Day One Transcript: 9/11 Commission Hearing

Following is the full transcript of Tuesday's hearing by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States:

SPEAKERS: Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, Commission Vice Chair Lee H. Hamilton, Commission Member Richard Ben-Veniste, Commission Member Max Cleland, Commission Member Fred F. Fielding, Commission Member Jamie S. Gorelick, Commission Member Slade Gorton, Commission Member John F. Lehman, Commission Member Timothy J. Roemer, Commission Member James R. Thompson, Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow, Commission Senior Counsel Michael Hurley

WITNESSES: Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers

KEAN: Good morning.

As chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States, I hereby convene our eighth public hearing.

This hearing is going to run over the course of two days, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. today, and from 8:30 to 5:30 tomorrow.

The focus of this two-day hearing will be the counterterrorism policy of the United States. We will take as our principal focus the period between the embassy bombings of 1998 and the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In particular, this commission will review how our government responded to the increasing threat from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

We'll also examine the global war on terrorism today and seek from our witnesses perhaps some recommendations now how today we can do things to make America safer.

Over the next two days, we'll hear from senior officials from both the Clinton and the Bush administrations on the topic of terrorism, bin Laden and al Qaeda.

We will hear from former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright; current secretary of state, Colin Powell; former secretary of defense, William Cohen; current secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld; the director of central intelligence, George Tenet; former national security adviser, Samuel Berger; and former national counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke.

This commission had invited current national security adviser Dr. Condoleezza Rice to appear today, but the administration has declined that invitation. We're disappointed that she's not going to appear to answer our questions about national policy coordination, but in her place the administration has designated Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

We have had extended private meetings with Dr. Rice. We have received a lot of information from her and she's been a very cooperative witness in that circumstance.

We reserve the right today to ask each of our witnesses, as well as Dr. Rice, to appear before this commission again and answer further questions.

It is not possible for this hearing to cover everything we've learned. We know more than we are able to present to the public today. Yet we believe that we will be able to bring before the American public a significant body today of new information. We'll present more, of course, in our final report.

Just one additional word: Our hearing today is on policy issues leading up to 9/11, and a number of our witnesses were also involved in the events of that particular day. We're going to hold a later hearing in June that will address in detail how our government responded to the attacks on that particular day of 9/11.

Our first panel today will examine how the U.S. government used diplomacy as an instrument of national power to try and disrupt the al Qaeda network, and in particular, what it did to persuade the Taliban regime to arrest and to hand over bin Laden and his lieutenants, or at least to expel them from Afghan territory.

As we did in January, we will precede the introduction of panels with staff statements. These statements are informed by the work of the commissioners, as well as staff, and represent the staff's best effort to reconstruct the factual record.

Judgments and recommendations are for commissioners, and the commission will make those recommendations during the course of our work and, of course, in our final report.

I would now like to recognize Dr. Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director, who will introduce the first staff statement. And he will be followed by Mr. Mike Hurley, who directs the investigations that pertains to the topic of today's hearing.

Mr. Zelikow?

ZELIKOW: Members of the commission, with your help, your staff has developed initial findings to present to the public on the diplomatic efforts to deal with the danger posed by Islamic extremist terrorism before the September 11th attacks on the United States.

ZELIKOW: We will specifically focus on the efforts to counter the danger posed by the al Qaeda organization and its allies. These findings may help frame some of the issues for this hearing and inform the development of your judgments and recommendations.

This report reflects the results of our work so far. We remain ready to revise our understanding of these topics as our work continues. This staff statement represents the collective effort of a number of members of our staff. Scott Allan, Michael Hurley, Warren Bass, Dan Byman, Thomas Dowling and Len Hawley did much of the investigative work reflected in this statement.

We are grateful to the Department of State for its excellent cooperation in providing the commission with needed documents and in helping to arrange needed interviews both in the United States and in nine foreign countries.

We are also grateful to the foreign governments who have extended their cooperation in making many of their officials available to us as well.

The Executive Office of the President and the Central Intelligence Agency have made a wealth of material available to us that sheds light on the conduct of American diplomacy in this period.

I'd now like to introduce Michael Hurley of our staff, noting that Michael is employed by an agency of the United States government and did three tours in Afghanistan after 9/11. He will now present an abbreviated version of the staff statement, omitting some of the historical background.

Michael?

HURLEY: Counterterrorism and U.S. foreign policy -- terrorism is a strategy. As a way to achieve their political goals, some organizations or individuals deliberately try to kill innocent people, noncombatants.

The United States has long regarded such acts as criminal. For more than a generation, international terrorism has also been regarded as a threat to the nation's security.

In the 1970s and 1980s, terrorists frequently attacked American targets, often as an outgrowth of international conflicts like the Arab-Israeli dispute. The groups involved were frequently linked to states.

After the destruction of Pan-American flight 103 by Libyan agents in 1988, the wave of international terrorism that targeted Americans seemed to subside.

The 1993 attempt to blow up the World Trade Center called attention to a new kind of terrorist danger.

A national intelligence estimate issued in July 1995 concluded that the most likely threat would come from emerging transient terrorist groupings that were more fluid and multinational than the older organizations and state-sponsored surrogates.

This new terrorist phenomenon was made up, according to the NIE, of loose affiliations of Islamic extremists violently angry at the United States. Lacking strong organization, they could still get weapons, money and support from an assortment of governments, factions and individual benefactors.

HURLEY: Growing international support networks were enhancing their ability to operate in any region of the world.

Since the terrorists were understood as loosely affiliated sets of individuals, the basic approach for dealing with them was that of law enforcement. But President Clinton emphasized his concern about the problem as a national security issue in a presidential decision directive, PDD 39, in June 1995, that stated the U.S. policy on counterterrorism. This directive superseded the directive signed by President Reagan in 1986.

President Clinton's directive declared that the United States, "saw terrorism as a potential threat to national security, as well as a criminal act, and will apply all appropriate means to combat it. In doing so, the U.S. shall pursue vigorously efforts to deter and preempt, apprehend and prosecute, or assist other governments to prosecute individuals who perpetrate or plan to perpetrate such attacks."

The role of diplomacy was to gain the cooperation of other governments in bringing terrorists to justice. PDD 39 stated, "When terrorists wanted for violation of U.S. law are at large overseas, their return for prosecution shall be a matter of the highest priority and shall be a continuing central issue in bilateral relations with any state that harbors or assists them. If extradition procedures were unavailable or put aside, the United States could seek the local country's assistance in a rendition, secretly putting the fugitive in a plane back to America or some third country for trial."

Counterterrorism and foreign policy in practice: four examples from 1995 to 1996.

The staff statements describes the first two examples, Ramzi Yousef in 1995 and Khalid Sheik Mohammed in 1996, in more detail.

Please turn to the middle of page 3 where I will now discuss the third example, Osama bin Laden.

In 1996, he was based in Sudan. Under the influence of the radical Islamist Hassan Al Turabi, Sudan had become a safe haven for violent Islamist extremists.

By 1995, the U.S. government had connected bin Laden to terrorists as an important terrorist financier.

Since 1979, the secretary of state has had the authority to name state sponsors of terrorism, subjecting such countries to significant economic sanctions. Sudan was so designated in 1993.

In February 1996, for security reasons, U.S. diplomats left Khartoum. International pressure further increased as the regime failed to hand over three individuals involved in a 1995 attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on the regime.

Diplomacy had an effect. In exchanges beginning in February 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching U.S. officials asking what they could do to ease the pressure.

During the winter and spring of 1996, Sudan's defense minister visited Washington and had a series of meetings with representatives of the U.S. government.

To test Sudan's willingness to cooperate on terrorism, the United States presented eight demands to their Sudanese contact.

HURLEY: The one that concerned bin Laden was a request for intelligence information about bin Laden's contacts in Sudan.

These contacts with Sudan, which went on for years, have become a source of controversy.

Former Sudanese officials claim that Sudan offered to expel bin Laden to the United States. Clinton administration officials deny ever receiving such an offer. We have not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim.

Sudan did offer to expel bin Laden to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. U.S. officials became aware of these secret discussions certainly by March 1996.

The evidence suggests that the Saudi government wanted bin Laden expelled from Sudan, but would not agree to pardon him. The Saudis did not want bin Laden back in their country at all.

U.S. officials also wanted bin Laden expelled from Sudan. They knew the Sudanese were considering it. The U.S. government did not ask Sudan to render him into U.S. custody.

According to Samuel Berger, who was then the deputy national security adviser, the interagency counterterrorism security group, CSG, chaired by Richard Clarke, had a hypothetical discussion about bringing bin Laden to the United States. In that discussion, a Justice Department representative reportedly said there was no basis for bringing him to the United States since there was no way to hold him here absent an indictment.

Berger adds that in 1996 he was not aware of any intelligence that said bin Laden was responsible for any act against an American citizen. No rendition plan targeting bin Laden, who was still perceived as a terrorist financier, was requested by or presented to senior policy-makers during 1996.

Yet both Berger and Clarke also said the lack of an indictment made no difference. Instead, they said the idea was not worth pursuing because there was no chance that Sudan would ever turn bin Laden over to a hostile country.

"If Sudan had been serious," Clarke said, "the United States would have worked something out."

However, the U.S. government did approach other countries hostile to Sudan and bin Laden about whether they would take bin Laden. One was apparently interested. No handover took place.

Under pressure to leave, bin Laden worked with the Sudanese government to procure a safe passage and possibly funding for his departure.

In May 1996, bin Laden and his associates leased an Ariana Airlines jet and traveled to Afghanistan, stopping to refuel in the United Arab Emirates. Approximately two days after his departure, the Sudanese informed the U.S. government that bin Laden had left. It is unclear whether any U.S. officials considered whether or how to intercept bin Laden.

The fourth example, which I'll paraphrase from the staff statement, is Khobar Towers.

HURLEY: In June 1996, an enormous truck bomb was detonated in the Khobar Towers residential complex for Air Force personnel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

The Khobar bombing began as a law enforcement case, but Khobar bombing also was an intelligence case.

As we state in the middle of page five, the Khobar case highlights a central policy problem in counterterrorism: the relationship between evidence and action.

Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, emphasized to us, for example, that even if some individual Iranian officials were involved, this was not the same as proving that the Iranian government as a whole should be held responsible for the bombing.

National Security Adviser Berger held a similar view. He stressed the need for a definitive intelligence judgment. "The evidence might be challenged by foreign governments. The evidence might form a basis for going to war. Therefore," he explained, "the DCI and the director of the FBI must make a definitive judgment based on the professional opinions of their experts."

In the Khobar case, as in some others, the time lag between terrorist act and any definitive attribution grew to months, then years, as the evidence was compiled.

I'll now discuss the Afghanistan problem, beginning with the fourth paragraph on page six.

After suffering some disruption from his relocation to Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and his colleagues rebuilt.

In August 1996, he issued a public declaration of jihad against American troops in Saudi Arabia. In February 1998, this was expanded into a public call for any Muslim to kill any American, military or civilian, anywhere in the world.

By early 1997, intelligence and law enforcement officials in the U.S. government had finally received reliable information disclosing the existence of al Qaeda as a worldwide terrorist organization. That information elaborated a command-and-control structure headed by bin Laden and various lieutenants, described a network of training camps to process recruits, discussed efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and placed al Qaeda at the center among other groups affiliated with them in its Islamic army.

This information also dramatically modified the picture of inchoate new terrorism presented in the 1995 national intelligence estimate. But the new picture was not widely known. It took still more time before officials outside the circle of terrorism specialists or in foreign governments fully comprehended that the enemy was much larger than an individual criminal, more than just one man, OBL, and his associates.

For example, in 1996, Congress passed a law that authorized the secretary of state to designate foreign terrorist organizations that threaten the national security of the United States, a designation that triggers economic, immigration and criminal consequences.

HURLEY: al Qaeda was not designated by the secretary of state until the fall of 1999.

While Afghanistan became a sanctuary for al Qaeda, the State Department's interest in Afghanistan remained limited. Initially, after Taliban's rise, some state diplomats were -- as one official said to us -- willing to give the Taliban a chance because it might be able to bring stability to Afghanistan.

A secondary consideration was that stability would allow an oil pipeline to be built through the country; a project to be managed by the Union Oil Company of California, or UNOCAL.

During 1997 working-level state officials asked for permission to visit and investigate militant camps in Afghanistan. The Taliban stalled, then refused.

In November 1997, Secretary Albright described Taliban human rights violations and treatment of women as "despicable."

A Taliban delegation visited Washington in December. U.S. officials pressed them on the treatment of women, negotiating an end to the civil war, and narcotics trafficking. Bin Laden was barely mentioned.

U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson led a delegation to South Asia and Afghanistan in April 1998. No U.S. official of this rank had been to Kabul in decades. Ambassador Richardson used the opening to support U.N. negotiations on the civil war.

In light of bin Laden's new public fatwa against Americans in February, Ambassador Richardson asked the Taliban to turn bin Laden over to the United States. They answered that they did not control bin Laden, and that, in any case, he was not a threat to the United States.

The Taliban won few friends. Only three countries recognized it as the government of Afghanistan: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The Saudi effort and its aftermath: As we say on the middle of page eight, Saudi Arabia was a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism. Yet the ruling monarchy also knew bin Laden was an enemy.

Bin Laden had not set foot in Saudi Arabia since 1991, when he escaped a form of house arrest and made his way to Sudan. Bin Laden had fiercely denounced the rulers of Saudi Arabia publicly in his August 1996 fatwa, but the Saudis were content to leave him in Afghanistan so long as they were assured he was not making any trouble for them there.

Events soon drew Saudi attention back to bin Laden. In the spring of 1998, the Saudi government successfully disrupted a major bin Laden-organized effort to launch attacks on U.S. forces in the kingdom using a variety of man-portable missiles. Scores of individuals were arrested.

HURLEY: The Saudi government did not publicize what had happened, but U.S. officials learned of it. Seizing this opportunity, DCI Tenet urged the Saudis to help deal with bin Laden.

President Clinton, in May, designated Tenet as his representative to work with the Saudis on terrorism. Director Tenet visited Riyadh a few days later, then returned to Saudi Arabia in June.

Crown Prince Abdullah agreed to make an all-out secret effort to persuade the Taliban to expel bin Laden for eventual delivery to the United States or another country. Riyadh's emissary would be the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal. Director Tenet said it was imperative now to get an indictment against bin Laden.

A sealed indictment against bin Laden was issued by a New York grand jury a few days later: the product of a lengthy investigation.

Director Tenet also recommended that on action be taken on other U.S. options such as a covert action plan.

Vice President Gore thanked the Saudis for their efforts.

Prince Turki followed up in meetings during the summer with Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders. Employing a mixture of possible bribes and threats, he received a commitment that bin Laden would be handed over.

After the embassy bombings in August, Vice President Gore called Riyadh again to underscore the urgency of bringing the Saudi ultimatum to a final conclusion.

In September 1998, Prince Turki, joined by Pakistan's intelligence chief, had a climactic meeting with Mullah Omar in Kandahar. Omar reneged on his promise to expel bin Laden. When Turki angrily confronted him, Omar lost his temper and denounced the Saudi government. The Saudis and Pakistanis walked out. The Saudi government then cut off any further official assistance to the Taliban regime, recalled its diplomats from Kandahar, and expelled Taliban representatives from the kingdom. The Saudis suspended relations without a final break.

The Pakistanis did not suspend relations with the Taliban.

Both governments judged that Iran was already on the verge of going to war against the Taliban. The Saudis and Pakistanis feared that a further break might encourage Iran to attack. They also wanted to leave open room for rebuilding ties if more moderate voices among the Taliban gained control.

Crown Prince Abdullah visited Washington later in September. In meetings with the president and vice president, he briefed them on these developments. The United States had information that corroborated his account. Officials thanked the prince for his efforts, wondering what else could be done.

HURLEY: The United States acted too. In every available channel, U.S. officials, led by State's aggressive counterterrorism coordinator, Michael Sheehan, warned the Taliban of dire consequences if bin Laden was not expelled. Moreover, if there was any further attack, he and others warned, the Taliban would be held directly accountable, including the possibility of a military assault by the United States.

These diplomatic efforts may have had an impact. The U.S. government received substantial intelligence of internal arguments over whether bin Laden could stay in Afghanistan. The reported doubts extended from the Taliban to their Pakistani supporters, and even to bin Laden himself. For a time, bin Laden was reportedly considering relocating, and may have authorized discussion of this possibility with representatives of other governments.

We will report further on this topic at a later date.

In any event, bin Laden stayed in Afghanistan.

This period may have been the high-water mark for diplomatic pressure on the Taliban. The outside press continued. But the Taliban appeared to adjust and learn to live with it, employing a familiar mix of stalling tactics again and again. Urged on by the United States, the Saudis continued a more limited mix of the same tactics they had already employed. Prince Turki returned to Kandahar in June 1999 to no effect.

From 1999 through early 2001, the United States also pressed the United Arab Emirates, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off its ties and enforce sanctions, especially those relating to flights to and from Afghanistan. Unfortunately, these efforts to persuade the UAE achieved little before 9/11.

As time passed, the United States also obtained information that the Taliban was trying to extort cash from Saudi Arabia and the UAE with various threats, and that these blackmail efforts may have paid off.

After months of heated internal debate about whether this step would burn remaining bridges to the Taliban, President Clinton issued an executive order in July 1999 effectively declaring that the regime was a state sponsor of terrorism. U.N. economic and travel sanctions were added in October 1999, in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1267.

None of this had any visible effect on Mullah Omar, an illiterate leader who was unconcerned about commerce with the outside world. Omar had no diplomatic contact with the West, since he refused to meet with non-Muslims.

The United States also learned that at the end of 1999 the Taliban Council of Ministers had unanimously reaffirmed that they would stick by bin Laden. Relations with bin Laden and the Taliban leadership were sometimes tense, but the foundation was solid. Omar executed some subordinates who clashed with his pro-bin Laden line.

By the end of 2000, the United States, working with Russia, won U.N. support for still broader sanctions in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1333, including an embargo on arm sales to the Taliban.

HURLEY: Again, these had no visible affect. This may have been because the sanctions did not stop the flow of Pakistani military assistance to the Taliban.

In April 2001, State Department officials in the Bush administration concluded that the Pakistani government was just not concerned about complying with sanctions against the Taliban.

Reflecting on the lack of progress with the Taliban, Secretary Albright told us that, "We had to do something. In the end," she said, "it didn't work. But we did, in fact, try to use all the tools we had."

Other diplomatic efforts with the Saudi government centered on letting U.S. agents interrogate prisoners in Saudi custody in cases like Khobar. Several officials have complained to us that the United States could not get direct access to an important al Qaeda financial official, Madoni Al Tayid (ph), who had been detained by the Saudi government in 1997.

American officials raise the issue. The Saudis provided some information.

In September 1998, Vice President Gore thanked the Saudis for the responsiveness on this matter, though he renewed the request for direct U.S. access. The United States never obtained this access.

The United States also pressed Saudi Arabia and the UAE for more cooperation in controlling money flows to terrorists or organizations linked to them.

After months of arguments in Washington over the proper role of the FBI, an initial U.S. delegation on terrorist finance visited these countries to start working with their counterparts in July 1999.

U.S. officials reported to the White House that they thought the new initiatives to work together had begun successfully.

Another delegation followed up with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in January 2000.

In Saudi Arabia, the team concentrated on tracing bin Laden's assets and access to his family's money, exchanges that led to further fruitful work.

Progress on other topics was limited, however. The issue was not a consistent U.S. priority. Moreover, the Saudis were reluctant or unable to provide much help.

Available intelligence was also so non-specific that it was difficult to confront the Saudis with evidence or cues to action.

HURLEY: The Bush administration did not develop any diplomatic initiatives on al Qaeda with the Saudi government before the 9/11 attack. Vice President Cheney apparently called Crown Prince Abdullah on July 4th, 2001, only to seek Saudi help in preventing threatened attacks on American facilities in the kingdom.

Pressuring Pakistan: Please go to the bottom of page 11.

Secretary Albright hoped to promote a more robust approach to South Asia when she took office, but the administration had a full agenda of concerns, including a possible nuclear weapons program, illicit sales of missile technology, terrorism, an arms race, and danger of war with India, and a succession of weak democratic governments.

The American ambassador to Islamabad, in most of the immediate pre-9/11 period, William Milam, told us that U.S. policy had too many moving parts and could never determine what items had the highest priority.

A principle envoy to South Asia for the administration, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, explained the emphasis on nuclear weapons both because of the danger of nuclear war and because nuclear proliferation might increase the risk that terrorists could access such technology.

In May 1998, both Pakistan and India had tested nuclear weapons. These tests marked a setback to nonproliferation policy, and reinforced U.S. sanctions on both countries. But the tests also spurred more engagement in order to reduce the threat of war.

Bin Laden and terrorist activity in Afghanistan were not significant issues in high-level contacts with Pakistan, until after the embassy bombings of August 1998.

After the U.S. missile strikes on Afghanistan, bin Laden's network and their relationship with the Pakistani supported Taliban did become a major issue in high-level diplomacy. After the strikes, President Clinton called Pakistani President Nawaz Sharif, and he was sympathetic to America's losses. But the Pakistani side thought the strikes were overkill; the wrong way to handle the problem.

The United States asked the Saudis to put pressure on Pakistan to help. A senior State Department official concluded that Crown Prince Abdullah put a tremendous amount of heat on Sharif during his October 1998 visit to Pakistan.

Sharif was invited to Washington and met with President Clinton on December 2nd, 1998. Tension with India and nuclear weapons topped the agenda, but the leaders also discussed bin Laden. Pakistani officials defended Mullah Omar, and thought the Taliban would not object to a joint effort by others to get bin Laden.

In mid-December, President Clinton called Sharif, worried both about immediate threats and the longer-term problem of bin Laden. The Pakistani leadership promised to raise the issue directly with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but the United States received word in early 1999 that the Pakistani army remained reluctant to confront the Taliban, in part because of concerns about the effect on Pakistani politics.

In early 1999, the State Department Counterterrorism Office proposed a comprehensive diplomatic strategy for all the states involved in the Afghanistan problem, including Pakistan.

HURLEY: It specified both carrots and sticks, including the threat of certifying Pakistan as not cooperating on terrorism.

A version of this diplomatic strategy was eventually adopted by the State Department. Its author, Ambassador Sheehan, told us that it had been watered down to the point that nothing was then done with it.

By the summer of 1999, the counterterrorism agenda had to compete with cross-border fighting in Kashmir that threatened to explode into war. Nevertheless, President Clinton contacted Sharif in June, urging him strongly to get the Taliban to expel bin Laden.

Clinton suggested Pakistan use its control over oil supplies to the Taliban and its access to imports through Karachi. The Pakistani leadership offered instead that Pakistani intelligence services might try to capture bin Laden themselves.

President Clinton met with Prime Minister Sharif in Washington on July 4th. The prime subject was resolution of the crisis in Kashmir. The president also complained to the prime minister about Pakistan's failure to take effective action with respect to the Taliban and bin Laden.

Later, the United States agreed to assist in training a Pakistani special forces team for the bin Laden operation. Particularly since the Pakistan Intelligence Service was so deeply involved with the Taliban and possibly bin Laden, U.S. counterterrorism officials had doubts about every aspect of this new joint plan. Yet while few thought it would do much good, fewer thought it would do any actual harm.

Officials were implementing it when Prime Minister Sharif was deposed by General Pervez Musharraf in October 1999. General Musharraf was scornful about the unit and the idea.

At first the Clinton administration hoped that Musharraf's takeover might create an opening for action on bin Laden. National Security Adviser Berger wondered about a trade of getting bin Laden in exchange for softer treatment of a relatively benign military regime. But the idea was never developed into a policy proposal.

Meanwhile, the president and his advisers were anxious about a series of new terrorist threats associated with the millennium and were getting information linking these threats to al Qaeda associates in Pakistan, particularly Abu Zubaida.

President Clinton sent a message asking for immediate help on Abu Zudaida and another push on bin Laden, renewing the idea of using Pakistani forces to get him.

Musharraf told Ambassador Milam that he would do what he could, but he preferred a diplomatic solution on bin Laden. Though he thought terrorists should be brought to justice, he did not find the military ideas appealing.

Administration officials debated whether to keep wrong with the Musharraf government or confront the general with a blunter choice: to either adopt a new policy or Washington will draw the appropriate conclusions.

One such threat would be to cancel a possible presidential visit in March.

HURLEY: U.S. envoys were given instructions that were firm, but not as confrontational as some U.S. officials had advocated.

Musharraf was preoccupied with his domestic agenda, but replied that he would do what he could, perhaps meeting with the Taliban himself.

Despite serious security threats, President Clinton made a one- day stopover in Islamabad on March 25th, 2000, the first presidential visit since 1969.

The main subjects were India-Pakistan tensions and proliferation, but President Clinton did raise the bin Laden problem. The Pakistani position was that their government had to support the Taliban and that the only way forward was to engage them and try to moderate their behavior. They asked for evidence that bin Laden had really ordered the embassy bombings a year and a half earlier.

In a follow-up meeting the next day with Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, President Musharraf argued that Pakistan had only limited influence over the Taliban.

Musharraf did meet with Mullah Omar and did urge him to get rid of bin Laden. In early June, the Pakistani interior minister even joined with Pickering to deliver a joint message to Taliban officials.

But the Taliban seemed immune to such pleas, especially from Pakistani civilians like the interior minister. Pakistan did not threaten to cut off its help to the Taliban regime.

By September, the United States was again criticizing the Pakistani government for supporting a Taliban military offensive to complete the conquest of Afghanistan.

Considering new policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan: The civil war in Afghanistan posed the Taliban on one side, drawn from Afghanistan's largest ethnic community, the Pashtuns, against the Northern Alliance.

Pashtuns opposing the Taliban, like the Karzai clan, were not organized into a political and military force. The main foe of the Taliban was the Northern Alliance led by Ahmed Shah Masood, a hero of the Afghan jihad and a leader of ethnic Tajiks. The Taliban were backed by Pakistan. The Northern Alliance received some support from Iran, Russia and India.

During 1999, the U.S. government began thinking harder about whether or how to replace the Taliban regime. Thinking in Washington divided along two main paths.

The first path, led by the South Asia Bureau at the State Department, headed by Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth and its counterpart on the NSC staff, was for a major diplomatic effort to end the civil war and install a national unity government.

The second path, proposed by counterterrorism officials in the NSC staff and the CIA, was for the United States to take sides in the Afghan civil war and begin funneling secret military aide to the Taliban's foe, the Northern Alliance.

HURLEY: These officials argued that the diplomatic approach had little chance of success and would not do anything, at least in the short term, to stop al Qaeda.

Critics of this idea reply that the Northern Alliance was tainted by associations with narcotics traffickers, that its military capabilities were modest, and that an American association with this group would link the United States to an unpopular faction that Afghans blamed for much of the misrule and war earlier in the 1990s. The debate continued inconclusively throughout the last year and a half of the Clinton administration.

The CIA established limited ties to the Northern Alliance for intelligence purposes. Lethal aid was not provided.

The Afghan and Pakistani dilemmas were handed over to the Bush administration as it took office in 2001. The NSC counterterrorism staff, still led by Clarke, pushed urgently for a quick decision in favor of providing secret military assistance to the Northern Alliance to stave off its defeat.

The initial proposed amounts were quite small, with the hope of keeping the Northern Alliance in the field tying down Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice discussed the issue with DCI Tenet.

In early March 2001, Clarke presented the issue of aid to the Northern Alliance to Rice for action. Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley suggested dealing with this as part of the overall review they were conducting of their strategy against al Qaeda. In the meantime, lawyers could work on developing the appropriate authorities.

Rice agreed, noting that the review would need to be done very soon, but that the issue had to be connected to an examination of policy toward Afghanistan.

Rice, Hadley and the NSC staff member for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, told us that they opposed aid to the Northern Alliance alone, contending that the program needed to include Pashtun opponents of the regime and be conducted on a larger scale.

Clarke supported the larger program, but he warned the delay risked the alliance's defeat.

The issue was then made part of the reviews of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. The government developed formal policy papers that were discussed by sub-Cabinet officials, the deputies, on April 30th, June 27th and 29th, July 16th and September 10th.

During the same time period, the administration was developing a formal strategy on al Qaeda to be codified in a national security presidential directive, NSPD.

HURLEY: The al Qaeda elements of this directive had been completed by deputies in July. On September 4th, the principals apparently approved the submission of this directive to the president.

The Afghanistan options debated in 2001 ranged from seeking a deal with the Taliban to overthrowing the regime. By the end of the deputies meeting on September 10th, the officials had formally agreed upon a three-phase strategy.

It called first for dispatching an envoy to give the Taliban an opportunity to expel bin Laden and his organization from Afghanistan, even as the U.S. government tried to build greater capacity to pressure them.

If this failed, pressure would be applied on the Taliban both through diplomacy and by encouraging anti-Taliban Afghans to attack al Qaeda bases, part of a planned covert action program, including significant additional funding and more support for Pashtun opponents of the regime.

If the Taliban's policy failed to change after these two phases, the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action.

ZELIKOW: Excuse me, Mike. We've been asked to wrap up the staff statements so that we can proceed with the witnesses. Let me move immediately to the conclusion of the staff statement from here.

In conclusion, from the spring of 1997 to September 2001, the U.S. government tried to persuade the Taliban to expel bin Laden to a country where he could face justice and stop being a sanctuary for his organization. The efforts employed included inducements, warnings and sanctions. All these efforts failed.

The U.S. government also pressed two successive Pakistani governments to demand that the Taliban cease providing a sanctuary for bin Laden and his organization, and failing that, to cut off their support for the Taliban.

Before 9/11, the United States could not find a mix of incentives or pressure that would persuade Pakistan to reconsider its fundamental relationship with the Taliban.

From 1999 to early 2001, the United States pressed the UAE, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off ties and enforce sanctions, especially related to air travel to Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/11.

The government of Saudi Arabia worked closely with top U.S. officials in major initiatives to solve the bin Laden problem with diplomacy.

On the other hand, before 9/11 the Saudi and U.S. governments did not achieve full sharing of importance intelligence information or develop an adequate joint effort to track and disrupt the finances of the al Qaeda organization.

ZELIKOW: Thank you.

KEAN: Thank you very much.

Our first witness today is Dr. Madeleine K. Albright, formerly our secretary of state. She's, I believe, well-known to all in this audience, and has a distinguished career in public service. We are very pleased to have her appear before the commission this morning.

So welcome to you, Madam Secretary.

She is accompanied by former Undersecretary for Political Affairs, and one of the great public servants this country has, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who has had, as I say, a very distinguished career in public service.

Madam Secretary and Ambassador Pickering, we would like to ask you if you could raise your hands so we may place you under oath.

Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

ALBRIGHT: I do.

KEAN: Thank you very much, Madam Secretary. A prepared statement will be entered into the record in full, and we would ask you to summarize your statement, and please proceed.

ALBRIGHT: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Vice Chairman Hamilton, and members of the commission. I'm very pleased to be here.

As you've just mentioned, Tom Pickering, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs, and one of our most experienced and respected foreign service officers in U.S. history, is here with me.

During my years as secretary of state, if I were traveling or otherwise occupied, Ambassador Pickering was the department's representative at White House meetings related to terrorism. We thought it would help in providing the most complete answers if Ambassador Pickering were available as appropriate to add his recollections to mine.

I would also like to emphasize, at the outset, my desire to be of as much help as possible to the commission. We can't turn back the clock to before September 11th, but we must do everything we can to prevent similar tragedies and we owe it to the families of the victims of 9/11 and to us all.

Mr. Chairman, we all know that history is lived forward and written backward; much seems obvious now that was less clear prior to September 11th. But I can say with confidence that President Clinton and his team did everything we could -- everything we could think of -- based on the knowledge, we had to protect our people and disrupt and defeat al Qaeda.

ALBRIGHT: We certainly recognized the threat posed by the terrorist groups. Although terror was not new, we realized we faced a novel variation. Instead of being directed by a hostile country, the new breed of terrorist was independent, multinational and well-versed in modern information technology.

During our time in office, the transnational threat was a dominant theme in public statements, private deliberations and foreign relations. This was reflected in the administration's decision to expand the CIA's counterterrorism center, intensify security cooperation with other countries, enlarge counterterrorism training assistance, double overall counterterrorism expenditures, increase anti-terrorist rewards, freeze terrorist assets, train first responders here at home, plan for the protection of infrastructure against cyberattacks and reorganize the National Security Council with a mandate to prepare the government to shield our people from unconventional dangers.

As early as 1995, President Clinton said that, and I quote, "Our generation's enemies are the terrorists who kill children or turn them into orphans," unquote.

The president repeatedly told the United Nations that combating terrorism topped America's agenda and should top theirs. He urged every nation to deny sanctuary to terrorists and to cooperate in bringing them to justice.

Before Y2K, we undertook the largest counterterrorism operation in U.S. history to that time. Cabinet members or their representatives met virtually every day for the sole purpose of detecting and preventing terrorist attacks.

I fully embraced an aggressive policy before and especially after August 7th, 1998, when terrorist explosions struck our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. This was my worst day as secretary of state.

Within a week, we had clear evidence that Osama bin Laden was responsible. The question for us was whether to rely on law enforcement or take military action. We decided to do both.

We prosecuted the conspirators we had captured, but we also launched cruise missiles at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. The timing of the strikes was prompted by credible, predictive intelligence that terrorist leaders, possibly including bin Laden, would be gathering at one of the camps.

The day after the strike, the White House convened a meeting to study further military option.

Our primary target, bin Laden, had not been hit so we were determined to try again. In subsequent weeks, the president specifically authorized the use of force and there should have been no confusion that our personnel were authorized to kill bin Laden. We did not, after all, launch cruise missiles for the purpose of serving legal papers.

To use force effectively, we placed war ships equipped with cruise missiles on call in the Arabian Sea. We also studied the possibility of sending a U.S. special forces team into Afghanistan to try and snatch bin Laden.

ALBRIGHT: But success in either case depended on whether we knew where bin Laden would be at a particular time. Although we consumed all the intelligence we had, we did not get this information, and instead we occasionally learned where bin Laden had been or where he might be going or where someone who appeared to resemble him might be. It was truly maddening.

I compared it to one of those arcade games where you manipulate a lever hooked to a claw-like hand that you think once you put your quarter in will actually scoop up a prize, but every time you try to pull the basket out the prize falls away.

The Africa embassy bombings intensified our efforts to neutralize bin Laden and also to protect our own people. Every morning that I was in Washington, I personally reviewed the latest information about threats to our diplomatic posts. I was struck by the number of danger signals we received and also by the difficulty of making a clear judgment about whether a threat was credible enough to warrant closing an embassy.

Even as we took protective measures and looked for ways to use force effectively, we pressed ahead diplomatically. Shortly after our cruise missile strikes, the Taliban called the State Department to complain. This led to a prolonged dialogue during which we repeatedly pushed for custody of bin Laden.

The Taliban replied by offering a menu of excuses. They said that surrendering bin Laden would violate their cultural tradition of hospitality and that they would be overthrown by their own people if they yielded bin Laden in response to U.S. pressure. Perhaps, they said, bin Laden will leave voluntarily. At one point they told us he had already gone.

In any case, we were assured that bin Laden was under house arrest. That was a lie, since he continued to show up in the media threatening Americans.

In 1999, we developed a new strategy aimed at pulling all the diplomatic levers we had simultaneously. We went to each of the countries we thought had influence with the Taliban and asked them to use that influence to help us get bin Laden.

One such country was Pakistan, whose leaders were reluctant to apply real pressure to the Taliban because it would alienate radicals within their own borders.

ALBRIGHT: There was a limit to the incentives we could offer to overcome this reluctance. Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998 had triggered one set of sanctions; a military coup in 1999 triggered more.

Nevertheless, in our discussions with Pakistani leaders we were blunt. We told them that, "Bin Laden is a murderer who plans to kill again. We need your help in bringing him to justice."

Our ambassador delivered this message, so did Tom Pickering. So did I. So did the president of the United States.

In return, we received promises but no decisive action. We couldn't offer enough to persuade Pakistani leaders, such as General Musharraf, to run the risks that would have been necessary.

It was not until September 11th that Musharraf had the motivation in his own mind to provide real cooperation. And even that has not yet resulted in bin Laden's capture, though it apparently has led to several attempts on Musharraf's life.

The other two countries we went to were Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and both agreed to deliver the right message. The Saudis sent one of their princes to confront the Taliban directly. And he came back and told us the Taliban were "idiots and liars."

The Saudis then downgraded diplomatic ties with the Taliban, cut off official assistance and denied visas to Afghans traveling for non- religious reasons. And the UAE did the same. Our diplomats, including Ambassador Pickering, also met directly with Taliban leaders.

We told them that if we did not get bin Laden, we would impose sanctions both bilaterally and through the U.N., which we did. We also warned them clearly and repeatedly that they would be held accountable for any future attacks traceable to al Qaeda.

In retrospect, we know that the Taliban and bin Laden had a symbiotic relationship. The Taliban needed the money and muscle al Qaeda provided; bin Laden needed space for his operatives to live and train. And there was never a real chance the Taliban would turn bin Laden over to us or to anybody else.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to now offer briefly some of the recommendations for the future.

We must begin by thinking clearly about what it is we need to do.

ALBRIGHT: We were not attacked on September 11th by a noun, terrorism. We were attacked by individuals affiliated with al Qaeda. They are the enemies who killed our fellow citizens and foreigners, and defeating them should be the focus of our policy.

If we pursue goals that are unnecessarily broad, such as the elimination not only of threats but also of potential threats, we will stretch ourselves to the breaking point and become more vulnerable -- not less -- to those truly in a position to harm us.

We also need to remember that al Qaeda is not a criminal gang that can simply be rounded up and put behind bars. It is the center of an ideological virus that has wholly perverted the minds of thousands and distorted the thinking of millions more. Until the right medicine is found, the virus will continue to spread, and that remedy begins with competence.

Bin Laden and his cohorts have absolutely nothing to offer their followers except destruction, death and the illusion of glory. Puncturing this illusion is the key to winning the battle of ideas.

The problem is not combating al Qaeda's inherent appeal, for it has none. The problem is changing the fact that major components of American foreign policy are either opposed or misunderstood by much of the world.

According to the State Department's advisory group on public diplomacy, published recently, the bottom has indeed fallen out of support for the United States. This unpopularity has handed bin Laden a gift that he has eagerly exploited. He is viewed by many as a leader of all those who harbor anti-American sentiments, and this has given him a following that is wholly undeserved.

If we are to succeed, we must be sure that bin Laden goes down in history not as a defender of the faith or champion of the dispossessed, but rather as what he is: a murderer, a traitor to Islam and a loser.

The tarnishing of America's global prestige will require considerable time and effort to undue, and that's why we need long- range counterterrorism plans that advantage of the full array of our national security tools.

This plan must include the comprehensive reform of our intelligence structures; a vastly expanded commitment to public diplomacy and outreach, especially within the Arab and Muslim worlds; a far bolder strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan; revised policies toward the key countries of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia; expansion of the Nunn-Lugar program to secure weapons of mass destruction materials on a global basis; a new approach to handling and sharing of information concerning terrorist suspects; and a change in the tone of American national security policy to emphasize the value of diplomatic cooperation.

ALBRIGHT: And Secretary of State Powell has made a concerted effort to begin this.

Let me close by saying that I sympathize greatly with the president and others in positions of responsibility at this time. Each day brings with it the possibility of a new terrorist strike. The March 11 train bombings in Madrid remind us that, despite all that is being done, our enemies have a broad range of targets.

We should all expect and prepare ourselves for the likelihood that further strikes will take place on our own soil, and we must be united in making sure that if and when that happens it will do absolutely nothing to advance the terrorists' goals. It will not cause divisions within and among the American people; on the contrary, it must bring us closer together and make us even more determined to fulfill our responsibilities.

For more than two centuries, our countrymen have fought and died so that liberty might live, and since September 11th we have been summoned, each in our own way, to a new round in that struggle.

We cannot underestimate the risks or anticipate the final victories will come easily or soon, but we can draw strength from the knowledge of what terror can and cannot do.

Terror can turn life to death and laughter to tears and shared hopes to sorrowful memories. It can crash a plane and bring down towers that scrape the sky.

But it cannot alter the essential goodness of the American people or diminish our loyalty to one another or cause our nation to turn its back on the world.

Mr. Chairman, and members of the commission, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here with you this morning. And I'd be very pleased now to answer your questions.

KEAN: Thank you very much, Madam Secretary.

Lead questioners for this panel are Commissioner Lehman and Commissioner Roemer. They will each have 15 minutes for their questions. Additional questioners on this panel will be held strictly to the five-minute rule.

And, Commissioner Lehman, I believe you're going to start the questioning on behalf of the panel.

LEHMAN: Since my college Tim Roemer was one of the originators of this commission, I'll yield the prime position to Tim.

KEAN: So yielded.

ROEMER: I want to thank the secretary for that gracious gesture.

I want to start, Mr. Chairman, by, I believe, underscoring something you said in your opening statement.

ROEMER: You said that we have invited Dr. Rice to talk to this 9/11 commission.

Well, we have a book issued by Richard Clarke which is a blistering attack on the Bush administration. We have Dr. Rice on the airwaves saying that she strongly condemns and disagrees with Mr. Clarke's assessments and analysis.

I would hope that this discussion would not be for the airwaves and would not be a partisan type of discussion that we have, but belongs in this hearing room tomorrow in a substantive way so that the 10 commissioners can ask factually based questions and so the American people have the access to those answers to try to make this country safer.

So I would underscore your comments, Mr. Chairman, that I hope Dr. Rice will reconsider and come before our commission for the sake of the American people tomorrow.

(APPLAUSE)

Madam Secretary, I want to mention your book, if I may, Madam Secretary -- I don't need to mention a bestseller.

You say, in a chapter called "A Special Kind Of Evil," that, the African bombings -- our embassies there -- were the worst day of your tenure as secretary of state. "We lost 224 people, 12 Americans. The devil breathed down our neck that day, and three years later, 19 hijackers drove us into the jaws of Hell," where we are today. trying to resolve some of these tough questions.

The Clinton administration launched 79 cruise missiles 13 days after finding who did this. Had diplomacy run its course? Should we have taken the same kind of action that we took after the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa with the USS Cole?

ALBRIGHT: Congressman Roemer, let me say that, as you pointed out, when the embassies were blown up, it was my worse day. I went to Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. In Nairobi, I saw the rubble and I saw the suffering of the African people, many of whom were in hospitals as a result of what had happened, and obviously many were dead.

ALBRIGHT: And I then brought the bodies home of the dead Americans, and sat with the coffins and talked with the families when I came back.

And so for me, this was a horrendous moment and one that I was bound and determined to figure out why it had happened and what we could do about it.

I asked Admiral Crowe to form a commission to determine various actions that we could take, and it was something that was on my mind constantly.

I was very much in favor of the attack with the cruise missiles, and was very much in favor, along with the rest of our team, to try to do everything we could to have further military attacks if and when we had predictable and actionable intelligence.

And as I say in my statement, I believed fully that we were prepared to go. President Clinton had issued all the orders. We had kept armed submarines in the Arabian Sea. And we were ready if there ever was actionable intelligence. And so I did favor military action.

But at the same time, we had to continue to act diplomatically. I have always believed that what is necessary is to use every tool in the American national security arsenal, whether it is military, diplomatic or economic or legal. And we tried everything at the same time.

On the USS Cole, we were obviously prepared to respond, but we did not have definitive evidence that it really was committed by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda; that evidence came after we were out of office. But had we had definitive evidence, I can assure you that we were prepared to act militarily.

ROEMER: Let me ask you a question about that, Madam Secretary.

There are three investigations going on with respect to the USS Cole. The Yemenis are doing one, the FBI is doing one and the CIA is doing one.

In December, the CIA comes forward, hedges the recommendation, comes forward with a preliminary judgment, and says they can't, through command and control, prove that Osama bin Laden ordered it.

Isn't it enough at this point to say al Qaeda did it and respond in that kind of way, either in December or certainly in the months that come after your administration?

ALBRIGHT: Well, I think the real question is to try to figure out what really did happen. And when we left office, we did not have all the answers to it. And as you point out, there were numerous investigations.

I, myself, called the president of Yemen to help us in this issue and to press for additional investigations. I think the results came after we were out of office, and I would have hoped that action could have been taken.

But there was no definitive action of any kind at the time that we left office.

ROEMER: In terms of the time that you spent as a secretary of state on terrorism -- we'll have Secretary Powell follow you -- what percent of your time, if you can give us a rough estimation, did you spend?

You had Middle East peace. You certainly were one of the driving forces in being a hawk with respect to Kosovo and using our military there. What percent of your time can you best estimate that you spent on counterterrorism policy?

ALBRIGHT: It's very hard, Congressman, to give you an exact estimate, but I can tell you what I did, which is every morning when I came into my office, I obviously read the intelligence, but I also met with the assistant secretary for security.

I had changed the standard practice and named a law enforcement officer to that job, David Carpenter, who was a retired Secret Service agent. And so I had a real expert dealing with it. We spent whatever time was necessary in the morning in order to go over the threats.

Then either I or Ambassador Pickering, depending upon who was in town, went to the small meetings that took place on counterterrorism issues.

We talked about issues to do with terrorism, Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda in so many meetings, whether they were official principals meetings at the White House or the breakfasts that Mr. Berger and Secretary Cohen and...

ROEMER: ABC breakfasts, Albright...

(CROSSTALK)

ALBRIGHT: No. The ABCs were lunches. The breakfasts were a little bit larger, with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Mr. Tenet and the ambassador to the United Nations.

But we talked about this constantly and therefore it's hard to give you an estimate of the time. But it was very much...

ROEMER: Can you guess at all? Twenty percent? Fifty percent?

ALBRIGHT: I would say probably somewhere about 35 percent, because it was something that was constant and it was very hard to quantify.

ALBRIGHT: But I can tell you I started every single day trying to assess what the terrorist threats were, and also how to direct the diplomacy in order to be able to make sure that we were dealing with this.

I think maybe Ambassador Pickering can also tell you how much time he spent on it because our activities were seamless.

PICKERING: I think that secretary's judgment in this -- and she used to call me after the morning meetings and give me orders to carry things out and get things done. Given the number of meetings, particularly in crisis periods leading up to the millennium, for example, sometimes most of the day would be occupied in dealing with this particular issue until all the meetings that the secretary mentioned -- she had many internal meetings in the State Department to plan for not only what she should do with the ongoing meetings at an interagency basis, but also get us thinking about new ideas, thinking out of the hat on this issue and trying to come up with new and different ways to deal with the problem.

ALBRIGHT: So some days, it was 100 percent. So I think it's very hard to give you a real percentage.

ROEMER: Let me, in my 15 minutes, move quickly through some things. I mentioned Secretary Powell will be coming next.

I imagine you briefed Secretary Powell as he came into office in a transition. Did you let the secretary know that al Qaeda was going to be the kind of threat that he would need to spend 35 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent, in some days, of his time fighting this new fluid, dynamic threat to this country? And what was his reaction or what was Dr. Rice's reaction to these types of briefings?

ALBRIGHT: Well, let me explain a little bit of what happened in the transition in the State Department as something that is done many times and is well put together. So I had general meetings with Secretary Powell. Then, when he moved into his offices in the first floor of the State Department, I arranged to make sure that every assistant secretary briefed him on whatever the issue was. And Ambassador Sheehan, who was in charge of counterterrorism, briefed Secretary Powell in detail about the kinds of things that we have been talking about, in terms of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, et cetera.

In my general discussions with Secretary Powell, I did point out that this was a major issue that had occupied a large portion of my time. But...

ROEMER: How did he react to that?

ALBRIGHT: Well, I think he understood that this was a serious issue. And I only know what I've read in terms of Mr. Berger's conversations with Dr. Rice, but I believe that Secretary Powell understood the dangers that were inherent.

ROEMER: Let me move on to a very complicated relationship that the United States has with Saudi Arabia.

I want to ask, very bluntly and very frankly, your opinion with regard to their cooperation with the United States prior to 9/11.

We were able to get the Saudis to cooperate on issues such as having Ambassador Turkey go to yell at Mullah Omar in Afghanistan, but we could not get them to access al Qaeda's CFO. What kind of relationship was this? And did you personally press the Saudis hard in these kinds of instances when we needed access to high-level people like Madoni Al Tayid (ph)?

ALBRIGHT: I think, as you pointed out, our relationship with Saudi Arabia is a very complicated one and the Saudi record is a mixed one, frankly.

I think that they were helpful on a number of issues. I talked to Crown Prince Abdullah, as well as Foreign Minister Saud, about a number of issues, obviously including bin Laden and al Qaeda. We also spent a lot of time on Iraq, and we spent a lot of time in terms of issues to do around the Middle East peace process.

They always did say that they would press and push on the bin Laden/al Qaeda front but, frankly, it's hard to say how effective it was at what times.

ROEMER: Are you convinced they were pushing?

ALBRIGHT: Well, I was convinced when they told me they were pushing, but the bottom line is that, in effect, as you look at the record, there were questions about some of the financial aspects. And I do think that there is a mixed record.

One of the things about the Saudis is that they often do more things in private than is evident publicly, but I would say the record was a mixed one. I would say we pushed as hard as we could.

ROEMER: Let me ask you, Madam Secretary, in your book, you say, and I quote, "Sadly I was not surprised that we were attacked, or even shocked that the airplane hijacking was involved," unquote.

You were not surprised by that September 11th event? Did you have intelligence or briefings indicating that hijackings were possible on September 11th? Why weren't you surprised? And did it include not being shocked that planes were used as missiles and weapons, or that it was al Qaeda?

ALBRIGHT: A number of responses to that, Congressman.

I think that we were operating within an atmosphere where we were watching all kinds of potential attacks, and, in fact, foiled a number of them in the years that we were in office. I, kind of, call them the dogs that didn't bite or bark, because people didn't hear about them.

So, I think that we were always on the lookout, which is why I said I wasn't surprised, because we knew that there were a variety of attacks possible and we foiled some.

In various briefings, we were told that there were all kinds of ways to do things: car bombs or suitcases or bio or chemical. And among the various parts of what we were briefed, there would be sometimes a mention of an airplane.

But basically, we were looking at all kinds of potential ways that there could be attacks. And so the sadness of this was that we were always on the lookout for some terrible thing, and we were foiling many, many of the potential attacks.

ROEMER: Madam Secretary, thank you very much. I've been slipped a note that my time has expired and I want to stick right to that so that other commissioners can get in.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

KEAN: Thank you, Congressman.

Secretary Lehman?

LEHMAN: Madam Secretary, welcome.

LEHMAN: I would like to follow up on many of the same subjects here.

One of the constant refrains we've had in the over a thousand interviews that we've done and through the documents that we have been studying, is that there was considerable dysfunction in the intelligence community, particularly with regard to sharing of information. A lot of people did not know about information that was in the government that was not shared, stovepiped. And many people were not playing with a full deck.

So I'd like to ask your own view...

(LAUGHTER)

... some even with intelligence -- about starting with your entry as secretary of state. You'd been at the U.N. You were part of the inner circle, the NSC, the Cabinet. What was the picture that you had when you took over the reins as secretary of state as to the nature of the threat -- the terrorist threat?

ALBRIGHT: When I came in as secretary, which was February 1997, there was no question that we knew about a variety of threats. I had, at the U.N., been involved with some of the issues to do with Sudan, where we were very concerned about the web of terrorist camps and support, et cetera, that were present in Sudan.

If you remember, the Sudanese were implicated in an assassination attempt on President Mubarak, and it was as a result of that that we instituted or put in sanctions against Sudan.

And so I clearly was aware of issues and was briefed. And also briefed in terms of some of the investigations to do with the World Trade Center.

So one knew that there were various terrorist threats that we were dealing with, but on, as I pointed out in my remarks, kind of, a whole new level of problems.

And I did see, I have to say, something that you alluded to, which was a lack of communication already between the CIA and the FBI in terms of transmitting information to each other. And so what we tried to do was to bring them closer together, with some difficulty. I think some to do with the culture of both those agencies, and something that I recommend finally that needs to be fixed.

ALBRIGHT: So I do think that there were issues in that regard.

But on the whole, I think there was a lot of intelligence available and the question is how it was read.

LEHMAN: Well, specifically on the '93 attack on the World Trade Center, we have been told by some very senior officials that the complete picture, the evidence of the al Qaeda links of the perpetrators, were really not made known until after -- shared within the government until after the trial of the blind sheik. And the links of Abdel Rahman Yasin, for instance, were not widely known within the government.

When did you, if you could think back, become aware of the close and many links between the '93 plotters and al Qaeda?

ALBRIGHT: I can't remember exactly. I mean, I think that, you know, we began to know more about al Qaeda sometime in '96, '97. We knew bin Laden was a financier that was involved in a variety of activities. But I honestly can't tell you exactly when I became aware of the various linkages.

LEHMAN: Did you know about Abdel Rahman Yasin and his fleeing to Baghdad and his support and cooperation with Saddam's intelligence service? Did you see any significance in that? He being, of course, one of the main plotters of the '93 bombing.

ALBRIGHT: I can't say that I remember that.

LEHMAN: Just on that theme, the fact that Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas were there along with Yasin, would this have been a reason to begin to look a bit at what the Iraqi secret service was doing with al Qaeda, with or without Saddam's knowledge?

ALBRIGHT: Again, my sense of all of this was that there were shadowy connections among a variety of groups. But in terms of this kind of specificity, frankly, that was not something that as secretary of state I would have been looking into.

LEHMAN: One of the questions, again, that have often been raised is, almost as soon as the Clinton administration came in there was an attempt to assassination President Bush. There was a very minor strike launched against the intelligence service of Saddam -- intelligence headquarters, and with the assurance that no one would be there so it would be in the middle of the night.

After the Khobar bombing there were many in the administration who wanted to retaliate, but in fact nothing was done.

After the '93 WTI attack there essentially was nothing done, pending the five-year trial.

LEHMAN: After the embassy bombing, there was, again, an attempt to make cruise missile attacks against the training camps and then against the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.

As you recall, there were criticisms at the time that this was a wag-the-dog scenario, that it was during the various stages of the president's problems, and that there was no real evidence there; that it was an innocent pharmaceutical plant. You were part of the inner sanctum at the time.

In your view, was there real evidence that this was part of a bin Laden network?

ALBRIGHT: You've said a lot of different things.

Let me just say that I do believe that when we had evidence, we used force. And the response on the '93 -- on the attempted assassination of President Bush, we reacted I think, very strongly. That's certainly what the Iraqis thought.

And I was the one that had the rather peculiar moment of delivering the message to the Iraqi ambassador at the United Nations, while sitting in his residence under a portrait of Saddam Hussein, that we were bombing Baghdad and then went to the Security Council with the proof of it.

So I think that we acted very well on that, and should be a sign that we were prepared to use military force when it was appropriate and we had intelligence in order to make it effective.

I think on the issue of '98, we were prepared to use force, and did use it immediately after the bombings of the embassies, as I said earlier.

On actionable intelligence, I believed, and continue to believe, that the plant in Sudan was connected to this network that Osama bin Laden had had in Sudan and that it was an appropriate strike.

And as you point out -- and I think this is the very hard part for all of us, Mr. Secretary -- is that we have to put ourselves into the pre-9/11 mode, and it's hard, because we've been in our post-9/11 prism, where we should be, and yet things were very different before 9/11.

And as you point out, we were mostly accused of overreacting, not underreacting. And I believe we reacted appropriately, and as I said earlier, we would have acted more had we had actionable intelligence.

And so, I think we dealt very appropriately with the issue and I think our record stands well.

LEHMAN: The reports at the time and subsequently have appeared in various places that the evidence involved with the pharmaceutical plant not only involved al Qaeda and specifically Osama, but also the Iraqi -- various programs within the Iraqi government, let us say.

Did you see any significance in that as something to worry about, perhaps the Iraqis' involvement with Osama might be a bit more than it might appear?

ALBRIGHT: I did not make the connection.

But let me just say this, is that if you look at the record, I was as hawkish on Saddam Hussein as anybody, made more statements and took more actions, whether I was ambassador at the United Nations or secretary of state, in terms of trying to contain Saddam Hussein and make sure that he proceeded in terms of trying to live up to or fulfill the Security Council resolutions.

ALBRIGHT: And so, I did not or do not remember making a link between what was happening in Sudan and the Iraqis.

I don't know, Tom, whether you have anything.

PICKERING: Mr. Secretary, I also participated in the meetings leading up to that decision.

There were two pieces of evidence only that I was aware of that I thought were very, very important and that helped, I believe, to crystallize the decision. One was the report we had following chemical analysis of the actual sample of a precursor to VX nerve gas that did not occur in nature. It was very unique and was not used for any other known purpose.

And the other was the connection that the secretary just talked to you about of the plant with investments of activities of Osama bin Laden in Sudan. As you know, he spent time in Sudan prior to the attack on the plant.

And I was not aware of any Iraqi connection until after the attack.

LEHMAN: Thank you.

Let me shift to Saudi Arabia. As I'm sure you all know, it is a kind of a, sort of, common wisdom, or in the State Department, one would say an urban myth, that the culture of the department is ruled by pro-Saudi- pro-Sunni bent.

And there are things that certainly give credence to that in the record leading up to 9/11. The fact that State never made any demarche to get after the Saudis had perhaps the second most powerful man in al Qaeda in their possession from '95 on and didn't tell us for some time, and to this day has not been turned over to us. The fact that the activities of the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs have really never gotten even on to the scope of the agenda between Saudi Arabia and the United States. The flow, this constant promotion of jihadist ideology around the world.

In your time -- and the fact, of course, that, which has recently become an issue that, despite the fact that the priests and ministers are in jail in Saudi for having Christian services, they are -- nevertheless, Saudi was never listed on the annual list of State Department states who don't offer religious freedom.

LEHMAN: In your time, did you find -- one last -- in our last hearing, Ms. Ryan, who headed the Consular Service, explained that the reason special attention was not given to Saudis seeking visas, even after Khalid Sheik Mohammed, for instance, was indicted and he was given a visa, was because the State Department had Saudi Arabia in a most favored nation status. And, indeed, when we had the officer who did stop one of the hijackers, he said that he came under pressure from his colleagues because picking on a Saudi was very much not acceptable.

Do you find this was a problem? Is there a cultural problem, or is this purely a myth?

ALBRIGHT: Well, I don't think there's a cultural problem. I think that basically there are those in the Department that are responsible for our relationships with Saudi Arabia, and there are people in the department who are responsible for our relationships with Israel and other countries. And I think that, as secretary, and as undersecretary, we took all those issues under consideration, obviously.

I do think, as I said earlier, our relationship with Saudi Arabia is an incredibly complicated one. We had forces stationed there. We were trying to figure out how to deal with Iraq. We understood the role of Saudi Arabia within the Arab world.

And we pressed them. I, personally, pressed them on issues to do -- believe it or not -- on women's rights. I pressed them on the religious issues. I pressed them on questions to do with how they were using their charitable money. And we did push them at a variety of times.

As I said earlier, the record is mixed. But the relationship is complicated and there are divisions within Saudi society, and I think it will continue to be a highly complex relationship for the United States.

PICKERING: Also, Mr. Secretary, on the visa case, as I know all of you know from your own work and some of the work that has been done ahead of time, the State Department officers issuing visas relied on something called a watch list. And in fact, the State Department had taken the initiative to develop the watch list in connection with certain criminal activities and then expanded it in cooperation with the intelligence community to try to deal with terrorism, as we all saw terrorism becoming a much more serious problem.

PICKERING: And the tragedy of the issue is that apparently there was information available to the intelligence community, but it did not get into the watch lists, something every State Department officer in Saudi Arabia issuing visas had to consult before even thinking about issuing a visa. And that, unfortunately, the intelligence we had in our possession -- again some of the stovepiping problem you related earlier and some of the compartmentation issue or some of the, I think, maybe uncertainty in the intelligence community about the importance of getting that information to the visa officers.

Visa officers interview people often to determine whether they're going to overstay their visa; become immigrants without going through the appropriate processes.

I don't know that visa officers, except by happenstance, have any particular ability to detect terrorists. But maybe we have new profiles now that will help.

But the watch list was the basis for that. And unfortunately in that particular case, the watch list was not up to date and, therefore, we missed those individuals that should have been caught by the visa process.

LEHMAN: Thank you very much.

KEAN: I just have one question. It seems to me that for years, at the end of the Clinton administration and into the Bush administration, we seem to have a hope -- which I don't quite understand -- that the Taliban somehow would agree, through diplomatic pressure or through some other pressure, to give up Osama bin Laden in some way or other. And it seems to go on for a few years, even though I can't find in anything I've read any justification, really, for that hope.

I understand trying for a while, but once you've probably coming to the end of your rope on those attempts, recognizing that this was a man who was the leader of the Taliban, was something who wasn't even talking to people because they weren't Muslims, diplomatically?

ALBRIGHT: I do think that we later learned about the very, kind of, as I said, symbiotic relationship between the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. And if you look at it, it's hard to -- the vain hope is the way that I say -- as you review it, that you feel.

ALBRIGHT: But at the time, you have to realize what our options were, in terms of we needed to have them cuff him up, so to speak, and basically we used every pressure point that we could.

There were a variety of meetings that we had with them. We thought that we could either threaten or induce them to give him up. But even -- and I have to say the options, let's say, of bombing them has not p