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Richard Clark's testimony last year in front of the 9/11 commission was riveting. His testimony clearly showed that he had approached Condoleezza Rice with an outline of how to deal with al-Qaida and it's imminent threat. What did she do with that memo?

As Clark testified:

...the response was that in the Bush administration I should, and my committee, counter terrorism security group, should report to the deputies committee, which is a sub-Cabinet level committee, and not to the principals and that, therefore, it was inappropriate for me to be asking for a principals' meeting. Instead, there would be a deputies meeting.

Asked by 9/11 panelist, Roemer, "So does this slow the process down to go to the deputies rather than to the principals or a small group as you had previously done?" Clark responded:

It slowed it down enormously, by months. First of all, the deputies committee didn't meet urgently in January or February. Then when the deputies committee did meet, it took the issue of Al Qaida as part of a cluster of policy issues, including nuclear proliferation in South Asia, democratization in Pakistan, how to treat the various problems, including narcotics and other problems in Afghanistan, and launched on a series of deputies meetings extending over several months to address Al Qaida in the context of all of those inter-related issues. That process probably ended, I think in July of 2001. So we were ready for a principals meeting in July. But the principals calendar was full and then they went on vacation, many of them in August, so we couldn't meet in August, and therefore the principals met in September.

The entire memo has been declassified, released, and discussed in its entirety on the National Security Archive web site.

The Bush Administration kept the complete memo classified throughout the 9/11 hearings (only releasing parts of it), out of the public realm and away from criticism. Surprised?

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