Tuesday, October 03, 2006

State Dept. Confirms Rice-Tenet Meeting

State Dept. Confirms Rice-Tenet Meeting : "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did receive a CIA briefing about terror threats just about two months before the Sept. 11 attacks, but the information was not new, her chief spokesman said.

In doing so, Sean McCormack confirmed a meeting -- on July 10, 2001 -- that his boss had said repeatedly she could not specifically recall. She had said earlier that there were virtually daily meetings at the time.

A new book by reporter Bob Woodward of Watergate fame describes the White House meeting as an emergency wakeup call that Rice had brushed off. Rice was President Bush's national security adviser at the time and was promoted to the top diplomatic job last year.

Although spokesmen for the State Department and the National Security Council indicated Sunday that such a meeting had taken place, Rice was still saying Monday that she was not sure about it. She said she would have remembered the sort of forceful warning the book claims was conveyed there."

(Via Salon.)