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• Thursday, January 8, 2009 09:39 AM

  @libertyson

  You seem to be having a reading comprehension problem. How else can one explain you still citing the August 6 PDB as important after I showed that it was unimportant and based largely on a December 4, 1998 PDB? (The December 4, 1998 PDB and actions taken in response to it apparently were of such little consequence that Richard Clarke made no mention of them in Against All Enemies.)

  One more time:

  "I really can’t recall it. I think its importance has been overblown. What hap-pens in the presidential daily briefing is that the president asks questions of the briefer, which is usually Tenet on Monday through Friday. And the briefer then takes notes of the questions and goes back to CIA to get papers written to respond to the questions.

  "In response to the drumbeat day after day of intelligence that there was going to be an al-Qaida attack, the president apparently said, 'Tell me what al-Qaida could do.' And in response to that the CIA went off and wrote a paper that listed everything possible that al-Qaida could do. It didn’t say we have intelligence that tells us the attack will be here or there, the attack method will be this or that. It was rather a laundry list of possible things they could do."

  That was Richard Clarke on the August 6 PDB.

  http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/03/24/clarke/index2.html

  You also claimed that I did not read Rice's words right after I posted her words. Once again, here is part of the exchange Rice had with Richard Ben-Veniste before the 9/11 Commission:

  RICE: Certainly not. There was nothing reassuring. But I can also tell you that there was nothing in this memo that suggested that an attack was coming on New York or Washington, D.C. There was nothing in this memo as to time, place, how or where. This was not a threat report to the president or a threat report to me.

  BEN-VENISTE: We agree that there were no specifics. Let me move on, if I may.

  Ben-Veniste himself acknowledged that there were no specifics in the August 6 PDB. Clarke also noted in "Against All Enemies" that there were no "proof or specificity" regarding an imminent al Qaeda attack.

  You're making yourself look foolish when you claim the August 6 PDB contained information that it did not contain.

  —Groenhagen Read Groenhagen's other letters
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