Condoleezza Rice in Against the Tide, by Lincoln Chafee

On Foreign Policy: Nothing positive about Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela

On Jan. 18. 2005, [at her confirmation hearing, I questioned] Condoleezza Rice; she would not acknowledge that the Venezuelans had voted their president into office in free and fair elections. I said in exasperation, "Is it possible for you to say SOMETHING positive about the Chavez administration?"

"It's pretty hard to find something positive," she said. Viewed through the official White House lens, the freely elected government of Venezuela was all bad. I never asked her to embrace that democracy or pretend we had no differences, just to step out of attack mode for a moment. She could think of nothing positive, and my time was up.

On Homeland Security: Post-9-11: Blamed structural reforms needed in FBI & CIA

Rice's answer was another way of saying [Bush's] watch had not really started. Rice kept steering the testimony back to the previous administration. "I think the question, is why over all of these years did we not address the structural problems that were there, with the FBI, with the CIA." By definition, then, no one in the administration made a mistake on domestic security in the 9 months leading up to Sep. 11. The structure was wrong, not the people in charge of it. Her subtext was: "if only a previous administration had put the right structural reforms in place."