Over the past weekend,
I posted a diary about how Condoleeza Rice received urgent warnings from the CIA two months prior to 9/11 suggesting that attacks within the United States were imminent. Speaking to reporters on a plane en route to Saudi Arabia,
Rice claimed she never remembered such a briefing, and that the idea she would have brushed off such a warning was absurd. As it turns out, Ms. Rice is simply a stone cold liar:
SHANNON, Ireland - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she cannot recall then-CIA chief George Tenet warning her of an impending al-Qaida attack in the United States, as a new book claims he did two months before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible," Rice said.
::snip::
"I don't know that this meeting took place, but what I really don't know, what I'm quite certain of, is that it was not a meeting in which I was told there was an impending attack and I refused to respond," Rice said.
Condoleeza Rice is a liar. A liar who not only WAS briefed on the urgent threat of imminent attacks on our country, but then lied by omission to the 9/11 commission. As reported in an updated version of the same story also reported in the New York Times:
A former intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Sept. 11 Commission and an earlier joint congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks were both informed of Tenet's and Black's meeting with Rice, when Tenet warned Rice that a significant attack was coming.
In a closed, classified session at CIA headquarters, Tenet told Sept. 11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, the commission's executive director Phil Zelikow and other commission staff about Rice's meeting with Tenet and Black, the official said.
Well, well, well. The truth rears its ugly head. The Bush administration miscalculated on this one, big time. They figured that because the primary 9/11 commission report mentioned nothing about this meeting they could just lie and obfusicate about it. You know, no harm no foul. Business as usual. What they did not anticipate is that the details of George Tenet's testimony during private session with the commission would become public, and that the whole thing would blow right up in their fucking faces. The idea that Rice would just forget the content of such an urgent warning is just laughably absurd:
...though Tenet and Black warned Rice in the starkest terms of the prospects for attack, she brushed them off, Woodward reiterated Monday. He told NBC's "Today" show that Black told him the two men were so emphatic, it amounted to "holding a gun to her head" and doing everything except pulling the trigger.
Black reportedly laid out secret intercepts and other data "showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaida would soon attack the United States." Tenet was so worried that he called Rice from his car and asked to see her right away, the book said.
Well, doesn't exactly SOUND like the type of meeting that would just "slip your mind", now does it? However, in her interview Rice refers to the briefing as the "supposed meeting."
Folks, let's hit them square in the jaw on this. We need to be out there repeating the following meme over and over again: The Bush administration did NOTHING to prevent 9/11. Even in the face of hard evidence, even in the face of the CIA telling them that an attack was imminent. Now they are even resorting to lying to cover up their malfeasance.
Terror is all they've got. Without this issue they are DONE. We should never relent, even after we have left them quivering on the floor begging for mercy. This is the smoking gun we have all been waiting for. Let's get cracking!