The Ming Report

THE 233 DAY EXERCISE

April 8, 2004 - In her testimony before the 911 Commission National Security Advisor Rice, an accomplished concert pianist played her central theme: We did not have time to deal with terrorism in just 233 days. Her other hand played the counter-point:
You can’t afford to wait for the key to a plot to fall out of the trees. Loathe to give credit to the preceding administration for any success, she ascribed the foiling of the Millennium Plot to an alert and suspicious customs agent and repeated that the customs service had received no formal alert to minimize the possibility that anyone could credit Dick Clarke with any success whatever.

Those of us whose memories are unclouded by a partisan agenda recall that in the latter days of the previous century the entire public was alert to the probability of a terrorist attack to disrupt the celebration of New Years 2000. The intercepted bomber was not the first potential threat intercepted or turned back at the Canadian border that holiday season. No specific alert to the customs service was necessary. We were all alert to that possibility.

The fact that Ms. Rice obscured with a glissando or two was that the administration had a specific and credible warning that a strike in the US was impending and that it was expected to be dramatic. She revealed that in July they considered that airliners might be hijacked in an effort to free terrorists in custody and the possibility of a strike on the New York Federal Courthouse. She covered the fact that not one but two alert and suspicious FBI agents had caught clues falling from the Minnesota trees and the Arizona cactus with a crescendo of her theme and counter-point.

The Administration spent their 233 days thinking, searching for a technique to roll back Al Qaeda’s threat she said. And when the President returned from spending August in Crawford he issued his first Presidential National Security Directive on September 4th 2001. She made every effort to soft pedal the fact that after 221 days of thinking the President adopted almost verbatim the recommendations of Richard Clarke’s recommendations contained in his memo handed to Ms. Rice on the 5th day of the Bush Presidency. Commissioner Bob Kerry alluded to that fact when he called for the de-classification of the January 25th memo so that the public could judge for itself.

All in all Ms. Rice’s performance was that of a journeyman musician playing the piece that had been written for her. She executed the notes on the page with accomplished technique but without bringing fire and conviction to the music.

What was to have been a bravura performance was nothing more than a fingering exercise executed with practiced ease.