Speak of the devil...
Spokesman: Rice didn't 'brush off' terror warnings
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) -- In July 2001, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice did have a meeting with CIA Director George Tenet about the threat posed by al Qaeda, but the information presented to her was not new, her spokesman said Monday.
A new book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward says Tenet and Cofer Black, then the U.S. counterterrorism chief, demanded a snap meeting with Rice to warn her of a growing al Qaeda threat to U.S. interests and possibly the U.S. homeland. The meeting took place July 10, 2001, two months before al Qaeda suicide hijackers attacked New York and Washington, killing nearly 3,000 people.
According to Woodward's book, "State of Denial," Tenet and Black left the meeting with the sense that Rice had given them "the brush-off." And the meeting was never reported to the independent commission that investigated the attacks, Woodward writes.
Rice, now secretary of state, told reporters traveling with her Sunday that she did not remember any "so-called emergency meeting" and said any meeting records had been turned over to the 9/11 commission.
"What I am quite certain of, however, 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," she said. "And the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible, especially given that in July when we were getting a very steady stream of quite alarmist reports of potential attacks."
But State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Monday that Rice did meet with Tenet on July 10, and the records were made available to the commission.
