Then, in early 2001, Cheney downgraded Clarke's job. Cheney undertook the role of national security overseer, but he did not hold one meeting on the subject of national security. In early 2001, The only meetings Cheney held were closed-door ones with energy company executives.
Prior to 9/11, U. S. intelligence noticed "chatter" among suspect groups from the mid-east. On July 5, Bush requested more information on this topic from National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11th-warning-signs-fast-facts/ .
Clarke was largely left out of the loop. After 9/11, at one of the hearing into the intelligence failure which led to the attack, Clarke offered to the assembled family members of 9/11 victims, an apology one behalf of himself and, informally, on behalf of the collective government intelligence agencies. In the partial transcript below from an installment of Larry King Live, Clarke discussed whether 9/11 was preventable:
LARRY KING: Was 9/11 preventable?
RICHARD CLARKE: Well, we'll never know. But let me compare 9/11 and the period immediately before it to the millennium rollover and the period immediately before that. In December, 1999, we received intelligence reports that there were going to be major al Qaeda attacks. President Clinton asked his national security adviser Sandy Berger to hold daily meetings with the attorney general, the FBI director, the CIA director and stop the attacks. And every day they went back from the White House to the FBI, to the Justice Department, to the CIA and they shook the trees to find out if there was any information. You know, when you know the United States is going to be attacked, the top people in the United States government ought to be working hands-on to prevent it and working together.
Now, contrast that with what happened in the summer of 2001, when we even had more clear indications that there was going to be an attack. Did the president ask for daily meetings of his team to try to stop the attack? Did Condi Rice hold meetings of her counterparts to try to stop the attack? No.
And if she had, if the FBI director and the attorney general had gone back day after day to their department to the White House, what would they have shaken loose? We now know from testimony before the Commission that buried in the FBI was the fact that two of the hijackers had entered the United States. Now, if that information had been able to be shaken loose by the FBI director and the attorney general in response to daily meetings with the White House, if we had known that those two -- if the attorney general had known, if the FBI director had known, that those two were in the United States, Larry, I believe we could have caught those two. Would that have stopped...
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/24/lkl.00.html
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