I was under the impression that the president had decided against a public apology, and was therefore surprised a few days later when National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the White House press pool, "We wouldn't have put it in the speech if we had known what we know now." The result was the conflagration I had predicted. Rice realized sometime later that she had made a major mistake by issuing a public apology. She came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right. Unfortunately, the damage was done.
We stopped at the bottom of the stairs in a tunnel outside the PEOC. I watched as Secret Service agents positioned themselves at the top, middle, and bottom of the staircase, creating layers of defense in case the White House itself should be invaded. The Agent had evacuated me from my office, he said, because he'd gotten word over his radio that "an inbound unidentified aircraft was headed for 'Crown,'" code name for the White House. Within moments another report came in. An agent said, "the plane headed for us just hit the Pentagon." Now I knew for certain that Washington as well as NY was under attack.
This was the second call I had made to President Bush since hijacked airliners flew into the World Trade towers, and he'd been trying to reach me as well. A communications glitch had cut us off earlier, and as I waited to talk to him now, I watched images of the burning towers on an old television set that had been set up in the tunnel. When the president came on the line, I told him that the Pentagon had been hit and urged him to stay away from Washington. The city was under attack, and the White House was a target. I understood that he didn't want to appear to be on the run, but he shouldn't be here until we knew more about what was going on.
At about 10:15, a plane, believed hijacked, was 80 miles out and headed for DC. [An aide] asked me whether our combat air patrol had authority to engage the aircraft. Did our fighter pilots have authority, in other words, to shoot down an American commercial airliner believed to have been hijacked? "Yes," I said without hesitation. A moment later he was back. "It's 60 miles out. Do they have authorization to engage?" Again, yes.
There could have been no other answer. As the last hour had made brutally clear, once a plane was hijacked it was a weapon in the hands of the enemy. In one of our earlier calls, the president approved my recommendation that the combat air patrol be authorized to fire on a civilian airliner if it had been hijacked and would not divert.
The techniques worked. Zubaydah gave up information about Ramzi bin al Shibh, who had assisted the 9/11 hijackers. Information from Zubaydah and bin al Shibh led in turn to the capture of KSM, who after being questioned with enhanced techniques became a fount of information. A CIA report, declassified at my request, notes that KSM was the "preeminent source on al-Qa'ida." According to the 2004 report: "Debriefings since his detention have shed light on the plots, capabilities, the identity and location of al Qa'ida operatives and affiliated terrorist organizations and networks."
Despite the invaluable intelligence we were obtaining through the program of enhanced interrogation, in 2005 there was a move on Capitol Hill, led by Sen. John McCain & Lindsey Graham, to end it and require that all US government interrogations be conducted under the rules of the US Army Field Manual.
I was under the impression that the president had decided against a public apology, and was therefore surprised a few days later when National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the White House press pool, "We wouldn't have put it in the speech if we had known what we know now." The result was the conflagration I had predicted. Rice realized sometime later that she had made a major mistake by issuing a public apology. She came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right. Unfortunately, the damage was done.
Despite the invaluable intelligence we were obtaining through the program of enhanced interrogation, in 2005 there was a move on Capitol Hill, led by Sen. John McCain & Lindsey Graham, to end it and require that all government interrogations be conducted under the rules of the US Army Field Manual.
In an effort to reach an agreement with McCain and explain to him how damaging his proposed amendment would be, the CIA Director and I met with him in a secure conference room at the Capitol and tried to brief him about the program and the critical intelligence we had gained. But John didn't want to hear what we had to say. We had hardly started when he lost his temper and stormed out of the meeting.
Despite the invaluable intelligence we were obtaining through the program of enhanced interrogation, in 2005 there was a move on Capitol Hill, led by Sen. John McCain & Lindsey Graham, to end it and require that all US government interrogations be conducted under the rules of the US Army Field Manual.
[We failed in] an effort to reach an agreement with Senator McCain and explain to him how damaging his proposed amendment would be.
A commercial airline pilot usually has wide discretion to handle his aircraft in an emergency, and apparently someone said something to Norm about pilots deciding when and if to bring their planes down. I heard him say in no uncertain terms that pilot discretion would not be the rule today. "Get those planes down now," he ordered.
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| 2012 Presidential contenders on Homeland Security: | |||
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Republicans:
Rep.Newt Gingrich(GA) Rep.Ron Paul(TX) Gov.Mitt Romney(MA) Sen.Rick Santorum(PA) |
Democrats:
Pres.Barack Obama(IL) V.P.Joe Biden(DE) |
Third Parties:
Green: Gov.Gary Johnson(NM) AmericansElect: Gov.Buddy Roemer(LA) >Libertarian: Jill Stein(MA) | |
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