Blame game: the Democrats' search for 9/11 'contradictions'.

IN the weeks since former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke began promoting his anti-Bush book, Against All Enemies, it has become commonplace for the president's critics to say there are "contradictions" or "inconsistencies" in the Bush administration's defense of its actions in the days leading up to the 9/11 attacks. The talk became so intense that Thomas Kean, the Republican chairman of the 9/11 investigating commission, virtually demanded that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice testify "under the penalty of perjury." The New York Times reported that the chairman was moved to act because of "discrepancies" between Rice's statements and Clarke's.

Yet after Rice testified, Clarke himself declared, "I don't see that there are a lot of factual problems with what Dr. Rice said." Appearing on ABC News, where he is a paid analyst, Clarke added, "There were one or two minor points here or there that I think are probably wrong. But overall, I think she corroborated what I said."

Given all the accusations that had been made, a fair-minded observer might be moved to ask, "What's going on? Are there contradictions, or not?" And the answer is, mostly not. To begin with, much of the arguing about contradictions and discrepancies was simply rhetorical. Arguing from the same set of facts, administration critics said Bush did not do enough to fight terrorism before 9/11, while the president's defenders said he did. Other controversies involved more invective than argument, as when Clarke, making the rounds of TV talk shows, said, "President Bush did nothing [about terrorism] prior to September 11." No one who was trying to seriously portray the administration's position on terrorism would have said that.

Still, some of the talk of "contradictions" was based in fact, or at least what appeared to be fact. Much of the controversy stemmed from a story that appeared in the Washington Post in late March headlined, "Neither Silent Nor a Public Witness; Presidential Adviser Rice Becomes a 9/11 Focal Point as Contradictions Appear." Reporters Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank listed a number of apparent conflicts between statements Rice had made and those made by Clarke and other administration officials. The top three "contradictions" involved conflicting answers to the following questions: 1) Did the White House's pre-9/11 antiterrorism policy include military options? 2) Did the now-famous August 6, 2001, briefing of the president about al-Qaeda come as a result of Bush's questions, or was it brought to him unbidden by worried CIA officials? And 3) Was the administration's war planning for Iraq done at the expense of the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan?

First, the military strategy. In an op-ed in the Washington Post on March 22, Rice wrote that "our [pre-9/11] plan called for military options to attack al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets--taking the fight to the enemy where he lived." But when Jamie Gorelick, a Democratic member of the 9/11 commission, asked State Department official Richard Armitage if that was true, Armitage said, "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11."

Some of the president's opponents quickly seized Armitage's statement as evidence that Rice had lied, but it appears Rice was correct. When she appeared before the commission, Rice made public parts of the still-classified National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD), the anti-terrorism plan that was ready for Bush's signature shortly before 9/11. The NSPD directed the secretary of defense to "ensure that the contingency planning process include plans: against al-Qaeda and associated terrorist facilities in Afghanistan, including leadership, commandcontrol-communications, training, and logistics facilities; against Taliban targets in Afghanistan, including leadership, command-control, air and air defense, ground forces, and logistics; to eliminate weapons of mass destruction which al-Qaeda and associated terrorist groups may acquire or manufacture, including those stored in underground bunkers." That was a significant change from President Clinton's anti-terror plan, which called on the military mostly to help with logistics in the law-enforcement fight against terrorism. Once Rice released the actual words of the Bush directive, accusations of "contradictions" on the issue disappeared.

Next, the August 6, 2001, briefing of the president. The question was whether concerned CIA officials tried to warn a basically unworried president about the threat of terrorism, or whether the president himself wanted answers about alQaeda. In her private meeting with the commission in February, Rice said the briefing came about because the president had asked questions. But on March 24, Democratic commissioner Richard Ben Veniste said the commission had learned from the CIA itself that the briefing "was initiated by individuals within the CIA and not as a direct request from the national security adviser."

Questioned by Ben Veniste, CIA director George Tenet said he didn't know which story was correct. But after looking into the question, Tenet sent the commission a letter which said that in the spring and summer of 2001, the president "raised questions about whether the intelligence pointed toward threats inside the United States." CIA officials discussed the president's questions, Tenet continued, and decided to put together a briefing. "When this item was presented in the [presidential daily briefing] on August 6--with Dr. Rice present--the briefer introduced the piece by referring to the president's earlier questions," Tenet wrote. That put an end to another "contradiction."

Finally, there was the question of planning for war in Iraq. Much had been made of Clarke's assertion that Bush and his top aides were obsessed with Iraq at a time when they should have been fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. After Clarke made his accusation, Rice appeared on television to say that on September 16, 2001, the day after a key meeting to plan the War on Terror, the president told Rice, "Iraq is to the side. We're going after Afghanistan, and we're going to eliminate the Taliban and the al-Qaeda base in Afghanistan." But Post reporters Pincus and Milbank questioned Rice's account, writing that Bush's statement that Iraq had been put to the side "appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 [2001] directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq."

That is not, however, the whole story. It appears that Pincus and Milbank were relying on an article written by their Post colleague, Glenn Kessler, in early 2003, which said that on September 17, 2001, Bush "signed a 2 1/2 page document marked 'TOP SECRET' that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism." Kessler also wrote that before 9/11, the administration had been discussing changes in Iraq policy, but that after 9/11, "these concerns were submerged by the imperative of dealing first with Afghanistan." Kessler added that, "almost as a footnote," the presidential document also ordered the military to begin planning options for an invasion of Iraq. But nothing serious was done about the issue until the spring of 2002, Kessler reported, when the war in Afghanistan was over. Iraq was, in fact, on the side until that was finished. Yet another "contradiction" dissolved.

Still other claims of inconsistency proved just as fleeting. For example, administration opponents criticized Rice's testimony that reports of steppeds-up terrorist activities in the summer of 2001 were "frustratingly vague"; the critics argued that the White House should have done more to alert the public to specific threats. But Clarke himself made Rice's argument in his book, when he wrote that in the summer of 2001, "We considered a broad public warning, but we had no proof or specificity. What would it say? 'A terrorist group you have never heard of may be planning to do something somewhere'?"

In the end, almost all of the "contradictions" in the White House's defense turned out not to be contradictions at all. That is not to say that every question has been put to rest, and it certainly doesn't mean that the administration, especially its law-enforcement arms, should not face criticism for missing clues to the 9/11 hijackers' activities. But it does suggest that the basic outline of what happened in the days before 9/11 is pretty much known. When all the controversy is over, the story will likely be what it is now: a tale of investigative failures--such as the failure to catch known al-Qaeda operatives living in the U.S. and planning the 9/11 attacks--and of the failure of federal agencies to communicate more effectively with one another.

Still, some of the president's opponents will continue their quest to prove that Bush and his top aides are lying. Much like Clinton opponents who could not accept the fact that high-ranking White House aide Vincent Foster killed himself, they will search for shreds of evidence that, they believe, point to administration wrongdoing. Certainly that quest will continue through this election year, and, if Bush is re-elected, into his second term. "It seems that there is the expectation that somewhere there is a piece of evidence or facts that will point to why we missed this, and it will all be clear as day," says one frustrated administration official. "And it will show exactly who was to blame."