What Did Condi Know And When Did She Know It?

In his new book, State of Denial, Bob Woodward writes:

“On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence, showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.

“Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away... He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action...”

Woodward reports that Tenet wanted to “shake Rice” and that Black “emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy... They needed to take action that moment—covert, military, whatever—to thwart bin Laden.”

Woodward goes on, “Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn’t want to swat at flies...”

So: Then National Security Adviser Rice was given an explicit, detailed warning, just two months before 9/11, and she did nothing about it.

Black is quoted in Woodward's book as saying, “The only thing we didn’t do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head.”

After sections from the Woodward book were first made public, Rice said that she did not remember her conversation with Tenet and Cofer, calling it a “supposed meeting,” and saying that it was “incomprehensible” to her that she would have ignored such warnings.

The State Department was later forced to admit, however, after a review of their records, that the meeting had in fact taken place.

Sean McCormack, Rice’s spokesman at the State Department, then claimed, “The information presented in this meeting was not new, rather it was a good summary from the threat reporting from the previous several weeks.”

But this is exactly how Rice responded after the now infamous August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside U.S.", was first made public.

Rice said then that the briefing reported nothing new and that its contents were “historical."

It was only after the Bush administration was forced to release the document itself that it became clear that, in fact, it contained an explicit warning that Al Qaeda was preparing an imminent attack within the United States, with New York and Washington, D.C. as the most likely targets.

Before the title of this document was released, Rice had claimed—as she now claims in relation to her July meeting with Tenet and Cofer—that the Presidential Daily Briefing didn't warn of any attacks within the United States.

How can I say this so I make sure to sound "unbiased," so that I continue to be "balanced in my coverage"? Or should I just state the truth: Rice was lying. And she's lying again.

Her spokesman, McCormack, continues to claim that his boss just couldn't remember the July 10 meeting in which she was told that a massive terrorist attack on U.S. soil was about to take place.