Rice Tries To Calm The Storm

News Analysis by David Paul Kuhn, CBSNews.com Chief Political Writer

Rice insisted there was no "silver bullet" that could have stopped the terrorist attacks – something all experts agree on – but failed to disprove the growing consensus from testimony and intelligence records that the Bush administration did not treat al Qaeda as a principal national security concern.

"She can out-argue the television interviewers but she is not going to change the judgment of this committee, Democrats and Republicans," said Leslie H. Gelb, a former Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times correspondent and one of 12 members of the Hart-Rudman commission on national security chartered by the Defense Department in 1998.

"I think that the media still treats the issue of 'important' versus 'priority' as a 'he says, she says' issue," Gelb continued, referring to former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke and Rice, respectively.

"It isn't. All the evidence is on the 'he says,' including Bush's interview with Woodward, including General Shelton's statement, Armitage's statement, O'Neill's book. I mean, the evidence is overwhelming ... that the Bush administration treated this as an important issue but not one of his top priorities."

Rice's nationally broadcast, three-hour appearance before the ten-member bipartisan commission was widely anticipated in Washington. Mr. Bush had for weeks refused to let Rice testify, citing the "executive privilege" of a president over staff members that Congress has no role in appointing.

Bowing to growing political pressure, the White House relented and allowed Rice to appear before the panel. Republicans saw her testimony as necessary in order to have an under-oath rebuttal to Clarke's contention that the Bush White House did not consider al Qaeda a top defense priority. Clarke also charged that the war in Iraq subverted the success of the war on terror.

In her testimony Thursday, Rice said that the White House would have "moved Heaven and Earth" if they'd had specific information on a terrorist plot prior to Sept. 11. Rice referenced the general nature of intelligence "chatter" on al Qaeda gathered prior to the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

Rice cited warnings that said, "Unbelievable news coming in weeks" and "Big event – there will be a very, very, very, very big uproar. There will be attacks in the near future." She called the reports "troubling" but was quick to point out that they "don't tell us when; they don't tell us where; they don't tell us who; and they don't tell us how."

"I think she was convincing on balance on the question about whether they had any warning that really could have been used. Reading those messages, those telephone conversations, the intercepts, was very effective," said I. M. "Mac" Destler, director of the Program on International Security and Economic Policy at the University of Maryland.

The most contentious testimony of the day surrounded a previously undisclosed White House presidential daily brief from August 6, 2001 that Rice said was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." There was agreement that there were no specifics in the memo about pending attacks, but Democratic commission member Bob Kerrey, a former senator and governor of Nebraska, sparred with Rice as to why the president did not have a meeting of his senior advisers in response to the memo.

There were 33 meetings of senior Bush administration officials devoted to various national security threats over a seven-month period. The topics ranged from Iraq to the Middle East to China to missile defense, but not one dealt solely with terrorism.

Both Destler and Gelb agreed with Rice that no specific action within reason could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks. But both pointed out that if the Bush administration had treated terrorism as a top priority it might have improved its chances of thwarting an attack.

"The Bush administration thought of the world in terms of states and therefore they were not predisposed to give equal priority to a problem that didn't involve states, that involved this sort of stateless transnational entity like al Qaeda," Destler said.

"I think the idea that they had 33 principal meetings and none of them were primarily about terrorism is a problem," he continued. "Principals meet on issues that are up for decision, that are very prominent on the administration's agenda."

Surrounding Thursday's proceedings was the increasingly grim situation in Iraq, where more than 30 Americans have died since Sunday.

The political ramifications of both the war in Iraq and the Sept. 11 commission report, due to come out in late July, are being closely watched by both the Bush campaign and Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

"This committee is absolutely balanced politically and it is not going to come out with any conclusion that will really damage the president. The Republicans on the committee won't let it," Gelb said. "What's going to shift political attitudes is whether or not there are going to further terrorist incidents or the situation in Iraq."