The Case against Condi is growing.

The case against Condi Rice is growing.

The Washington Post have released the latest excerpt from Bob Woodward's "State of Denial" entitled: "Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice".

It tells of how the CIA became so concerned about the mass of "communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States" that Tenet and J. Cofer Black decided call the national security adviser from the car and to demand an immediate meeting with Rice in the hope that this dramatic request - Black called it an "out of cycle" session, beyond Tenet's regular weekly meeting with Rice - would get Rice's attention.

The reports of an imminent attack were so hard to ignore that:

Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence he'd seen. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming.

He did not know when, where or how, but Tenet felt there was too much noise in the intelligence systems. Two weeks earlier, he had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."

Tenet had been having difficulty in getting any movement on an immediate bin Laden action plan largely because Donald Rumsfeld had put forward the notion that all this noise on the intelligence networks could be a grand deception on bin Laden's part to test US reactions and suss their defences.

With this in mind:

Tenet had the NSA review all the intercepts, and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real."

Having established that the threats were real, Tenet and Black approached Condi laying out their fears that an al Qaeda attack was imminent.

He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden.

The United States had human and technical sources, and all the intelligence was consistent, the two men told Rice. Black acknowledged that some of it was uncertain "voodoo" but said it was often this voodoo that was the best indicator.

Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies.

Besides, Rice seemed focused on other administration priorities, especially the ballistic missile defense system that Bush had campaigned on. She was in a different place.

Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long. "Adults should not have a system like this," he said later.

It seems impossible to reconcile reports like this with Rice's claim - indeed, the claims from the entire Bush administration - that 9-11 came as a bolt from the blue that no-one could possibly have seen coming.

What we have here is the CIA Director and his counterterrorism chief making a highly unusual appointment with Rice in the hope that their "out of the norm" behaviour will startle her out of her complacency and result in some kind of action to thwart a possible attack. What they received was what one always gets from Condi - an over promoted loyalist who's greatest gift is her ability to continue to mouth Republican party "talking points" no matter what pressure she is under - a regurgitation of the need for Star Wars that ignored the entire context of what Tenet and Black were trying to convey to her.

It is now obvious why the Bush administration could identify bin Laden as the culprit the day after 9-11, a point that has previously confused me. They could identify him so quickly because they had been so forcefully warned about what he intended to do.

The line that the administration has so far successfully managed to maintain is that no-one could have seen this coming. That is now exposed as a lie.

They were forcefully warned about what was about to happen, but lacked the wherewithal to grasp what they were being told.

Afterward, Tenet looked back on the meeting with Rice as a tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the Sept. 11 attacks. Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the threat, but she just didn't get it in time, Tenet thought. He felt that he had done his job and had been very direct about the threat, but that Rice had not moved quickly. He felt she was not organized and did not push people, as he tried to do at the CIA.

Black later said, "The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head."

The Bush administration will now move into full defence mode and repeat ad nauseam their claims that no-one could have predicted this, as if repetition somehow enhances their argument.

If Woodward's sources are correct then Rice and Rumsfeld should be forced to reconsider their positions. And, if they won't, then Bush should fire them.

The argument that they couldn't have possibly seen this coming no longer holds water.

Tags: Rice, Woodward, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Black, al Qaeda, CIA, State of Denial, bin Laden, 9-11, attacks, prediction, warnings,