AP - State Dept. confirms Rice-Tenet meeting and that Ashcroft was briefed

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4232571.html

"Although spokesmen for the State Department and the National Security Council indicated Sunday that such a meeting had taken place, Rice was still saying Monday that she was not sure about it. She said she would have remembered the sort of forceful warning the book claims was conveyed there.

"We can confirm that a meeting took place on or around July 10, 2001," McCormack said late Monday.

"The information presented in this meeting was not new, rather it was a good summary from the threat reporting from the previous several weeks," he added.

Woodward's book "State of Denial" recounts the meeting among then-CIA Director George Tenet, Rice and the CIA's top counterterror officer. The book said the session stood out in the minds of the CIA officials as the "starkest warning they had given the White House" on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his network"
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and Ashcroft said on Monday that it was a pity no one came to him with this information - unfortunately for him the article also states that they have records showing that he was briefed on this by Tenet 5 July 2001. People this is either criminal negligence or gross incompetence - but either way surely it is impeachable?
THIS STORY NEEDS TO BE FRONT AND CENTER.

Please - keep the hits from Woodwards book in the news. Don't let the Foley follies sideline this news.
With luck Foley will bring down Hastert and a few repugs - let's keep the pressure on Rice and Rummy and the rest of the bush misadministration also.

thanks - I'll step off my soapbox now.....

these meetings and deliberately left them out of the Commission's report, presumably to give political shelter to Rice and indirectly to Bush.

"Philip D. Zelikow, the executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and now a top aide to Ms. Rice at the State Department, agreed that no witness before the commission had drawn attention to a July 10 meeting at the White House, nor described the sort of encounter portrayed in Mr. Woodward’s book.

Mr. Zelikow said that it was “entirely plausible” that a meeting occurred on July 10, during a period that summer in which intelligence agencies were being flooded with warnings of a terrorist attack against the United States or its allies."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/washington/01cnd-book.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1159761600&en=797d904aeadd4206&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin

commercial flights in the late summer of '01, yes?

WELCOME TO DU.

The wheels are really starting to wobble now. :D

So this makes at least twice then, that Dr. Rice was briefed on information that the CIA thought there was a threat looming that rated a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. And she doesn't remember a thing to this very day.

You know, I have to believe that if I were in a position of that kind of authority and responsibility, I'd be real sure of my facts, considering the horrific results of September 11. I would have gone over every scrap of paper, every memo, every file. What did I miss? Could I have possibly known? If I missed something, what could I do in the future? Could I live with myself and this mistake? And on and on.

But Dr. Rice, even five years later, isn't the least bit concerned, doesn't know whether she was briefed, can't remember any meetings, la-de-dah, la-de-dah, and may I add yada, yada, yada.

that statement - the information wasn't new, just a really good summation........

that cavalier attitude just blew me away.