Rice testimony transcript
If you didn't see/hear Dr. Rice, you can read it. CNN has a rush transcript available here (scroll down to find the beginning). What did you think of her? My sense is that it was a big win for Bush, from the outset, because her testimony was much hyped and she was sure to be treated respectfully even when not actually answering any of the tough questions. So, essentially she got the last word among high-profile public testifiers.

Below is the topic I've been anticipating from the testimony, because I think it points to a clear, acknowledged policy/administrative disagreement between the Clarke/Rice accounts, not just a difference of opinion about how urgent terrorism was to Clinton versus Bush. Clarke said principals didn't begin to meet regularly once threats increased in 2001, and says it could have helped as it did in 1999. Rice agrees that principals didn't meet in 2001 but insists it wouldn't have helped, and she believes it didn't in fact help in 1999. I think the most important bit of White House/security procedure that needs to be addressed is found in this rather mundane issue. This excerpt will be long, sorry. The bold text is my doing.

"FIELDING: Now, during this period of time, what -- and I'd like you to just respond to several points -- what involvement did you have in this alert? And how did it come about that the CSG was handling this thing as opposed to the principals?

Because candidly it's been suggested that the difference between the 1999 handling and this one was that you didn't have the principals dealing with it; therefore, it wasn't given the priority; therefore, the people weren't forced to do what they would otherwise have done, et cetera. You've heard the same things I've heard.

And would it have made a real difference in enhancing the exchange of intelligence, for instance, if it had been the principals?

I would like your comments, both on your involvement and your comments to that question. Thank you.

RICE: Of course. Let me start by talking about what we were doing and the structure we used. I've mentioned this.

The CSG, yes, was the counterterrorism group, was the nerve center, if you will. And that's been true through all crises. I think it was, in fact, a nerve center as well during the millennium, that they were the counterterrorism experts, they were able to get together. They got together frequently. They came up with taskings that needed to be done.

I would say that if you look at the list of taskings that they came up with, it reflected the fact that the threat information was from abroad. It was that the agencies like the Department of State needed to make clear to Americans traveling abroad that there was a danger, that embassies needed to be on alert, that our force protection needed to be strong for our military forces.

The Central Intelligence Agency was asked to do some things. It was very foreign policy or foreign threat-based as well. And of course, the warning to the FBI to go out and task their field agents.

The CSG was made up of not junior people, but the top level of counterterrorism experts. Now, they were in contact with their principals.

Dick Clarke was in contact with me quite frequently during this period of time. When the CSG would meet, he would come back usually through e-mail, sometimes personally, and say, here's what we've done. I would talk everyday, several times a day, with George Tenet about what the threat spike looked like.

In fact, George Tenet was meeting with the president during this period of time so the president was hearing directly about what was being done about the threats to -- the only really specific threats we had -- to Genoa, to the Persian Gulf, there was one to Israel. So the president was hearing what was being done.

The CSG was the nerve center. But I just don'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. It wasn't an efficient way to go about it.

Then she goes on to explain why the success at thwarting the millenium plot in Los Angeles is not, in fact, an example of those meetings being a success, as Clarke claims it was.

I think it actually wasn't by chance, which was Washington's view of it. It was because a very alert customs agent named Diana Dean and her colleagues sniffed something about Ressam. They saw that something was wrong. They tried to apprehend him. He tried to run. They then apprehended him, found that there was bomb- making material and a map of Los Angeles.

Now, at that point, you have pretty clear indication that you've got a problem inside the United States.

I don't think it was shaking the trees that produced the breakthrough in the millennium plot. It was that you got a -- Dick Clarke would say a 'lucky break' -- I would say you got an alert customs agent who got it right.

And the interesting thing is that I've checked with Customs and according to their records, they weren't actually on alert at that point.

So I just don't buy the argument that we weren't shaking the trees enough and that something was going to fall out that gave us somehow that little piece of information that would have led to connecting all of those dots.

In any case, you cannot be dependent on the chance that something might come together. That's why the structural reforms are important.

But the central question, which was begged rather than answered by Dr. Rice, is why was the alert customs agent in fact alert leading up to 1/1/2000, when the FBI/CIA/FAA/INS agents were not alert (enough) leading up to 9/11/2001? The administrative difference suggested by Clarke in the millenium incident is not a belief in a "silver bullet" as she would have us believe. It is a belief in human nature. Passing down that beauracratic accountability with purpose is precisely what creates that level of alertness. But Condi says those meetings did not catch the plot, alert agents did. Ugh.

Whether purposefully or not, Dr. Rice misses the point. She says again and again that the threats were not specific enough to act; that we didn't know who, where or when. But that's precisely why Clarke's point is so compelling here. If you know that the threats are increasing and that a coming attack is more and more likely, then your primary job is to demand an answer to who, where and when. Constantly requiring information to be sent up, the kind of pressure that comes best from a boss that is faced with the same pressure, seems like an excellent way to answer those questions. In any case, the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. The pudding in this instance is one defeated plot under one set of procedures, and one successful plot under a different set.