-
Many Say U.S. Planned for Terror but Failed to Take Action
"As he prepared to leave office last January, Mr. Berger met
with his successor,
Condoleezza Rice, and gave her a fatalistic warning.
According to both of them, he said that terrorism -- and
particularly Mr. bin Laden's
brand of it -- would consume far more of her time than she had
ever imagined.
A month later, with the administration still getting organized,
Mr. Tenet, whom
President Bush had asked to stay on at the C.I.A., warned the
Senate Intelligence
Committee that Mr. bin Laden and Al Qaeda remained "the most
immediate and
serious threat" to security.
But until Sept. 11, the people at the top levels of the new
Bush administration, if
anything, may have been less preoccupied by terrorism than the
Clinton aides
before them.
At the C.I.A., according to former Clinton administration
officials, Mr. Tenet's
actions did not match his words. For example, one intelligence
official said, the
C.I.A. station in Pakistan remained understaffed and
underfinanced, though the
C.I.A. denied that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/30/national/30TERR.html?pagewanted=1