. Rice knew that focus was on the terrorists hijacking airplanes but Rice claims that using them as missiles was far afield from her mind and ipso facto the mindset of the President of the United States. In fact she and her agents have advised that she stood ignorant of intelligence community knowledge of using airplanes as missiles into buildings by terrorists until after her historic faux pax in May 2002. Sender, Berl & Sons asks how can someone stand so ignorant and ask you to believe that she was the National Security Advisor. We have forcibly argued that she was not (www.senderberl.com/bushrice.htm) and is not the National Security Advisor. Quite frankly and succinctly Sender, Berl & Sons Inc. was cognizant of multiple reports in the intelligence community about the use of airplanes for the purposes of 9-11, so how can anyone believe that the National Security Advisor can sit there and deny such knowledge and to boot declare that it took her eight months after 9-11 to find out what we knew when we heard her make this stupid remark in May 2002.

RICE: Despite the fact that the vast majority of the threat information we received was focused overseas, I was also concerned about possible threats inside the United States. On July 5, Chief of Staff Andy Card and I met with Dick Clarke, and I asked Dick to make sure that domestic agencies were aware of the heightened threat period and were taking appropriate steps to respond, even though we did not have specific threats to the homeland. Later that same day, Clarke convened a special meeting of his CSG, as well as representatives from the FAA, the INS, Customs, and the Coast Guard. At that meeting, these agencies were asked to take additional measures to increase security and surveillance.

SenderBerl: She in large part said that she left domestic issues to Clarke and the CSG but here in her opening statement she says she was concerned about threat inside the US. So it is clear unless she was at the beach that she knew there was a serious threat or else there was no reason for the USA to be on the highest state of alert for domestic terrorism in US history.

RICE: There were no specifics, and, in fact, the country had already taken steps through the FAA to warn of potential hijackings. The country had already taken steps through the FBI to task their 56 field offices to increase their activity. The country had taken the steps that it could given that there was no threat reporting about what might happen inside the United States.

SenderBerl: Four hijackings and so what was the FAA supposed to do and did they do it? Condy Rice's position is that absent knowing the exact date, the place, location, perhaps even the telephone numbers involved in terrorism, what does the country expect from her and this administration from a problem she simply says is systemic. The American people will not take well to this malarkey. Commissioner Lehman gave her a line of questions trying to help her out, that she was without knowledge, but in reviewing the transcript, it is apparent that she stood proudly ignorant of facts that the general public itself was knowledgeable about. Her arrogance in declaring what did you expect from an administration only in office for 233 days said it all.

GORTON: Would the program recommended on September 4th have prevented 9-11 had it been adopted in, say, February or March of 2001?

RICE: Commissioner, it would not have prevented September 11th if it had been approved the day after we came to office.

SenderBerl: We are talking apples and pears. SenderBerl has said there are trillion dollar military defense systems in place for decades to guard against nuclear attack against major cities. When four planes went off transponder we are not talking about Richard Clarke agendas and strategies, we are talking about the basic framework of taxpayer dollars to protect this country from nuclear attack. Would the point be any clearer had there been a nuclear device on board one of the planes?

KERREY: Let me ask you another question. Here's the problem that I have as I -- again, it's hindsight. I appreciate that. But here's the problem that a lot of people are having with this July 5th meeting.

You and Andy Card meet with Dick Clarke in the morning. You say you have a meeting, he meets in the afternoon. It's July 5th.

Kristen Breitweiser, who's a part of the families group, testified at the Joint Committee. She brings very painful testimony, I must say.

But here's what Agent Kenneth Williams said five days later. He said that the FBI should investigate whether al Qaeda operatives are training at U.S. flight schools. He posited that Osama bin Laden followers might be trying to infiltrate the civil aviation system as pilots, security guards and other personnel. He recommended a national program to track suspicious flight schools.

Now, one of the first things that I learned when I came into this town was the FBI and the CIA don't talk. I mean, I don't need a catastrophic event to know that the CIA and the FBI don't do a very good job of communicating.

And the problem we've got with this and the Moussaoui facts, which were revealed on the 15th of August, all it had to do was to be put on Intelink. All it had to do is go out on Intelink, and the game's over. It ends. This conspiracy would have been rolled up.

KERREY: And so I...

RICE: Commissioner, with all due respect, I don't agree that we know that we had somehow a silver bullet here that was going to work.

What we do know is that we did have a systemic problem, a structural problem between the FBI and the CIA. It was a long time in coming into being. It was there because there were legal impediments, as well as bureaucratic impediments. Those needed to be overcome.

Obviously, the structure of the FBI that did not get information from the field offices up to FBI Central, in a way that FBI Central could react to the whole range of information reports, was a problem..

KERREY: But, Dr. Rice, everybody...

RICE: But the structure of the FBI, the restructuring of the FBI, was not going to be done in the 233 days in which we were in office...

KERREY: Dr. Rice, everybody who does national security in this town knows the FBI and the CIA don't talk. So if you have a meeting on the 5th of July, where you're trying to make certain that your domestic agencies are preparing a defense against a possible attack, you knew al Qaeda cells were in the United States, you've got to follow up.

And the question is, what was your follow-up? What's the paper trail that shows that you and Andy Card followed up from this meeting, and...

RICE: I followed...

SenderBerl: This shows that Condy Rice is inept or part of the complicity of 9-11. Once flight school was an issue on the table it was incumbent on Rice to be totally on top of all intelligence on the use of airplanes in acts of terrorism.

***

KERREY: Actually it won't be a question.

In the spirit of further declassification, this is what the August 6th memo said to the president: that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking.

That's the language of the memo that was briefed to the president on the 6th of August.

RICE: And that was checked out and steps were taken through FAA circulars to warn of hijackings.

But when you cannot tell people where a hijacking might occur, under what circumstances -- I can tell you that I think the best antidote to what happened in that regard would have been many years before to think about what you could do for instance to harden cockpits.

SenderBerl: You can see that Kerrey achieves something with Rice who is out there with her message that there was a problem and it existed for quite some time so please don't blame me, President Bush or this administration. However, it was HER JOB TO CONNECT THE DOTS. It was her responsibility to link hijackings to flight school to something big is going to happen and her position that without knowing where and when the government can't be expected to stop the hijackings. This is pure poppycock and is evidence of the complicity should the panel have gone into the questions SenderBerl and the victims' families had wanted presented to Condy Rice.

Rice:

But I think it is really quite unfair to suggest that something that was a threat spike in June or July gave you the kind of opportunity to make the changes in air security that could have been -- that needed to be made.

SenderBerl: She keeps driving the center of focus on the self serving argument that systemic changes need have been made and don't look to little ole me to have done anything when these things were around forever. However, the issues SenderBerl is concerned with is going from high level alert to no alert to the failure of the FAA and military to deal with four planes off transponder when THIS COUNTRY JUST HAD BEEN TAKEN OFF HIGH ALERT.

LEHMAN: As a last question, tell us what you really recommend we should address our attentions to to fix this as the highest priority. Not just moving boxes around, but what can you tell us in public here that we could do, since we are outside the legislature and outside the executive branch and can bring the focus of attention for change? Tell us what you recommend we do.

RICE: My greatest concern is that, as September 11th recedes from memory, that we will begin to unlearn the lessons of what we've learned.

SenderBerl: This reflects the truth that this administration's highest hope is that 9-11 be once and for all buried to the domain of history books. 9-11 is this country's final opportunity to get rid of the enemies within. Allow them to get away with 9-11 and a future of darkness is a given. We have a special public service page www.senderberl.com/ps/ps2 that details all that you have allowed this NWO government to get away with also highlighting TWA Flight 800 which proved to the NWO strategists just how stupid the American public was willing to hold themselves.

Doesn't that beg that there should have been more accountability? That there should have been a resignation or two? That there should have been you or the president saying to the rest of the administration, somehow, somewhere, that this was not done well enough?

RICE: Mr. Roemer, by definition, we didn't have enough information, we didn't have enough protection, because the attack happened -- by definition. And I think we've all asked ourselves, what more could have been done?

I will tell you if we had known that an attack was coming against the United States, that an attack was coming against New York and Washington, we would have moved heaven and earth to stop it.

SenderBerl: They did and they did not come close to moving heaven or earth.

But you heard the character of the threat report we were getting: something very, very big is going to happen. How do you act on "something very, very big is going to happen" beyond trying to put people on alert? Most of the threat reporting was abroad.

SenderBerl: But no one pursued the qualitative difference between the six weeks of high alert and the alert condition if any on 9-11. Richard Ben-Veniste said after the proceeding that he would pursue this issue.

Conclusion: When Condy Rice left the proceedings, her attitude and demeanor told us she thought she did very well. She did. Stonewalling. However, the American people are tuned into 9-11 and they carry a growing recognition that this administration may prove itself to be an enemy far greater than Saddam Hussein would have ever been to the interests of this country. This President using Saddam Hussein as the bogeyman has put this country domestically and internationally at risk. He is a President with an inner cabal that should be feared for his damage to date has been of historical significance and magnitude.

SENDERBERL IS HAPPY TO PERCEIVE THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SMELL A RAT. LITTLE DO KNOW ITS TRUE SIZE.

BUSH WILL PROBABLY CAVE IN THE DEMOCRATS AND CONFIRM WHAT WE SAID SINCE 11-19-03
JOHN KERRY WILL BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

www.senderberl.com

Commissioner Lehman in our opinion trying to help Rice inadvertently helped our case that Rice was not and is not the true National Security Advisor. See how many questions you can answer in the affirmative proving our point that she stood open and willing before the nation and the world that she was totally ignorant of facts relevant to the realm of her responsibilities.

LEHMAN: Were you told that there were numerous young Arab males in flight training, had taken flight training, were in flight training?

RICE: I was not. And I'm not sure that that was known at the center.

LEHMAN: Were you told that the U.S. Marshal program had been changed to drop any U.S. marshals on domestic flights?

RICE: I was not told that.

LEHMAN: Were you told that the red team in FAA - the red teams for 10 years had reported their hard data that the U.S. airport security system never got higher than 20 percent effective and was usually down around 10 percent for 10 straight years?

RICE: To the best of my recollection, I was not told that.

LEHMAN: Were you aware that INS had been lobbying for years to get the airlines to drop the transit without visa loophole that enabled terrorists and illegals to simply buy a ticket through the transit-without-visa waiver and pay the airlines extra money and come in?

RICE: I learned about that after September 11th.

LEHMAN: Were you aware that the INS had quietly, internally, halved its internal security enforcement budget?

RICE: I was not made aware of that. I don't remember being made aware of that, no.

LEHMAN: Were you aware that it was the U.S. government established policy not to question or oppose the sanctuary policies of New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, San Diego for political reasons, which policy in those cities prohibited the local police from cooperating at all with federal immigration authorities?

RICE: I do not believe I was aware of that.

LEHMAN: Were you aware - to shift a little bit to Saudi Arabia - were you aware of the program that was well established that allowed Saudi citizens to get visas without interviews?

RICE: I learned of that after 9-11.

LEHMAN: Were you aware of the activities of the Saudi ministry of religious affairs here in the United States during that transition?

RICE: I believe that only after September 11th did the full extent of what was going on with the ministry of religious affairs became evident.

LEHMAN: Were you aware of the extensive activities of the Saudi government in supporting over 300 radical teaching schools and mosques around the country, including right here in the United States?

RICE: I believe we've learned a great deal more about this and addressed it with the Saudi government since 9-11.

LEHMAN: Were you aware at the time of the fact that Saudi Arabia had and were you told that they had in their custody the CFO and the closest confidant of al-Qaida - of Osama bin Laden, and refused direct access to the United States?

RICE: I don't remember anything of that kind.

LEHMAN: Were you aware that they would not cooperate and give us access to the perpetrators of the Khobar Towers attack?

RICE: I was very involved in issues concerning Khobar Towers and our relations with several governments concerning Khobar Towers.

LEHMAN: Thank you.

Were you aware - and it disturbs me a bit, and again, let me shift to the continuity issues here.

Were you aware that it was the policy of the Justice Department - and I'd like you to comment as to whether these continuities are still in place - before I go to Justice, were you aware that it was the policy and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory?

RICE: No, I have to say that the kind of inside arrangements for the FAA are not really in my...

LEHMAN: Well, these are not so inside.

Were you aware that the FAA up until 9-11 thought it was perfectly permissible to allow four-inch knife blades aboard?

RICE: I was not aware.

LEHMAN: OK.

Conclusion: SenderBerl in May 2002, when Condy Rice made her classic faux pax regarding ignorance about terrorists planning on using planes as missiles to drive them into buildings, stood aware of what Condy Rice has the audacity to tell the nation and world she did not know. Incredibly, our position has alwas been that she is telling the truth. Our ability to accept it as the truth is due that it is totally consistent with her not being the National Security Advisor. Yet, while she was ignorant, her role was central to the success of 9-11. See www.senderberl.com/bushrice.htm

BEST EDITORIAL WE CAME ACROSS...

Last update: April 8, 2004 at 7:04 PM

Editorial: Connecting dots/Bush's culpability for 9/11

April 9, 2004ED0409

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony to the 9/11 commission Thursday allows for only one conclusion: The Bush administration was outrageously derelict in its duty to protect the American people as the Al-Qaida threat developed. Consider a few of the many issues on which Rice and the commission focused:

•Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright previously told the commission that during the millennium threat of 1999, key members of the Cabinet met almost daily at the White House to discuss the threat with counterterrorism director Richard Clarke. Clarke said those meetings ensured that Cabinet members would "shake the trees" in their departments and bring forward any information about the threat. It worked.

Rice testified Thursday that in the high-threat period during the summer of 2001, "I just [didn't] believe that bringing the principals over to the White House every day and having their counterterrorism people have to come with them and be pulled away from what they were doing to disrupt was a good way to go about this." Moreover, Clarke wasn't allowed by the Bush administration to interact directly with the Cabinet.

Those differences were critically important because, as Rice said, longstanding "systemic" problems hampered coordination of efforts and proper sharing of information in and between the CIA and FBI. And that's just the point: In a high-threat period, getting the top-level people together and pushing them hard was the only way to break through the bureaucratic inertia. Rice's failure to do that meant the FBI, in particular, didn't learn of information about Al-Qaida operatives already in the United States or about suspicious men of Middle Eastern origins taking flight instruction.

Rice didn't create the systemic problems she spoke of, but knowing about them and then failing to do the logical thing to overcome them in the face of an urgent threat is unconscionable.

As Commission Member Jamie Gorelick reminded Rice, the report of the Hart-Rudman Commission, a comprehensive, three-year effort timed to be available for the incoming administration, warned early in 2001 that the United States would get hit "big" and that the FBI wasn't working the way it should to discover and foil such a plot. Hart-Rudman also was ignored.

• The title of the Aug. 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing was revealed Thursday: "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." The briefing also, according to Commission Member Bob Kerrey, warned that "the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."

Rice gave a two-pronged answer: The Aug. 6 document was "historical" in nature -- meaning, apparently, it looked back -- and that all through the summer, federal agencies, including FBI field offices, had been "tasked" with investigating this information.

But the language from the memo certainly doesn't sound "historical," and as for tasking federal agencies, Gorelick responded: "Secretary Mineta, the secretary of transportation, had no idea of the threat. The administrator of the FAA, responsible for security on our airlines, had no idea. Yes, the attorney general was briefed, but there was no evidence of any activity by him about this.

"You indicate in your statement that the FBI tasked its field offices to find out what was going on out there. We have no record of that."

Commission Member Tim Roemer came back to the same point: "We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9/11 commission. We've gone through literally millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have found nobody -- nobody at the FBI who knows anything about a tasking of field offices."

The exchanges between commission members and Rice reveal a criminal lack of interest in trying to prevent an attack on the United States that the administration had strong reason to expect. It's one thing to wait for a new strategic plan before taking the fight to Al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's another entirely to ignore evidence that mounted all through 2001 that the United States was about to be hit. Almost nothing of a defensive nature was done to guard against -- to prevent -- the horrific spectacle that unfolded on Sept. 11.

Comment
Events of this past week have proven distressing and further disturbing

SenderBerl's perspective is that focus should not primarily be on the August 6, 2001 PDB. SenderBerl believes that the most successful line of pursuit is on Condy Rice not having the knowledge needed and necessary to preclude what unraveled as 9-11. This then would be consistent with the line that 9-11 was allowed to happen, that the President's and the Secret Service's behavior on 9-11 was both weird and contrary to protocol, and that proof positive of complicity is inherent when the trillion dollar military machine did not impede or even act to impede four planes off transponder any one of which could have carried a nuclear payload against two major and essential metropolitan areas.

ROEMER: So, Dr. Rice, let's say that the FBI is the key here. You say that the FBI was tasked with trying to find out what the domestic threat was. We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9-11 Commission. We've gone through literally millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have found nobody - nobody at the FBI who knows anything about a tasking of field offices. Nothing went down the chain to the FBI field offices on spiking of information, on knowledge of al-Qaida in the country, and still, the FBI doesn't do anything. Isn't that some of the responsibility of the national security adviser?

RICE: The responsibility for the FBI to do what it was asked was the FBI's responsibility .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1188133,00.html

SenderBerl: Gary Hart a former presidential candidate and who is a verified expert on domestic matters relating to terrorism has made it known that he finds it incredible that the 9-11 panel has not invited him to testify regarding 9-11. The relayed reason for his ire is that he told Condy Rice, someone he personally knows for twenty years, five days before 9-11, that major domestic terrorism was imminent. Hart told the Guardian his warning had been ignored.

"She [Rice] said: 'I'll discuss it with the vice-president'," Mr Hart said; but he felt the response was a brush-off.  "All I can say is she didn't feel the degree of urgency I thought was necessary," he said. He said he has known Ms Rice for 20 years, since she had volunteered to work on his Colorado Senate campaign.

SenderBerl: There you have yet another proof of not only the sandbagging by the Bush administration of all impediments to allowing 9-11 to unravel, but the reference by Rice to Hart of the true National Security Advisor operating no doubt before 9-11 from his secret bunker with the shadow government overseeing what unraveled as 9-11. No one has really detailed why the high state of alert was abandoned to a state of neglect, allowing the barn door to remain fully open to the events of 9-11. What is inescapable is that 9-11 did reveal itself during this hiatus from full alert. Of course, the evidence by the 9-11 panel that the FBI really hadn’t been tasked in terms of the known danger of imminent domestic terrorism, says as much as Rice saying what could we expect from an administration only in office 233 days. The evidence and concern mounts as noted by this excellent editorial we recently encountered .

The families of 9-11 victims were on Chris Mathews and detailed the several issues taking five to ten minutes that would blow up this administration. The rest of the world knows that this administration was the sine qua non to the events of 9-11. Only the American people sit stupid and silent to what is in front of them. It is your children and their children that will suffer mightily as the result of your failing to do what you can. If you can’t give it the time, if you can’t make the small sacrifices that are called for here, then the New World Order aristocrats will tell us what they already have: you deserve what lies ahead for you.

We are desperate enough to make a further point regarding Mel Gibson’s movie. One of the messages in the movie is whether the sacrifices of one man were worth your speaking up on his behalf when he tried to correct the conditions of which he complained. No one intervened for him when it was necessary and appropriate to do so. The same dynamic was repeated in The Green Mile. There we had a man who tendered to the sick, who could provide miraculous help to those who needed it. When it came between the main character (“man” played by Tom Hanks in the movie) saving the good man or making the necessary personal sacrifice, the main character could only muster superficial sympathy and life time memory for the INNOCENT COURAGEOUS GOOD man allowed to go UNJUSTLY to the electric chair.

Our analysis of the Green Mile written in 2000 definitely connects to the true dynamic for good of Mel Gibson’s movie. To obtain our analysis simply send a blank E-mail to greenmile@senderberl.com. Every positive action and deed has the ability to change the world and prove to either your benefit and/or that of your family. Even the smallest positive deed.

It is important to ask yourself what small positive deed or deeds can I do this week, and next week, that will help. What sacrifice am I willing to make to help my family, my country, my fellow man and myself. Heavenly rewards are given to men whom do not lead complacent lives.

Evil has much energy and wide resources to pursue its course. Good requires you to think in terms of positive deeds and sacrifice. It will ultimately help assure a better world.

Remember, Condy Rice was not the National Security Advisor. The true National Security Advisor made it certain that the events of 9-11 would unravel as planned to create the condition of moral outrage necessary to proffer the dramatic doctrines of the President’s National Security Strategy, which documented an agenda for world domination and control and affirmatively diminished and cast off the United States Constitution www.senderberl.com/nss.pdf. You have to speak up for the 3000 innocent souls lost that day. You must further understand that each of those souls can represent tens of thousands that will die tomorrow from the failure to confront and address the sins of that day.