NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES

Eighth Public Hearing

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC

CHAIRED BY: THOMAS H. KEAN

STAFF STATEMENT NO. 5: DIPLOMACY

PANEL I:
FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT

PANEL II:
SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL; ACCOMPANIED BY DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE RICHARD ARMITAGE

STAFF STATEMENT NO. 6:THE MILITARY

PANEL III:
FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE WILLIAM COHEN

PANEL IV
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DONALD RUMSFELD; ACCOMPANIED BY DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PAUL WOLFOWITZ; AND GENERAL RICHARD MYERS, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

MR. KEAN: Good morning. As chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States I hereby convene our eighth public hearing. This hearing is going to run over the course of two days, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. today and from 8:30 to 5:30 tomorrow.

The focus of this two-day hearing will be the counterterrorism policy of the United States. We will take as our principal focus the period between the embassy bombings of 1998 and the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. In particular, this commission will review how our government responded to the increasing threat from Osama Bin Ladin and al Qaeda. We'll also examine the global war on terrorism today and seek from our witnesses perhaps some recommendations on how today we can do things to make America safer.

Over the next two days we'll hear from senior officials from both the Clinton and the Bush administrations on the topic of terrorism, Bin Ladin and al Qaeda. We will hear from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; current Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Secretary of Defense William Cohen; current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet; former National Security Advisor Samuel Berger and former National Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke.

This commission had invited current National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice to appear today. But the Administration has declined that invitation. We're disappointed that she's not going to appear to answer our questions about national policy coordination. But in her place the Administration has designated Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. We have had extended private meetings with Dr. Rice. We have received a lot of information from her and she's been a very cooperative witness in that circumstance. We will reserve the right today to ask each of our witnesses, as well as Dr. Rice, to appear before this commission again and answer further questions.

It's not possible for this hearing to cover everything we've learned. We know more than we're able to present to the public today. Yet we believe that we'll be able to bring before the American public a significant body today of new information. We'll present more, of course, in our final report.

Just one additional word. Our hearing today is on policy issues leading up to 9/11, and a number of our witnesses were also involved in the events of that particular day. We're going to hold a later hearing in June that will address in detail how our government responded to the attacks on that particular day of 9/11.

Our first panel today will examine how the U.S. government used diplomacy as an instrument of national power to try and disrupt the al Qaeda network and in particular what it did to persuade the Taliban regime to arrest and to hand over Bin Ladin and his lieutenants, or at least to expel them from Afghan territory.

As we did in January, we will proceed to introduction of panels, with staff statements. These statements are informed by the work of the Commissioners, as well as staff, represent the staff's best effort to reconstruct the factual record. I'll say judgments and recommendations are for commissioners, and the Commission will make those recommendations during the course of our work and, of course, in our final report.

I would now like to recognize Dr. Philip Zelikow, the Commission's executive director, who will introduce the first staff statement. He will be followed by Mr. Mike Hurley, who directs the investigation that pertains to the topic of today's hearing.

Mr. Zelikow.

PHILIP ZELIKOW (executive director): Members of the Commission, with your help, your staff has developed initial findings to present to the public on the diplomatic efforts to deal with the danger posed by Islamic extremist terrorism before the September 11th attacks on the United States. We will specifically focus on the efforts to counter the danger posed by the al Qaeda organization and its allies. These findings may help frame some of the issues for this hearing and inform the development of your judgments and recommendations.

This report reflects the results of our work so far. We remain ready to revise our understanding of these topics as our work continues. This staff statement represents the collective effort of a number of members of our staff. Scott Allan, Michael Hurley, Warren Bass, Dan Byman, Thomas Dowling and Len Hawley did much of the investigative work reflected in this statement.

We are grateful to the Department of State for its excellent cooperation in providing the Commission with needed documents and in helping to arrange needed interviews, both in the United States and in nine foreign countries.

We are also grateful to the foreign governments who have extended their cooperation in making many of their officials available to us as well. The Executive Office of the President and the Central Intelligence Agency have made a wealth of material available to us that sheds light on the conduct of American diplomacy in this period.

I'd now like to introduce Michael Hurley of our staff, noting that Michael is employed by an agency of the United States government and did three tours in Afghanistan after 9/11. He will now present an abbreviated version of this staff statement, omitting some of the historical background. Michael?

MICHAEL HURLEY: Counterterrorism and U.S. foreign policy. Terrorism is a strategy. As a way to achieve their political goals, some organizations or individuals deliberately try to kill innocent people, noncombatants. The United States has long regarded such acts as criminal.

For more than a generation, international terrorism has also been regarded as a threat to the nation's security. In the 1970s, and 1980s, terrorists frequently attacked American targets, often as an outgrowth of international conflicts like the Arab-Israeli dispute. The groups involved were frequently linked to states. After the destruction of Pan American Flight 103 by Libyan agents in 1988, the wave of international terrorism that targeted Americans seemed to subside.

The 1993 attempt to blow up the World Trade Center called attention to a new kind of terrorist danger. A National Intelligence Estimate issued in July 1995 concluded that the most likely threat would come from emerging transient terrorist groupings that were more fluid and multinational than the older organizations and state- sponsored surrogates. This new terrorist phenomenon was made up, according to the NIE, of loose affiliations of Islamist extremists violently angry at the United States. Lacking strong organization, they could still get weapons, money and support from an assortment of governments, factions and individual benefactors. Growing international support networks were enhancing their ability to operate in any region of the world.

Since the terrorists were understood as loosely affiliated sets of individuals, the basic approach for dealing with them was that of law enforcement. But President Clinton emphasized his concern about the problem as a national security issue in a presidential decision directive -- PDD 39 in June 1995 -- that stated the U.S. policy on counterterrorism. This directive superseded a directive signed by President Reagan in 1986. President Clinton's directive declared that the United States saw terrorism "as a potential threat to national security as well as a criminal act, and will apply all appropriate means to combat it. In doing so, the U.S. shall pursue vigorously efforts to deter and preempt, apprehend and prosecute, or assist other governments to prosecute individuals who perpetrate or plan to perpetrate such attacks."

The role of diplomacy was to gain the cooperation of other governments in bringing terrorists to justice. PDD 39 stated, "When terrorists wanted for violation of U.S. law are at large overseas, their return for prosecution shall be a matter of the highest priority and shall be a continuing central issue in bilateral relations with any state that harbors or assists them." If extradition procedures were unavailable or put aside, the United States could seek the local country's assistance in a rendition, secretly putting the fugitive in a plane back to America or some third country for trial. Counterterrorism in foreign policy in practice, four examples from 1995 to 1996. The staff's statement describes the first two examples -- Ramzi Yousef in 1995 and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 1996 -- in more detail.

Please turn to the middle of page three, where I will now discuss the third example, Osama Bin Ladin. In 1996 he was based in Sudan. Under the influence of the radical Islamist Hassan al Turabi, Sudan had become a safe haven for violent Islamist extremists. By 1995, the U.S. government had connected Bin Ladin to terrorists as an important terrorist financier. Since 1979 the secretary of State has had the authority to name state sponsors of terrorism, subjecting such countries to significant economic sanctions. Sudan was so designated in 1993.

In February 1996, for security reasons, U.S. diplomats left Khartoum. International pressure further increased as the regime failed to hand over three individuals involved in a 1995 attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak. The United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on the regime. Diplomacy had an effect.

In exchanges beginning in February 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching U.S. officials asking what they could do to ease the pressure. During the winter and spring of 1996, Sudan's defense minister visited Washington and had a series of meetings with representatives of the U.S. government.

To test Sudan's willingness to cooperate on terrorism, the United States presented eight demands to their Sudanese contact. The one that concerned Bin Ladin was a request for intelligence information about Bin Ladin's contacts in Sudan.

These contacts with Sudan, which went on for years, have become a source of controversy. Former Sudanese officials claim that Sudan offered to expel Bin Ladin to the United States. Clinton administration officials deny ever receiving such an offer. We have not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim.

Sudan did offer to expel Bin Ladin to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. U.S. officials became aware of these secret discussions certainly by March 1996. The evidence suggests that the Saudi government wanted Bin Ladin expelled from Sudan but would not agree to pardon him. The Saudis did not want Bin Ladin back in their country at all.

U.S. officials also wanted Bin Ladin expelled from Sudan. They knew the Sudanese were considering it. The U.S. government did not ask Sudan to render him into U.S. custody.

According to Samuel Berger, who was then the deputy national security adviser, the inter-agency Counterterrorism Security Group, CSG, chaired by Richard Clarke, had a hypothetical discussion about bringing Bin Ladin to the United States. In that discussion, the Justice Department representative reportedly said there was no basis for bringing him to the United States since there was no way to hold him here absent an indictment.

Berger adds that in 1996 he was not aware of any intelligence that said Bin Ladin was responsible for any act against an American citizen. No rendition plan targeting Bin Ladin, who was still perceived as a terrorist financier, was requested by or presented to senior policymakers during 1996.

Yet both Berger and Clarke also said the lack of an indictment made no difference. Instead they said the idea was not worth pursuing because there was no chance that Sudan would ever turn Bin Ladin over to a hostile country.

If Sudan had been serious, Clarke said, the United States would have worked something out. However, the U.S. government did approach other countries hostile to Sudan and Bin Ladin about whether they would take Bin Ladin. One was apparently interested. No hand-over took place.

Under pressure to leave, Bin Ladin worked with the Sudanese government to procure a safe passage and possibly funding for his departure. In May 1996, Bin Ladin and his associates leased an Ariana Airlines jet and traveled to Afghanistan, stopping to refuel in the United Arab Emirates. Approximately two days after his departure, the Sudanese informed the U.S. government that Bin Ladin had left. It is unclear whether any U.S. officials considered whether or how to intercept Bin Ladin.

The fourth example, which I'll paraphrase from the staff statement, is Khobar Towers. In June 1996, an enormous truck bomb was detonated in the Khobar Towers residential complex for Air Force personnel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The Khobar bombing began as a law enforcement case. The Khobar bombing also was an intelligence case.

As we stated in the middle of page five, the Khobar case highlights a central policy problem in counterterrorism -- the relationship between evidence and action. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright emphasized to us, for example, that even if some individual Iranian officials were involved, this was not the same as proving that the Iranian government as a whole should be held responsible for the bombing.

National Security Adviser Berger held a similar view. He stressed the need for definitive intelligence judgment. The evidence might be challenged by foreign governments. The evidence might form a basis for going to war. Therefore, he explained, the DCI and the director of the FBI must make a definitive judgment based on the professional opinions of their experts.

In the Khobar case, as in some others, the time lag between terrorist acts and any definitive attribution grew to months, then years, as the evidence was compiled.

I'll now discuss the Afghanistan problem, beginning with the fourth paragraph on page six.

After suffering some disruption from his relocation to Afghanistan, Osama Bin Ladin and his colleagues rebuilt. In August 1996, he issued a public declaration of jihad against American troops in Saudi Arabia. In February 1998, this was expanded into a public call for any Muslim to kill any American, military or civilian, anywhere in the world. By early 1997, intelligence and law enforcement officials in the U.S. government had finally received reliable information disclosing the existence of al Qaeda as a worldwide terrorist organization. That information elaborated a command-and-control structure headed by Bin Ladin and various lieutenants, described a network of training camps to process recruits, discussed efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and placed al Qaeda at the center among other groups affiliated with them in its Islamic army.

This information also dramatically modified the picture of inchoate new terrorism presented in the 1995 National Intelligence Estimate. But the new picture was not widely known. It took still more time before officials outside the circle of terrorism specialists or in foreign governments fully comprehended that the enemy was much larger than an individual criminal, more than just one man, UBL, and his associates.

For example, in 1996 Congress passed a law that authorized the secretary of State to designate foreign terrorist organizations that threaten the national security of the United States, a designation that triggered economic, immigration and criminal consequences.

Al Qaeda was not designated by the secretary of State until the fall of 1999. While Afghanistan became a sanctuary for al Qaeda, the State Department's interest in Afghanistan remained limited. Initially, after the Taliban's rise, some State diplomats were, as one official said to us, "willing to give the Taliban a chance because it might be able to bring stability to Afghanistan."

A secondary consideration was that stability would allow an oil pipeline to be built through the country, a project to be managed by the Union Oil Company of California, or UNOCAL.

During 1997 working levels, State officials asked for permission to visit and investigate militant camps in Afghanistan. The Taliban stalled, then refused. In November 1997, Secretary Albright described Taliban human rights violations and treatment of women as "despicable."

A Taliban delegation visited Washington in December. U.S. officials pressed them on the treatment of women, negotiating an end to the civil war, and narcotics trafficking. Bin Ladin was barely mentioned.

U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson led a delegation to South Asia and Afghanistan in April 1998. No U.S. official of this rank had been to Kabul in decades. Ambassador Richardson used the opening to support U.N. negotiations on the civil war.

In light of Bin Ladin's new public fatwa against Americans in February, Ambassador Richardson asked the Taliban to turn Bin Ladin over to the United States. They answered that they did not control Bin Ladin and that, in any case, he was not a threat to the United States. The Taliban won few friends. Only three countries recognized it as the government of Afghanistan: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The Saudi effort and its aftermath. As we saw on the middle of page eight, Saudi Arabia was a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism. Yet the ruling monarchy also knew Bin Ladin was an enemy. Bin Ladin had not set foot in Saudi Arabia since 1991, when he escaped a form of house arrest and made his way to Sudan.

Bin Ladin had fiercely denounced the rulers of Saudi Arabia publicly in his August 1996 fatwa, but the Saudis were content to leave him in Afghanistan so long as they were assured he was not making any trouble for them there.

Events soon drew Saudi attention back to Bin Ladin. In the spring of 1998, the Saudi government successfully disrupted a major Bin Ladin organized effort to launch attacks on U.S. forces in the Kingdom using a variety of manned portable missiles. Scores of individuals were arrested. The Saudi government did not publicize what had happened, but U.S. officials learned of it.

Seizing this opportunity, DCI Tenet urged the Saudis to help deal with Bin Ladin. President Clinton in May designated Tenet as his representative to work with the Saudis on terrorism. Director Tenet visited Riyadh a few days later, then returned to Saudi Arabia in June.

Crown Prince Abdullah agreed to make an all-out secret effort to persuade the Taliban to expel Bin Ladin for eventual delivery to the United States or another country. Riyadh's emissary would be the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki Bin Faisal. Director Tenet said it was imperative now to get an indictment against Bin Ladin.

A sealed indictment against Bin Ladin was issued by a New York grand jury a few days later, the product of a lengthy investigation. Director Tenet also recommended that no action be taken on other U.S. options, such as the covert action plan. Vice President Gore thanked the Saudis for their efforts.

Prince Turki followed up in meetings during the summer with Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders. Employing a mixture of possible bribes and threats, he received a commitment that Bin Ladin would be handed over.

After the embassy bombings in August, Vice President Gore called Riyadh again to underscore the urgency of bringing the Saudi ultimatum to a final conclusion.

In September 1998, Prince Turki, joined by Pakistan's intelligence chief, had a climactic meeting with Mullah Omar in Kandahar. Omar reneged on his promise to expel Bin Ladin. When Turki angrily confronted him, Omar lost his temper and denounced the Saudi government. The Saudis and Pakistanis walked out.

The Saudi government then cut off any further official assistance to the Taliban regime, recalled its diplomats from Kandahar and expelled Taliban representatives from the Kingdom. The Saudis suspended relations without a final break.

The Pakistanis did not suspend relations with the Taliban. Both governments judged that Iran was already on the verge of going to war against the Taliban. The Saudis and Pakistanis feared that a further break might encourage Iran to attack. They also wanted to leave open room for rebuilding ties if more moderate voices among the Taliban gained control.

Crown Prince Abdullah visited Washington later in September. In meetings with the President and Vice President, he briefed them on these developments. The United States had information that corroborated his account. Officials thanked the prince for his efforts, wondering what else could be done.

The United States acted, too. In every available channel, U.S. officials, led by State's aggressive counterterrorism coordinator, Michael Sheehan, warned the Taliban of dire consequences if Bin Ladin was not expelled. Moreover, if there was any further attack, he and others warned, the Taliban would be held directly accountable, including the possibility of a military assault by the United States. These diplomatic efforts may have had an impact. The U.S. government received substantial intelligence of internal arguments over whether Bin Ladin could stay in Afghanistan. The reported doubts extended from the Taliban to their Pakistani supporters and even to Bin Ladin himself. For a time, Bin Ladin was reportedly considering relocating and may have authorized discussion of this possibility with representatives of other governments. We will report further on this topic at a later date.

In any event, Bin Ladin stayed in Afghanistan. This period may have been the high-water mark for diplomatic pressure on the Taliban. The outside pressure continued, but the Taliban appeared to adjust and learned to live with it. Employing a familiar mix of stalling tactics again and again, urged on by the United States, the Saudis continued a more limited mix of the same tactics they had already employed, Prince Turki returned to Kandahar in June 1999 to no effect.

From 1999 through early 2001, the United States also pressed the United Arab Emirates, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world to break off its ties and enforce sanctions, especially those relating to flights to and from Afghanistan. Unfortunately, these efforts to persuade the UAE achieved little before 9/11. As time passed, the United States also obtained information that the Taliban was trying to extort cash from Saudi Arabia and the UAE with various threats and that these blackmail efforts may have paid off.

After months of heated internal debate about whether this step would burn remaining bridges to the Taliban, President Clinton issued an executive order in July 1999, effectively declaring that the regime was a state sponsor of terrorism. U.N. economic and travel sanctions were added in October 1999 in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1267. None of this had any visible effect on Mullah Omar, an illiterate leader who was unconcerned about commerce with the outside world. Omar had no diplomatic contact with the West, since he refused to meet with non-Muslims. The United States also learned that at the end of 1999, the Taliban Council of Ministers had unanimously reaffirmed that they would stick by Bin Ladin. Relations with Bin Ladin and Taliban leadership were sometimes tense, but the foundation was solid. Omar executed some subordinates who clashed with his pro-Bin Ladin line.

By the end of 2000, the United States, working with Russia, won U.N. support for still broader sanctions in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1333, including an embargo on arm sales for the Taliban. Again, these had no visible effect. This may have been because the sanctions did not stop the flow of Pakistani military assistance to the Taliban. In April 2001, State Department officials in the Bush administration concluded that the Pakistani government was just not concerned about complying with sanctions against the Taliban.

Reflecting on the lack of progress with the Taliban, Secretary Albright told us that we had to do something. In the end, she said it didn't work, but we did, in fact, try to use all the tools we had. Other diplomatic efforts with the Saudi government centered on letting U.S. agents interrogate prisoners in Saudi custody in cases like Khobar. Several officials had complained to us that the United States could not get direct access to an important al Qaeda financial official, Madani al Sayeed, who had been detained by the Saudi government in 1997.

American officials raised the issue, the Saudis provided some information. In September 1998, Vice President Gore thanked the Saudis for the responsiveness on this matter, though he renewed the request for direct U.S. access. The United States never obtained this access.

The United States also pressed Saudi Arabia and the UAE for more cooperation in controlling money flows to terrorists or organizations linked to them. After months of arguments in Washington over the proper role of the FBI, an initial U.S. delegation on terrorist finance visited these countries to start working with their counterparts in July 1999. U.S. officials reported to the White House that they thought the new initiatives to work together had begun successfully. Another delegation followed up with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in January 2000. In Saudi Arabia the team concentrated on tracing Bin Ladin's assets and access to his family's money, exchanges that led to further fruitful work.

Progress on other topics was limited, however. The issue was not a consistent U.S. priority; moreover, the Saudis were reluctant or unable to provide much help. Available intelligence was also so non- specific that it was difficult to confront the Saudis with evidence or cues to action. The Bush administration did not develop any diplomatic initiatives on al Qaeda with the Saudi government before the 9/11 attack. Vice President Cheney apparently called Crown Prince Abdullah on July 4, 2001, only to seek Saudi help in preventing threatened attacks on American facilities in the kingdom.

Pressuring Pakistan. Please go to the bottom of page 11.

Secretary Albright hoped to promote a more robust approach to South Asia when she took office, but the Administration had a full agenda of concerns, including a possible nuclear weapons program, illicit sales of missile technology, terrorism, an arms race, danger of war with India, and a succession of weak democratic government. The American ambassador to Islamabad in most of the immediate pre-9/11 period, William Milam, told us that U.S. policy had too many moving parts and could never determine what items had the highest priority.

A principal envoy to South Asia for the Administration, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, explained the emphasis on nuclear weapons, both because of the danger of nuclear war and because nuclear proliferation might increase the risk that terrorists could access such technology. In May 1998, both Pakistan and India had tested nuclear weapons. These tests marked a setback to non-proliferation policy and reinforced U.S. sanctions on both countries. But the tests also spurred more engagement in order to reduce the threat of war.

Bin Ladin and terrorist activity in Afghanistan were not significant issues in high-level contacts with Pakistan until after the embassy bombings of August 1998. After the U.S. missile strikes on Afghanistan, Bin Ladin's network and the relationship with the Pakistani-supported Taliban did become a major issue in high-level diplomacy.

After the strikes, President Clinton called Pakistani President, Nawaz Sharif, and he was sympathetic to America's losses, but the Pakistani side thought the strikes were overkill -- the wrong way to handle the problem. The United States asked the Saudis to put pressure on Pakistan to help. A senior State Department official concluded that Crown Prince Abdullah put a tremendous amount of heat on Sharif during his October 1998 visit to Pakistan. Sharif was invited to Washington and met with President Clinton on December 2, 1998. Tension with India nuclear weapons topped the agenda, but the leaders also discussed Bin Ladin. Pakistani officials defended Mullah Omar and thought the Taliban would not object to a joint effort by others to get Bin Ladin.

In mid-December President Clinton called Sharif, worried both about immediate threats and the longer-term problem of Bin Ladin. The Pakistani leadership promised to raise the issue directly with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but the United States received word in early 1999 that the Pakistani army remained reluctant to confront the Taliban, in part because of concerns about the effect on Pakistani politics. In early 1999, the State Department Counterterrorism Office proposed a comprehensive diplomatic strategy for all the states involved in the Afghanistan problem, including Pakistan. It specified both carrots and sticks, including the threat of certifying Pakistan as not cooperating on terrorism. A version of this diplomatic strategy was eventually adopted by the State Department. Its author, Ambassador Sheehan, told us that it had been watered down to the point that nothing was then done with it.

By the summer of 1999, the counterterrorism agenda had to compete with cross-border fighting in Kashmir that threatened to explode into war. Nevertheless, President Clinton contacted Sharif in June urging him strongly to get the Taliban to expel Bin Ladin. Clinton suggested Pakistan use its control over oil supplies to the Taliban and its access to imports through Karachi. The Pakistani leadership offered instead that Pakistani intelligence services might try to capture Bin Ladin themselves.

President Clinton met with Prime Minister Sharif in Washington on July 4th. The prime subject was resolution of the crisis in Kashmir. The President also complained to the prime minister about Pakistan's failure to take effective action with respect to the Taliban and Bin Ladin. Later, the United States agreed to assist in training a Pakistani special forces team for the Bin Ladin operation. Particularly since the Pakistani intelligence service was so deeply involved with the Taliban and possibly Bin Ladin, U.S. counterterrorism officials had doubts about every aspect of this new joint plan. Yet while few thought it would do much good, fewer thought it would do any actual harm. Officials were implementing it when Prime Minister Sharif was deposed by General Pervez Musharraf in October 1999. General Musharraf was scornful about the unit and the idea.

At first, the Clinton administration hoped that Musharraf's takeover might create an opening for action on Bin Ladin. National security advisor Burger wondered about a trade of getting Bin Ladin in exchange for softer treatment of a relatively benign military regime, but the idea was never developed into a policy proposal. Meanwhile, the President and his advisors were anxious about a series of new terrorist threats associated with the Millennium and were getting information linking these threats to al Qaeda associates in Pakistan, particularly Abu Zubaydah. President Clinton sent the message asking for immediate help on Abu Zubaydah and another push on Bin Ladin, renewing the idea of using Pakistani forces to get him.

Musharraf told Ambassador Milam that he would do what he could, but he preferred a diplomatic solution on Bin Ladin. Though he thought terrorists should be brought to justice, he did not find the military ideas appealing.

Administration officials debated whether to keep working with the Musharraf government or confront the general with a blunter choice, to either adopt a new policy or Washington will draw the appropriate conclusions. One such threat would be to cancel a possible presidential visit in March. U.S. envoys were given instructions that were firm, but not as confrontational as some U.S. officials had advocated. Musharraf was preoccupied with his domestic agenda, but replied that he would do what he could, perhaps meeting with the Taliban himself.

Despite serious security threats, President Clinton made a one- day stopover in Islamabad on March 25th, 2000, the first presidential visit since 1969. The main subjects were India-Pakistan tensions and proliferation, but President Clinton did raise the Bin Ladin problem. The Pakistani position was that their government had to support the Taliban, and that the only way forward was to engage them and try to moderate their behavior. They asked for evidence that Bin Ladin had really ordered the embassy bombings a year-and-a-half earlier.

In a follow-up meeting the next day with Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, President Musharraf argued that Pakistan had only limited influence over the Taliban. Musharraf did meet with Mullah Omar and did urge him to get rid of Bin Ladin. In early June, the Pakistani interior minister even joined with Pickering to deliver a joint message to Taliban officials, but the Taliban seemed immune to such pleas, especially from Pakistani civilians like the interior minister. Pakistan did not threaten to cut off its help to the Taliban regime. By September, the United States was again criticizing the Pakistani government for supporting a Taliban military offensive to complete the conquest of Afghanistan.

Considering new policies towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. The civil war in Afghanistan posed the Taliban on one side, drawn from Afghanistan's largest ethnic community, the Pashtuns, against the Northern Alliance. Pashtuns opposing the Taliban, like the Karzai plan, were not organized into a political and military force. The main foe of the Taliban was the Northern Alliance, led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, a hero of the Afghan jihad and a leader of ethnic Tajiks. The Taliban were backed by Pakistan. The Northern Alliance received some support from Iran, Russia and India. During 1999, the U.S. government began thinking harder about whether or how to replace the Taliban regime. Thinking in Washington divided along two main paths. The first path, led by the South Asia bureau at the State Department, headed by Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth and his counterpart on the NSC staff, was for a major diplomatic effort to end the civil war and install a national unity government.

The second path, proposed by counterterrorism officials in the NSC staff and the CIA, was for the United States to take sides in the Afghan civil war and begin funneling secret military aid to the Taliban's foe, the Northern Alliance. These officials argued that the diplomatic approach had little chance of success and would not do anything, at least in the short term, to stop al Qaeda. Critics of this idea replied that the Northern Alliance was tainted by associations with narcotics traffickers, that its military capabilities were modest, and that an American association with this group would link the United States to an unpopular faction that Afghans blamed for much of the misrule and war earlier in the 1990s.

The debate continued inconclusively throughout the last year-and-a-half of the Clinton administration. The CIA established limited ties to the Northern Alliance for intelligence purposes. Lethal aid was not provided.

The Afghan and Pakistani dilemmas were handed over to the Bush administration as it took office in 2001. The NSC counterterrorism staff, still led by Clarke, pushed urgently for a quick decision in favor of providing secret military assistance to the Northern Alliance to stave off its defeat. The initial proposed amounts were quite small, with the hope of keeping the Northern Alliance in the field tying down Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

National security advisor Condoleezza Rice discussed the issue with DCI Tenet. In early March 2001, Clarke presented the issue of aid to the Northern Alliance to Rice for action. Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley suggested dealing with this as part of the overall review they were conducting of their strategy against al Qaeda. In the meantime, lawyers could work on developing the appropriate authorities. Rice agreed, noting that the review would need to be done very soon, but that the issue had to be connected to an examination of policy towards Afghanistan. Rice, Hadley, and the NSC staff member for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, told us that they opposed aid to the Northern Alliance alone, contending that the program needed to include Pashtun opponents of the regime and be conducted on a larger scale. Clarke supported the larger program, but he warned that delay risked the alliance's defeat.

The issue was then made part of the reviews of U.S. policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. The government developed formal policy papers that were discussed by sub-cabinet officials, the deputies, on April 30th, June 27th and 29th, July 16th, and September 10th. During this same time period, the Administration was developing a formal strategy on al Qaeda to be codified in the national security presidential directive, NSPD. The al Qaeda elements of this directive had been completed by deputies in July. On September 4th, the principals apparently approved the submission of this directive to the President.

The Afghanistan options debated in 2001 ranged from seeking a deal with the Taliban to overthrowing the regime. By the end of the deputies' meeting on September 10th, the officials had formally agreed upon a three-phase strategy. It called first for dispatching an envoy to give the Taliban an opportunity to expel Bin Ladin and his organization from Afghanistan, even as the U.S. government tried to build greater capacity to pressure them. If this failed, pressure would be applied on the Taliban both through diplomacy and by encouraging anti-Taliban Afghans to attack al Qaeda bases, part of a planned covert action program, including significant additional funding and more support for Pashtun opponents of the regime.

If the Taliban's policy failed to change after these two phases, the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action.

MR. ZELIKOW: Excuse me, Mike. We've been asked to wrap up the staff segment so that we can proceed with the witnesses. Let me move immediately to the conclusion of the staff statement from here.

In conclusion, from the spring of 1997 to September 2001, the U.S. government tried to persuade the Taliban to expel Bin Ladin to a country where he could face justice and stop being a sanctuary for his organization. The efforts employed included inducements, warnings and sanctions. All these efforts failed. The U.S. government also pressed to successive Pakistani governments to demand that the Taliban cease providing a sanctuary for Bin Ladin and his organization, and failing that, to cut off their support for the Taliban. Before 9/11, the United States could not find a mix of incentives or pressure that would persuade Pakistan to reconsider its fundamental relationship with the Taliban.

From 1999 through early 2001, the United States pressed the UAE, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off ties and enforce sanctions, especially related to air travel to Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/11.

The government of Saudi Arabia worked closely with top U.S. officials in major initiatives to solve the Bin Ladin problem with diplomacy. On the other hand, before 9/11, the Saudi and U.S. governments did not achieve full sharing of important intelligence information or develop an adequate joint effort to track and disrupt the finances of the al Qaeda organization.

Thank you. MR. KEAN: Thank you very much.

(Pause to switch witnesses.)

MR. KEAN: Our first witness today is Dr. Madeleine K. Albright, formerly our secretary of state. She is, I believe, well known to all in this audience, and has a distinguished career in public service. We are very pleased to have her appear before the Commission this morning, so welcome to you, Madam Secretary. She is accompanied by undersecretary -- former undersecretary for political affairs and one of the great public servants this country has, in my opinion, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who has had, as I say, a very distinguished career in public service.

Madam Secretary and Ambassador Pickering, we would like to ask you if you could raise your hands so we may place you under oath.

Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

MADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT: I do.

CHAIRMAN KEAN: Thank you very much. Madame Secretary, your prepared statement will be entered into the record in full, and we would ask you to summarize your statement. And, please proceed.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Vice Chairman Hamilton and members of the Commission. I'm very pleased to be here. As you've just mentioned, Tom Pickering, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs and one of our most experienced and respected foreign service officers in U.S. history, is here with me. During my years as secretary of state, if I were traveling or otherwise occupied, Ambassador Pickering was the department's representative at White House meetings related to terrorism. We thought it would help in providing the most complete answers if Ambassador Pickering were available, as appropriate, to add his recollections to mine.

I would also like to emphasize at the outset my desire to be of as much help as possible to the Commission. We can't turn back the clock to before September 11th, but we must do everything we can to prevent similar tragedies, and we owe it to the families of the victims of 9/11 and to us all.

Mr. Chairman, we all know that history is lived forward and written backward. Much seems obvious now that was less clear prior to September 11. But I can say with confidence that President Clinton and his team did everything we could, everything that we could think of, based on the knowledge we had, to protect our people and disrupt and defeat al Qaeda. We certainly recognized the threat posed by the terrorist groups.

Although terror was not new we realized we faced a novel variation. Instead of being directed by a hostile country, the new breed of terrorist was independent, multinational and well versed in modern information technology. During our time in office, the transnational threat was a dominant theme in public statements, private deliberations and foreign relations. This was reflected in the Administration's decision to expand the CIA's counterterrorism center, intensify security cooperation with other countries, enlarge counterterrorism training assistance, double overall counterterrorism expenditures, increase anti-terrorist rewards, freeze terrorist assets, train first responders here at home, plan for the protection of infrastructure against cyber attacks, and reorganize the National Security Council with a mandate to prepare the government to shield our people from unconventional dangers.

As early as 1995, President Clinton said that, and I quote: "Our generation's enemies are the terrorists who kill children or turn them into orphans," unquote. The President repeatedly told the United Nations that combating terrorism topped America's agenda and should top theirs. He urged every nation to deny sanctuary to terrorists and to cooperate in bringing them to justice.

Before Y2K we undertook the largest counterterrorism operation in U.S. history to that time. Cabinet members or their representatives met virtually every day for the sole purpose of detecting and preventing terrorist attacks. I fully embraced an aggressive policy before and especially after August 7th, 1998, when terrorist explosions struck our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. This was my worst day as secretary of State. Within a week, we had clear evidence that Osama Bin Ladin was responsible. The question for us was whether to rely on law enforcement or take military action. We decided to do both. We prosecuted the conspirators we had captured, but we also launched cruise missiles at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

The timing of the strikes was prompted by credible, predictive intelligence that terrorist leaders, possibly including Bin Ladin, would be gathering at one of the camps. The day after the strikes, the White House convened a meeting to study further military options. Our primary target, Bin Ladin, had not been hit, so we were determined to try again.

In subsequent weeks the President specifically authorized the use of force, and there should have been no confusion that our personnel were authorized to kill Bin Ladin. We did not, after all, launch cruise missiles for the purpose of serving legal papers. To use force effectively, we placed war ships equipped with cruise missiles on call in the Arabian sea. We also studied the possibility of sending a U.S. Special Forces team into Afghanistan to try and snatch Bin Ladin. But success in either case depended on whether we know where Bin Ladin would be at a particular time.

Although we consumed all the intelligence we had, we did not get this information; and instead, we occasionally learned where Bin Ladin had been or where he might be going or where someone who appeared to resemble him might be. It was truly maddening. I compared it to one of those arcade games where you manipulate a lever hooked to a claw- like hand that you think, once you put your quarter in, will actually scoop up a prize. But every time you try to pull the basket out, the prize falls away.

The Africa embassy bombings intensified our efforts to neutralize Bin Ladin and also to protect our own people. Every morning that I was in Washington I personally reviewed the latest information about threats to our diplomatic posts. I was struck by the number of danger signals we received and also by the difficulty of making a clear judgment about whether a threat was credible enough to warrant closing an embassy. Even as we took protective measures and looked for ways to use force effectively, we pressed ahead diplomatically.

Shortly after our cruise missile strikes, the Taliban called the State Department to complain. This led to a prolonged dialogue during which we repeatedly pushed for custody of Bin Ladin. The Taliban replied by offering a menu of excuses. They said that surrendering Bin Ladin would violate their cultural tradition of hospitality and that they would be overthrown by their own people if they yielded Bin Ladin in response to U.S. pressure. Perhaps, they said, Bin Ladin will leave voluntarily. At one point, they told us he had already gone. In any case, we were assured that Bin Ladin was under house arrest. That was a lie since he continued to show up in the media threatening Americans.

In 1999 we developed a new strategy aimed at pulling all the diplomatic levers we had simultaneously. We went to each of the countries we thought had influence with the Taliban and asked them to use that influence to help us get Bin Ladin. One such country was Pakistan, whose leaders were reluctant to apply real pressure to the Taliban because it would alienate radicals within their own borders. There was a limit to the incentives we could offer to overcome this reluctance. Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998 had triggered one set of sanctions; a military coup in 1999 triggered more.

Nevertheless, in our discussions with Pakistani leaders we were blunt. We told them that Bin Ladin is a murderer who plans to kill again; we need your help in bringing him to justice. Our ambassador delivered this message. So did Tom Pickering. So did I. So did the President of the United States. In return, we received promises but no decisive action. We couldn't offer enough to persuade Pakistani leaders such as General Musharraf to run the risks that would have been necessary. It was not until September 11th that Musharraf had the motivation in his own mind to provide real cooperation, and even that has not yet resulted in Bin Ladin's capture, though it apparently has led to several attempts on Musharraf's life.

The other two countries we went to were Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and both agreed to deliver the right message. The Saudis sent one of their princes to confront the Taliban directly, and he came back and told us the Taliban were idiots and liars. The Saudis then downgraded diplomatic ties with the Taliban, cut off official assistance, and denied visas to Afghans traveling for non-religious reasons, and the UAE did the same.

Our diplomats, including Ambassador Pickering, also met directly with Taliban leaders. We told them that if we did not get Bin Ladin, we would impose sanctions, both bilaterally and through the U.N., which we did. We also warned them clearly and repeatedly that they would be held accountable for any future attacks traceable to al Qaeda. In retrospect, we know that the Taliban and Bin Ladin had a symbiotic relationship. The Taliban needed the money and muscle al Qaeda provided. Bin Ladin needed space for his operatives to live and train. And there was never a real chance the Taliban would turn Bin Ladin over to us or to anybody else.

Mr. Chairman, I would like now to offer briefly some of the recommendations for the future. We must begin by thinking clearly about what it is we need to do. We were not attacked on September 11th by a noun, terrorism. We were attacked by individuals affiliated with al Qaeda. They are the enemies who killed our fellow citizens and other -- and foreigners, and defeating them should be the focus of our policy. If we pursue goals that are unnecessarily broad, such as the elimination not only of threats but also of potential threats, we will stretch ourselves to the breaking point and become more vulnerable, not less, to those truly in a position to harm us.

We also need to remember that al Qaeda is not a criminal gang that can simply be rounded up and put behind bars. It is the center of an ideological virus that has wholly perverted the minds of thousands and distorted the thinking of millions more. Until the right medicine is found, the virus will continue to spread, and that remedy begins with confidence. Bin Ladin and his cohorts have absolutely nothing to offer their followers except destruction, death and the illusion of glory. Puncturing this illusion is the key to winning the battle of ideas.

The problem is not combating al Qaeda's inherent appeal, for it has none. The problem is changing the fact that major components of American foreign policy are either opposed or misunderstood by much of the world. According to the State Department's Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy, published recently, the bottom has indeed fallen out of support for the United States. This unpopularity has handed Bin Ladin a gift that he has eagerly exploited. He is viewed by many as a leader of all those who harbor anti-American sentiments, and this has given him a following that is wholly undeserved.

If we are to succeed, we must be sure that Bin Ladin goes down in history not as a defender of the faith or champion of the dispossessed, but rather as what he is: a murderer, a traitor to Islam, and a loser.

The tarnishing of America's global prestige will require considerable time and effort to undo, and that's why we need long- range counterterrorism plans that take advantage of the full array of our national security tools. This plan must include the comprehensive reform of our intelligence structures; a vastly expanded commitment to public diplomacy and outreach, especially within the Arab and Muslim worlds; a far bolder strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan; revised policies towards the key countries of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia; expansion of the Nunn-Lugar program to secure weapons of mass destruction materials on a global basis; a new approach to handling and sharing of information concerning terrorist suspects; and a change in the tone of American national security policy, to emphasize the value of diplomatic cooperation. And Secretary of State Powell has made a concerted effort to begin this.

Let me close by saying that I sympathize greatly with the President and others in positions of responsibility at this time. Each day brings with it the possibility of a new terrorist strike. The March 11 train bombings in Madrid remind us that despite all that is being done, our enemies have a broad range of targets. We should all expect and prepare ourselves for the likelihood that further strikes will take place on our own soil. And we must be united in making sure that if and when that happens, it will do absolutely nothing to advance the terrorists' goals; it will not cause divisions within and among the American people. On the contrary, it must bring us closer together and make us even more determined to fulfill our responsibilities.

For more than two centuries, our countrymen have fought and died so that liberty might live. And since September 11th, we have been summoned, each in our own way, to a new round in that struggle. We cannot underestimate the risks or anticipate the final victories will come easily or soon, but we can draw strength from the knowledge of what terror can and cannot do. Terror can turn life to death, and laughter to tears, and shared hopes to sorrowful memories. It can crash a plane and bring down towers that scrape the sky. But it cannot alter the essential goodness of the American people or diminish our loyalty to one another or cause our nation to turn its back on the world.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here with you this morning. And I'd be very pleased now to answer your questions.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much, Madame Secretary.

The lead questioners for this panel are Commissioner Lehman and Commissioner Roemer. They will each have 15 minutes for their questions. Additional questioners on this panel will be held strictly to the five-minute rule.

And, Commissioner Lehman, I believe you're going to start the questioning on behalf of the panel.

MR. LEHMAN: Since my colleague, Tim Roemer, was one of the originators of this commission, I will yield the -- (word inaudible) -- position to Tim.

MR. KEAN: So yielded.

MR. ROEMER: I want to thank the secretary for that gracious gesture.

I want to start, Mr. Chairman, by, I believe, underscoring something you said in your opening statement. You said that we have invited Dr. Rice to talk to this 9/11 Commission. Well, we have a book issued by Richard Clarke which is a blistering attack on the Bush administration. We have Dr. Rice on the airwaves saying that she strongly condemns and disagrees with Mr. Clarke's assessments and analysis. I would hope that this discussion would not be for the airwaves and would not be a partisan type of discussion that we have, but belongs in this hearing room tomorrow in a substantive way so that the 10 Commissioners can ask factually-based questions, and so the American people have the access to those answers to try to make this country safer.

So I would underscore your comments, Mr. Chairman, that I hope Dr. Rice will reconsider and come before our commission for the sake of the American people tomorrow. (Applause.)

Madame Secretary, I want to mention your book, if I may, "Madam Secretary." I don't need to mention a best-seller. You say in a chapter called "A Special Kind of Evil" that the African bombings, our embassies there, were the worst day of your tenure as secretary of State. We lost 224 people, 12 Americans. "The devil breathed down our neck that day, and three years later 19 hijackers drove us into the jaws of hell" where we are today, trying to resolve some of these tough questions. The Clinton administration launched 79 cruise missiles 13 days after finding who did this. Had diplomacy run its course? Should we have taken the same kind of action that we took after the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa with the U.S.S. Cole?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Congressman Roemer, let me say that, as you pointed out, when the embassies were blown up it was my worst day. I went to Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. In Nairobi I saw the rubble and I saw the suffering of the African people, many of whom were in hospitals as a result of what had happened, and obviously many were dead. And I then brought the bodies home of the dead Americans, and sat with the coffins and talked with the families when I came back. And so for me this was a horrendous moment and one that I was bound and determined to figure out why it had happened and what we could do about it. I asked Admiral Crowe to form a commission to determine various actions that we could take, and it was something that was on my mind constantly. I was very much in favor of the attack with the cruise missiles and was very much in favor, along with the rest of our team, to try to do everything we could to have further military attacks if and when we had predictable and actionable intelligence. And as I say in my statement, I believed fully that we were prepared to go. President Clinton had issued all the orders. We had kept armed submarines in the Arabian Sea and we were ready if there ever was actionable intelligence.

And so I did favor military action, but at the same time we had to continue to act diplomatically.

I have always believed that what is necessary is to use every tool in the American national security arsenal, whether it is military, diplomatic or economic, or legal. And we tried everything at the same time.

On the U.S.S. Cole, we were obviously prepared to respond, but we did not have definitive evidence that it really was committed by Osama Bin Ladin and al Qaeda; that evidence came after we were out of office. But had we had definitive evidence, I can assure you that we were prepared to act militarily.

MR. ROEMER: Let me ask you a question about that, Madame Secretary. There are three investigations going on with respect to the U.S.S. Cole: the Yemenis are doing one, the FBI is doing one and the CIA is doing one. In December the CIA comes forward, hedges the recommendation, comes forward with a preliminary judgment and says they can't, through command and control, prove that Osama Bin Ladin ordered it. Isn't it enough at this point to say al Qaeda did it, and respond in that kind of way, either in December, or certainly in the months that come after your administration?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think the real question is to try to figure out what really did happen, and when we left office we did not have all the answers to it, and as you point out, there were numerous investigations. I myself called the President of Yemen to help us in this issue and to press for additional investigations. I think the results came after we were out of office and I would have hoped that action could have been taken. But there was no definitive action of any kind at the time that we left office.

MR. ROEMER: In terms of the time that you spent as secretary of State on terrorism -- we'll have Secretary Powell follow you -- what percent of your time, if you can give us a rough estimation, did you spend? You had Middle East peace, you certainly were one of the driving forces in being a hawk with respect to Kosovo and using our military there. What percent of your time can you best estimate that you spent on counterterrorism policy?

MS. ALBRIGHT: It's very hard, Congressman, to give you an exact estimate. But I can tell you what I did, which is every morning, when I came into my office, I obviously read the intelligence, but I also met with the assistant secretary for security. I had changed the standard practice and named a law enforcement officer to that job, David Carpenter, who was a retired Secret Service agent, and so I had a real expert dealing with it. We spent whatever time was necessary in the morning, in order to go over the threats. Then either I or Ambassador Pickering, depending upon who was in town, went to the small meetings that took place on counterterrorism issues.

We talked about issues to do with terrorism, Osama Bin Ladin, al Qaeda in so many meetings, whether they were official principals' meetings at the White House or the breakfasts that Mr. Berger and Secretary Cohen --

MR. ROEMER: ABC breakfasts -- Albright --

MS. ALBRIGHT: But the -- no, the --

MR. ROEMER: The lunch --

MS. ALBRIGHT: The ABCs were lunches.

MR. ROEMER: Okay.

MS. ALBRIGHT: (Chuckles.) The breakfasts were a little bit a larger, with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Mr. Tenet and the ambassador to the United Nations.

And so -- but we talked about this constantly, and therefore it's hard to give you an estimate of the time. But it was very much -- MR. ROEMER: Can you guess at all? Twenty percent? Fifty percent?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I would probably say somewhere about 35 percent, because it was something that was constant, and it was very hard to quantify.

But I can tell you I started every single day trying to assess what the terrorist threats were and also how to direct the diplomacy in order to be able to make sure that we were dealing with this. I think maybe Ambassador Pickering can also tell you how much time he spent on it, because our activities were seamless.

THOMAS PICKERING (former undersecretary of State for Political Affairs): I think that the secretary's judgment in this and -- she used to call me after the morning meetings and give me orders to carry things out and get things done.

Given the number of meetings, particularly in crises periods leading up to the Millennium, for example, sometimes most of the day would be occupied in dealing with this particular issue and to all the meetings that -- the secretary mentioned she had many internal meetings in the State Department to plan for not only what she should do with the ongoing meetings at an interagency basis but also to get us thinking about new ideas, thinking out of the hat on this issue and trying to come up with new and different ways to deal with the problem.

MS. ALBRIGHT: So on some days, it was a hundred percent. So I think it's very hard to give you a real percentage.

MR. ROEMER: Let me, in my 15 minutes, move quickly through some things. I mentioned Secretary Powell will be coming next. I imagine you briefed Secretary Powell as he came into office in a transition. Did you let the secretary know that al Qaeda was going to be the kind of threat that he would need to spend 35 percent or 50 percent or a hundred percent, in some days, of his time fighting new, fluid, dynamic threat to this country? And what was his reaction or what was Dr. Rice's reaction to these types of briefings?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, let me explain a little bit of what happened, and the transition in the State Department is something that is done many times and is well put together. So I had general meetings with Secretary Powell.

Then, when he moved into his offices in the first floor of the State Department, I arranged to make sure that every assistant secretary briefed him on whatever the issue was. And Ambassador Sheehan, who was in charge of counterterrorism, briefed Secretary Powell in detail about the kinds of things that we have been talking about, in terms of al Qaeda and Osama Bin Ladin, et cetera.

In my general discussions with Secretary Powell I did point out that this was a major issue that had occupied a large portion of my time. But --

MR. ROEMER: How did he react to that?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think he understood that this was a serious issue. And I am -- I only know what I've read in terms of Mr. Berger's conversations with Dr. Rice. But I know that I believe that Secretary Powell understood the dangers that were inherent.

MR. ROEMER: Let me move on to a very complicated relationship that the United States has with Saudi Arabia. I want to ask very bluntly and very frankly your opinion with regard to their cooperation to the United States, with the United States prior to 9/11. We were able to get the Saudis to cooperate on issues such as having Ambassador Turki go to yell at Mullah Omar in Afghanistan, but we could not get them to access al Qaeda's CFO. What kind of relationship was this? And did you personally press the Saudis hard in these kinds of instances when we needed access to high-level people like Madani al Tayyib?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I think, as you pointed out, our relationship with Saudi Arabia is a very complicated one. And the Saudi record is a mixed one, frankly. I think that they were helpful on a number of issues. I talked to Crown Prince Abdullah as well as Foreign Minister Saud about a number of issues, obviously including Bin Ladin and al Qaeda. We also spent a lot of time on Iraq, and we spent a lot of time in terms of issues to do around the Middle East peace process. They always did say that they would press and push on the Bin Ladin/al Qaeda front, but frankly, it's hard to say how effective it was at what times.

MR. ROEMER: Were you convinced they were pushing?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I was convinced when they told me they were pushing. But the bottom line is that in effect, as you look at the record, there were questions about some of the financial aspects. And I do think that there is a mixed record. One of the things about the Saudis is that they often do more things in private than is evident publicly. But I would say the record was a mixed one. I would say we pushed as hard as we could.

MR. ROEMER: Let me ask you, Madame Secretary, in your book you say, and I quote, "Sadly, I was not surprised that we were attacked, or even shocked that the airplane hijacking was involved," unquote.

You were not surprised by that September 11th event? And you -- did you have intelligence or briefings indicating that hijackings were possible on September 11th? Why weren't you surprised? And did it include not being shocked that planes were used as missiles and weapons or that it was al Qaeda?

MS. ALBRIGHT: A number of responses to that, Congressman. I think that we were operating within an atmosphere where we were watching all kinds of potential attacks, and in fact foiled a number of them in the years that we were in office -- I kind of call them the dogs that didn't bite or bark because people didn't hear about them, but we -- so I think that we were always on the lookout, which is why I said I wasn't surprised, because we knew that there were a variety of attacks possible and we foiled some. In various briefings, we were told that there were all kinds of ways to do things -- car bombs or suitcases or bio or chemical. And among the various parts of what we were briefed, there would be sometimes a mention of an airplane. But basically we were looking at all kinds of potential ways that there could be attacks. And so the sadness of this was that we always knew that some terrible -- we were always on the lookout for some terrible thing, and we were foiling many, many of the potential attacks.

MR. ROEMER: Madame Secretary, thank you very much. I've been slipped a note that my time has expired and I want to stick right to that, so that other commissioners can get in. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Congressman.

Secretary Lehman.

MR. LEHMAN: Madame Secretary, welcome. I would like to follow up with -- on many of the same subjects here. One of the constant refrains we've had in the over a thousand interviews that we've done and through the documents that we have been studying is that there was a considerable dysfunction in the intelligence community, particularly with regard to sharing of information. A lot of people did not know about information that was in the government that was not shared -- "stove-piped" -- and many people were not playing with a full deck. So I'd like to -- (laughs) -- ask your own view -- (laughter) -- some even with intelligence -- (laughter) -- about starting with your entry as secretary of State.

You had been at the U.N. You were part of the inner circle, the NSC, the Cabinet. What was the picture that you had when you took over the reigns as secretary of State as to the nature of the threat, the terrorist threat?

MS. ALBRIGHT: When I came in as secretary, which was February 1997, there was no question that we knew about a variety of threats. I had, at the U.N., been involved with some of the issues to do with Sudan, where we were very concerned about the web of terrorist camps and support, et cetera, that were present in Sudan. If you remember, the Sudanese were implicated in an assassination attempt on President Mubarak, and it was as a result of that that we instituted or put in sanctions against Sudan. And so I clearly was aware of issues and was briefed, and also briefed in terms of some of the investigations to do with the World Trade Center.

So one knew that there were various terrorist threats that we were dealing with, but on, as I pointed out in my remarks, kind of a whole new level of problems. And I did see, I have to say, something that you alluded to, which was a lack of communication already between the CIA and the FBI in terms of transmitting information to each other. And so what we tried to do was to bring them closer together, with some difficulty; I think some to do with the culture of both those agencies and something that I'd recommend, finally, that needs to be fixed. So I do think that there were issues in that regard, but on the whole I think there was a lot of intelligence available, and the question is how it was read.

MR. LEHMAN: Well, specifically on the '93 attack on the World Trade Center, we have been told by some very senior officials that the complete picture, the evidence of the al Qaeda links of the perpetrators were really not made known until after within -- shared within the government until after the trial of the blind Sheik, and the leaks of Abdul Rahman Yasin, for instance, were not widely known within the government. When did you, if you could think back, become aware of the close and many links between the '93 plotters and al Qaeda?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I can't remember exactly. I mean, I think that, you know, we began to know more about al Qaeda sometime in '96, '97. We knew Bin Ladin was a financier that was involved in a variety of activities.

But I honestly can't tell you exactly when I became aware of the various linkages.

MR. LEHMAN: Did you know about Abdul Rahman Yasin and his fleeing to Baghdad and his support and cooperation with Saddam's intelligence service? Did you see any significance in that? He being, of course, one of the main plotters of the '93 bombing.

MS. ALBRIGHT: I can't say that I remember that.

MR. LEHMAN: Just on that theme, the fact that Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas were there, along with Yasin, was -- would this have been a reason to begin to look a bit at what the Iraqi secret service was doing with al Qaeda and with or without Saddam's knowledge?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Again, I -- my sense of all of this was that there were shadowy connections among a variety of groups. But in terms of this kind of specificity, frankly, that was not something that as secretary of State I would have been looking into.

MR. LEHMAN: One of the questions, again, that have often been raised is after -- as -- almost as soon as the Clinton administration came in, there was an attempt to assassinate President Bush. There was a very minor strike launched against the intelligence service of Saddam, intelligence headquarters, and with the insurance (sic) that no one would be there, so it would be in the middle of the night. After the Khobar bombing, there were many in the Administration who wanted to retaliate, but in fact nothing was done. After the '93 WTI (sic) attack, there essentially was nothing done pending the five-year trial. After the embassy bombing, there was, again, an attempt to make cruise missile attacks against the training camps and then against the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.

As you'll recall, there were criticisms at the time that this was a "Wag the Dog" scenario, that it was during the various stages of the President's problems, and that there was no real evidence there, that it was an innocent pharmaceutical plant.

You were part of the inner sanctum at the time. In your view, was there real evidence that this was part of a Bin Ladin network?

MS. ALBRIGHT: You've said a lot of different things.

Let me just say that I do believe that when we had evidence, we used force. And the response on the '93 -- on the attempted assassination of President Bush we reacted, I think, very strongly. That's certainly what the Iraqis thought. And I was the one that had the rather peculiar moment of delivering the message to the Iraqi ambassador at the United Nations, while sitting in his residence under a portrait of Saddam Hussein, that we were bombing Baghdad. So -- and then went to the Security Council with the proof of it.

So I think that we acted very well on that, and it should be a sign that we were prepared to use military force when it was appropriate and we had intelligence in order to make it effective.

I think on the issue of '98, we were prepared to use force, and did use it immediately after the bombings of the embassies, as I said earlier, on actionable intelligence. I believed and continue to believe that the plant in Sudan was connected to this network that Osama Bin Ladin had had in Sudan and that it was an appropriate strike.

And as you point out -- and I think this is the very hard part for all of us, Mr. Secretary, is that we have to put ourselves into the pre-9/11 mode, and that it was -- and it's hard because we've all been in our post-9/11 prism, where we should be, and yet things were very different before 9/11. And as you point out, we were mostly accused of overreacting, not under-reacting. And I believe we reacted appropriately. And as I said earlier, we would have acted more had we had actionable intelligence. And so I think we dealt very appropriately with the issue and I think our record stands well.

MR. LEHMAN: The reports at the time, and subsequently, have appeared in various places that the evidence involved with the pharmaceutical plant not only involved al Qaeda, and specifically Osama, but also the Iraqi -- various programs within the Iraqi government, let us say. Did you see any significance in that as something to worry about, perhaps the Iraqis' involvement with Osama might be a bit more than might appear?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I did not make the connection. But let me just say this; is that if you look at the record, I was as hawkish on Saddam Hussein as anybody; made more statements and took more actions, whether I was ambassador at the United Nations or secretary of State, in terms of trying to contain Saddam Hussein and make sure that he proceeded in terms of trying to live up to or fulfill the Security Council resolutions. And so I did not -- or do not remember making a link between what was happening in Sudan and the Iraqis.

I don't know, Tom, whether you have any.

MR. PICKERING: Mr. Secretary, I also participated in the meetings leading up to that decision. There were two pieces of evidence only that I was aware of that I thought were very, very important that helped, I believe, to crystallize the decision.

One was the report we had following chemical analysis of the actual sample of a precursor to VX nerve gas that did not occur in nature. It was very unique and was not used for any other known purpose.

And the other was the connection that the secretary just talked to you about of the plant with investments and activities of Saddam -- excuse me, of Osama Bin Ladin in Sudan. As you know, he spent time in Sudan prior to the attack on the plant. And I was not aware of any Iraqi connection until after the attack.

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. Let me shift to Saudi Arabia. As I'm sure you all know, it is sort of common wisdom, or in the State Department one would say an urban myth, that the culture of the department is ruled by a pro-Saudi, pro-Sunni bent. And there are things that certainly give credence to that in the record leading up to 9/11: The fact that State never made any demarche to get after the Saudis had perhaps the second-most powerful man in al Qaeda in their possession from '95 on and didn't tell us for some time, and to this day has not been turned over to us; the fact that the activities of the Saudi ministry of religious affairs have really never gotten even onto the scope of the agenda between Saudi Arabia and the United States; the flow, this constant promotion of jihadist ideology around the world.

In your time -- and the fact, of course, which has recently become an issue, that despite the fact that the priests and ministers are in jail in Saudi for having Christian services, they are nevertheless -- Saudi was never listed on the annual list of State Department states who don't offer religious freedom.

In your time, did you find -- oh, one last; in our last hearing, Ms. Ryan, who headed the consular service, explained that the reason special attention was not given to Saudis seeking visas, even after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for instance, was indicted and he was given a visa, was because the State Department had Saudi Arabia in a most-favored-nation status. And indeed, when we had the officer who did stop one of the hijackers, he said that he came under pressure from his colleagues because picking on a Saudi was very much not acceptable.

Do you find this was a problem? Is there a cultural problem, or is this purely a myth?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I don't think there's a cultural problem. I think that basically there are those in the department that are responsible for our relationships with Saudi Arabia and there are people in the department who are responsible for our relationships with Israel or another country. And I think that, as secretary and as undersecretary, we took all those issues under consideration, obviously.

I do think, as I said earlier, our relationship with Saudi Arabia is an incredibly complicated one. We had forces stationed there. We were trying to figure out how to deal with Iraq. We understood the role of Saudi Arabia within the Arab world. And we pressed them. I personally pressed them on issues to do, believe it or not, on women's rights. I pressed them on the religious issues. I pressed them on questions to do with how they were using their charitable money. And we did push them at a variety of times. And as I said earlier, the record is mixed. But the relationship is complicated, and there are divisions within Saudi society. And I think it will continue to be a highly complex relationship for the United States.

MR. PICKERING: Also, Mr. Secretary, on the visa cases, I know all of you know from your own work and some of the work that has been done ahead of time, the State Department officers issuing visas relied on something called a watch list. And, in fact, the State Department had taken the initiative to develop the watch list in connection with certain criminal activities, and then expanded it in cooperation with the intelligence community to try to deal with terrorism, as we all saw terrorism becoming a much more serious problem.

And the tragedy of the issue is that apparently there was information available to the intelligence community, but it did not get into the watch list, something that every State Department officer in Saudi Arabia issuing visas had to consult before even thinking about issuing a visa, and that, unfortunately, the intelligence we had in our possession -- again, some of the stovepiping problem you related earlier, some of the compartmentation issue or some of the, I think, maybe uncertainty in the intelligence community about the importance of getting that information to the visa officers.

These officers interview people often to determine whether they're going to overstay their visa, become immigrants without going through the appropriate processes. I don't know that visa officers, except by happenstance, have any particular ability to detect terrorists, but maybe we have new profiles now that will help. But the watch list was the basis for that. And unfortunately, in that particular case the watch list was not up-to-date, and therefore we missed those individuals that should have been caught by the visa process.

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you very much.

MR. KEAN: I just had one question. It seems to me that for years, at the end of the Clinton administration and into the Bush administration, we seemed to have a hope, which I don't quite understand, that the Taliban somehow would agree, through diplomatic pressure or through some other pressure, to give up Osama Bin Ladin in some way or other.

And it seems to go on for a few years, even though I can't find in anything I've read any justification, really, for that hope. I understand trying for a while. But weren't you probably coming to the end of your rope on those attempts, recognizing that this was a man who was leader of the Taliban, was somebody who wasn't even talking to people because they weren't Muslims, diplomatically?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I do think that we later learned about the very kind of, as I said, symbiotic relationship between the Taliban and Osama Bin Ladin. And if you look at it, it's hard to -- vain hope is the way, as you review it, that you feel. But at the time, you have to realize what our options were in terms of we needed to have them cough him up, so to speak. And basically we used every pressure point that we could. There were a variety of meetings that we had with them. We thought that we could either threaten or induce them to give him up. But even -- and I have to say, the options, let's say, of bombing them has not produced Osama Bin Ladin. So I think that you do have to look at the options that you have. And if we did not have the leverage, then perhaps the Pakistanis, for instance, who had closer relations with them, or the Saudis, we had hoped, would have that kind of relationship. But clearly this very knitted relationship was not something that was evident that we had good intelligence on.

MR. KEAN: Senator Kerrey.

MR. KERREY: Madam Secretary, first of all, it's very nice to see you again.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Thank you.

MR. KERREY: It seems to me during the Clinton administration there were two big mistakes, and I wonder if you'd comment on them. The first is that from 1993 through 2001, the United States of America was either attacked or we prevented attack by radical Islamists close to a dozen times, either where the attack was successful or where we interrupted the attack.

And during that period of time, not only did we not engage in any single military attack other than the 20th of August, 1998, there was no attack against al Qaeda during that entire period of time. Indeed, the presidential directive that was the operative one of '62, that was signed in May of 1998, didn't give the military primary authority in counterterrorism. They were still responsible for supporting the states and local governments if we were attacked, and they were still providing support for the Department of Justice in doing investigations.

And, it seems to me, especially -- you cited the '93 case with Iraq, the bombing of Iraq -- it seems to me that that was a terrible mistake. Indeed, the Commission has seen evidence that people at lower levels in the Department of Defense and Dick Clarke, himself, were preparing analyses suggesting more aggressive military efforts, and it went nowhere. So that's mistake Number 1 that I think was a big one.

The second one was after we had reason to believe that the Saudis were financing terrorists who were at least indirectly connected, if not directly connected, with killing Americans on the 7th of August 1998, that we didn't threaten to freeze their assets or actually freeze their assets. Something that, my guess is, would have a dramatic impact on the Kingdom's willingness to continue to behave in that fashion. Those are the two mistakes that I think were made during the Clinton administration.

The first one, I think, is a really large one, and I don't -- honestly, I don't understand -- if we're attacked and attacked and attacked, why we continue to send the FBI over like, you know, like Khobar Towers was a crime scene or these African embassy bombings was a crime scene. You said we had balance between military effort and diplomacy and, frankly, I've got to say, it seems to me, it was very unbalanced in favor of diplomacy against military effort.

MS. ALBRIGHT: I think, Senator -- or -- Mr. President -- is that it is very difficult to assess what the targets would have been and, in many cases, some of the linkages that have been made now were not evident at the particular time and, to bomb at random, or use military force, I think, would have created a situation that would have made our lives, American lives, even more difficult within the Muslim world. These are judgments that have to be made, and I think I'm known well enough inside and outside the government as somebody who was always willing to match diplomacy with force.

And so I do believe that we used force when it was appropriate and strongly. So I think that --

MR. KERREY: Madam Secretary, with great respect, after August of '98, you and I both know what we did. We led the North Atlantic Alliance to an effort against Kosovo, and that was the choice that was made. That was the threat that was considered to be the most important, and we used the military force against Belgrade. I think it's a straw man to say that we're going to have random bombing or indiscriminate bombing. That's not what we're proposing at all. We had -- I keep hearing the excuse, "We didn't have actionable intelligence." Well, what the hell does that say to al Qaeda? Basically, they knew, at the beginning of 1993, it seems to me, that there was going to be limited, if any, use of military, and that they were also free to do whatever they wanted.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Senator, there never, as far as I know, was a discussion as to whether there was a choice between using force in the Balkans and using force against al Qaeda. That was not a choice that ever was discussed or made. There was not one or the other, and I think that the executive orders that President Clinton put out about using lethal force against Osama Bin Ladin -- everything that we did in terms of the structure that we put together to freeze various assets and to go after them with every conceivable tool that we had, you, Senator, I know, were the only person that I know of who suggested declaring war. You were -- you know, in retrospect, you were probably right, but we used every single tool we had in terms of trying to figure out what the right targets would be and how to go about dealing with what we knew to be a major threat, and I reviewed it, and I am satisfied that we did what we could, given the intelligence that we had and pre-9/11, if I might say. I think that we have to keep being reminded of that, because there were whole questions, as Secretary Lehman said, that we'd overreacted, not the other way around.

MR. HAMILTON: Commissioner Fielding?

MR. FIELDING: Madam Secretary, Ambassador Pickering, thank you both very much for being here and for your service to our commission and to the country.

I have a follow-up question very similar to the two that have just been asked you. There was broad consensus among officials, civilian and military, prior to 9/11 that there was little or no congressional support or even public support for a large-scale U.S. military action against al Qaeda in the Afghan territory. Likewise, there was skepticism that we've been told about frequently within the U.S. government that the military really was reluctant to engage in any military action against bin Ladin in the Afghan and, in fact, as Senator Kerrey just said, but for the retaliatory strike after the East African Embassy bombings, there was no follow-up.

So we have the State Department communicating threats to the Taliban saying that -- and I guess it was around 1999 -- that they would be held accountable and that there would be military force, among other things, for any attack by al Qaeda against the United States. Now, that leads to me question -- did the Taliban have reason to believe that we would make good on that threat, that it was a valid threat? And, likewise, what steps -- when you formulate a policy to make that kind of a threat, what steps did you take to ensure that we, in fact, had a credible military force that could enforce that?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, first of all, as I said, President Clinton had ordered that lethal force be used. There were armed submarines in the Arabian Sea and a variety of bombers on standby and ready to go so that -- the orders were there. The President also asked for a variety of options from the Pentagon in terms of special forces, a variety of -- as far as I know, there was no option off the table, and that there were questions about the Pentagon saying that these were not viable.

You will have Secretary Cohen here, and you can ask him these questions, but I do know that, from the perspective of one of the members of the principals committee and I, as secretary of state, can assure you that the President asked for a variety of military options. And so I, again, think that you have to -- from my perspective, the Pentagon did not come forward with viable options in response to what the President was asking for.

MR. PICKERING: I also think, Mr. Fielding, that the record is pretty clear on the intensive looks that we were giving to the target lists and what could be found and how to find Osama and could we see him? And we found that we may have seen him, but he wasn't there. Or perhaps he was going to be someplace, but it never panned out. But there are very clear indications using Afghan irregulars who were prepared to work with us, using the kinds of strikes that we used against the camps, looking at all of the other alternatives. This was a constant preoccupation that we had many times when I would phone the secretary on the secure phone and say, "We think it's about to happen," only to call her back 24 hours later and say, "No, it didn't work. The intelligence wasn't secure enough to know that we would be there to hit that particular target," who was Osama Bin Ladin, obviously.

So it was not something that, sort of, was done once and put aside and never thought about again.

MR. FIELDING: Oh, I appreciate that. But to get back to the second part of my question -- when you formulate a diplomatic policy, if you will, which says we are going to use force against you, and we're going to use our military if you don't resolve this in a diplomatic sense, my real question is -- what process do you go through before that decision is made to ensure that we really did have a credible military plan and force that could react to that to make our threat to the Taliban credible?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, we did, and Ambassador Pickering participated in many of these meetings. We had inter-agency meetings to talk about what our various options were, and I think we all felt it was appropriate to let the Taliban know that they would be held responsible if further action were held. And, as we made that -- the truth is that they didn't do anything in between the time that we made that point to them, and it was a threat that was out there, a Damocles sword, and we did have various options to deal with them with the cruise missiles off the submarines and other ways of bombing. I, personally, am not satisfied that we were able to get all the right answers out of the Pentagon. I think that is a question, and one of the issues always, in any inter-agency meeting, whether it was starting when I was ambassador at the United Nations, I would ask for a variety -- although at that case, not as appropriate as when I was secretary -- for a variety of options in terms of what could be done militarily, and I think you will have to ask Secretary Cohen, because we all dealt on this issue together, and I think -- the thing that is very hard to explain to people now is how much time we spent on all this, and we are constantly debating what we could do, given a pre- 9/11 atmosphere. It really was very, very different, and most people thought that we had made up the issues of terrorism, as Secretary Lehman pointed out.

So I hope, very much, that in considering all this, you do -- I know how hard it is for me, and I'm sure it's hard for you -- is to get back into the pre-9/11 mode.

MR. FIELDING: Thank you both very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. HAMILTON: Thank you. Commissioner Gorelick.

MS. GORELICK: Madam Secretary and Ambassador Pickering, thank you for being here and thank you for your service to this country.

I would like to probe a little bit further the issue of use of military force in Afghanistan. You, I think, once famously said, in a different context, "What's the use of having this state-of-the-art military if we can never use it?" So I would like to know what your reaction was when there was developed a plan to use special forces to invade Afghanistan and to go and get Bin Ladin post the '98 -- the '98 embassy bombings when DOD opposed using this plan as unworkable and unwieldy. What was your view on their posture?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, let me say, and as I said in my opening remarks, the embassy bombings were something that was very -- deeply touched everything that I did at the State Department and affected, you know, when -- when Admiral Crowe presented his report, it was, I think, devastating in many ways. And he blamed me personally, so believe me it was something that as secretary of state I did feel responsible -- these were people who worked for me. And I felt very much that we needed to do everything we could to make sure that there was a retaliation against those who had done it, and that we had to pursue so that this would not happen again.

And I did press, as did others, for a variety of options. And the explanation about the special forces that was always hard was you either had a very small group that was then not able to protect itself, or one that was so large that would be detectable. And so the balance of trying to find the right special operations group was very difficult. But, you have to ask the military people this question, because --

MS. GORELICK: Oh, we will.

MS. ALBRIGHT: -- President Clinton and I and Sandy Berger, we all pushed and pressed, as did Ambassador Pickering, because I think that we did see the linkage between diplomacy and the threat of force and the use of force. I spent most of my eight years in office thinking and talking about the linkages between diplomacy and the use of force, and that one underlines the other. And so I was -- I did my best, in fact, to question on this.

MS. GORELICK: Would you agree with the statement that Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz gave us, that if the DOD had gone to Congress before 9/11 and asked to invade Afghanistan, that we would -- they would not have been taken seriously?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I think I do agree with that, because it was very hard to get congressional support for military action. We had a hard time in various other areas, whether it was supporting peacekeeping operations or generally in terms of trying to get support, because I think there was a whole question about how serious this all was, despite the fact that I think we made many statements to the effect, as I said President Clinton, and Ambassador Pickering and I, and Sandy Berger, and Secretary Cohen spoke very often about the continuing danger of terrorism. But I, on this particular subject, I do agree with Undersecretary Wolfowitz.

MS. GORELICK: I appreciate the caveat. (Laughter.) You issued a demarche or a warning to the Taliban before the Cole, saying that you would hold, or the U.S. government would hold the Taliban responsible for any harm to Americans, is that correct?

MS. ALBRIGHT: We did, yes.

MS. GORELICK: And -- and after the Cole, you -- you, in answer to a question from -- from Secretary Lehman said -- or maybe it was Congressman Roemer, you said, well, we didn't know, by the time we left office, you didn't know that the attack on the Cole was the responsibility of Bin Ladin. Is that correct?

MS. ALBRIGHT: That is correct.

MS. GORELICK: But having made that threat, what is your view on the necessity for the U.S. government to have responded to the Cole forcefully when that conclusion of responsibility was in fact made?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, as I said, and you repeated, we did not have definitive proof. The definitive proof came during the Bush administration, and they had repeated the threat. So, I think you have to, again, ask them, in terms of how they saw whether they reacted appropriately once it was proven that the Cole was linked to al Qaeda, and -- but -- but I -- in our case, there was not definitive proof by the time we left office that it was, and we stood with our threat.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you.

MR. LEHMAN: Just to set the record straight, however, our investigations have indeed proved that the conclusion was reached in CIA at a much earlier time, in fact, as early as November, and certainly by December --

MS. GORELICK: But not conveyed to decision-makers.

MR. LEHMAN: But not conveyed to decision-makers. That's --

MS. ALBRIGHT: And I think that is a general issue that people need to look at, is how material comes up the system and who knows what at what time. I think, you know, that is an issue, how it is conveyed and at what time.

MR. KEAN: Senator Gorton.

MR. GORTON: Same general subject, Madam Secretary. I take from page six of your written statement. There would have been no reason to justify a military action, that is, an invasion of Afghanistan, but without the mega-shock of September 11th, there -- excuse me -- there would have been reason to justify military action, but without the mega-shock of September 11th, we would not have had a local staging ground to support such an attack, and diplomatic backing would have been virtually non-existent. Would you not -- would you not say that exactly the same situation existed during the first eight months of the Bush administration, i.e., prior to 9/11?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I -- I do think that clearly 9/11 affected them as it did us, and, therefore, the question is, how they looked at the particular material. They seem to have felt also that there was not a justification. I think the question comes down to one of the last issues that Ms. Gorelick raised with us is whether when there was proof that al Qaeda and Osama Bin Ladin were connected with the U.S.S. Cole, the threat having been made, why there was not a response at that time. I think that is the question --

MR. GORTON: We're speaking of -- I'm asking this question, as this question relates to an invasion of Afghanistan to depose the Taliban and disperse al Qaeda.

MS. ALBRIGHT: I -- I do think -- this is my personal opinion -- that it would be very hard, pre-9/11, to have persuaded anybody that an invasion of Afghanistan was appropriate. I think it -- it did take the mega-shock, unfortunately, of 9/ll to make people understand the considerable threat, plus, there was not a staging area in Pakistan, and the variety of problems that we faced, I do think that this Administration faced also.

MR. GORTON: And pre-9/11, the only military response to any al Qaeda attack, whether successful or one of the many that you said was frustrated during your period of time, the only military response was the response in the immediate aftermath of the embassy backing, and while many other potential covert or cruise missile kinds of responses were considered, all ran up against an objection that the intelligence wasn't actionable, that you didn't know what the -- there was no appropriate target, or there could be collateral damage, so every such suggestion, you know, was frustrated and came to naught before 9/11, is that not correct?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I have no way of judging what happened inside the Bush administration from January to September.

MR. GORTON: Well, you do know that nothing happened.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I do know that. But I also do know that many of the policy issues that we had developed were not followed-up. And I have to say with great sadness to watch a -- an incoming Administration kind of take apart a lot of the policies that we did have, whether it had to do with North Korea or the Balkans, was difficult. So, I think -- I think you have to ask people that were in the Bush administration as to how they saw things on this particular issue. But I do think, in all fairness, that 9/11 was a cataclysmic event that changed things and that it -- they must have had similar reactions. But clearly there are many issues and many questions now about how they were responding to the terrorist threat and how seriously they took it. You are going to have some other witnesses here who will be more capable of responding to that question than I because I know nothing beyond what I read.

SEN. GORTON: So, at least during probably the year 2000, if not earlier, and 2001 up to 9/11, a rational al Qaeda could determine that terrorism was essentially cost free, or only at a cost so modest that it was well worthwhile.

MS. ALBRIGHT: I don't believe that, actually. I think that if you look at what we were doing, we were on an upward trajectory of ramping up our dealing with terrorist activities, whether it was putting the infrastructure into place that the Bush administration is using on tracking finances, on trying to get more money into the CIA, of developing counterterrorism centers and activities. So, I think no -- I mean, it's hard for me to get inside the head of al Qaeda, but no, I do not think they must have thought it was cost free.

MR. GORTON: Well, there we certainly disagree. I guess my time is up.

MR. KEAN: Yes. Our last question for this panel from Governor Thompson.

MR. THOMPSON: Madam Secretary, thank you for being here today. And thank you for your service to our country.

I must say that I am impressed with not only your record but the record of the Clinton administration in its efforts to pursue and stop al Qaeda, to provide appropriate responses on behalf of our country, and for the vigor and determination with which your administration acted in these affairs during the time that you were in office.

But I'd like to turn to -- to a subject that everybody else in Washington is talking about, so we might as well recognize the elephant in the room --

MS. ALBRIGHT: So to speak.

MR. THOMPSON: Understanding as I do all the things that your administration did, I'm perplexed that even though you followed many of Mr. Clarke's suggestions, whether it was frequent principals meetings, frequent meetings of the small group, pressure on the Saudis, pressure on the Pakistanis, preparation of the Predator for military action, going after financing, issuing demarches, all of that, and where you didn't follow his advice you had reasonable and logical explanations for it, some of which you've talked about today, and some of which you've talked about in your written testimony -- for example, not providing military aid to the Northern Alliance or -- or putting boots on the ground in Afghanistan. But, none of the years of the Clinton effort, as vigorous as it was, either stopped the spread of al Qaeda, brought us Osama Bin Ladin or prevented September 11th. And it's really hard for me to see how a criticism can be leveled against the Bush administration which was brand-new, and had only seven months to try and look at and in many cases continue the policy of the Clinton administration towards al Qaeda and Osama Bin Ladin. This was not one of those things that blew up like the Balkans or North Korea. Is that a fair conclusion?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I think that fighting terrorism is a very difficult job, and it is clear from our experience of eight years I think it's very hard to find Osama Bin Ladin. We had a hard time. I regret that they have not been able to find him. It is very difficult. We are dealing with a brand-new threat in a way that spreads through these variety of groups where people are given sanctuary and where in fact I think there is a question in the long term how we deal with it in terms of educational issues, in terms of trying to get the moderate Muslims to help us -- some of the suggestions that I made.

I think what I consider, if I may say so, the great value of this commission is that you are going -- you are asking exactly these kinds of questions in terms of not just trying to place blame, but trying to learn lessons. When I was first told about the mandate of this commission, that is what it is, and so to get answers and learn lessons without in fact just trying to place blame.

I do think that it is important to understand how much attention was paid to fighting terrorism in the Bush administration. I can only talk about what we did, and that is that it was constantly on our minds, that President Clinton spoke about it all the time -- privately in meetings to foreign leaders as well as publicly -- that we did in fact create the national security system that allowed somebody like Dick Clarke in the job of being the coordinator, and that I think our record in dealing with this is one that established a variety of policies that I think were on the way towards helping us fight terrorism. But I am not going to say that it is easy, and it is the threat of our time. And the devil's marriage between these shady groups and the spread of weapons of mass destruction is unfortunately the problem that we are all dealing with that we cannot deed to our children and grandchildren.

So I am very glad that this commission is looking into this, because it is the lessons learned -- not so much the blame placing.

MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Madam Secretary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Thank you again for your testimony very much. And thank you for all your public service, Secretary Albright.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Thank you, governor.

MR. KEAN: And thank you, Ambassador Pickering, for being here with us. We are submitting a few, perhaps if we could, a few more questions for the record.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Absolutely.

MR. KEAN: And we look forward to your responses.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Thank you so much. Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very, very much. END.

MR. KEAN: Our next witness is, I think, familiar to everybody in this room. He, too, has a record of tremendously distinguished service to this country in a number of different ways, both in a volunteer level as well as in the public service level. We welcome a senior member of the Cabinet, Secretary of State Colin Powell, of course accompanied by the distinguished deputy secretary of State, Richard Armitage. Thank you very much for coming. Mr. Secretary, Mr. Deputy Secretary, we would like, if we could, to ask you to raise your right hand that we may put you under oath.

Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

SEC. POWELL: I do.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much. Secretary Powell, your prepared statement will be entered into the record in full. We would ask you, therefore, if you could summarize your remarks.

SEC. POWELL: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a great pleasure to be before the Commission today, and I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you regarding the events leading up to and following the murderous terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. It is my hope, as I know it is yours, that through the hard work of this commission, our country can improve the way we wage the war on terror, and in particular, better protect our homeland and the American people.

I'm pleased to have, of course, with me today Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage -- Rich Armitage. Secretary Armitage was sworn in on March 26th of 2001, two months into the Administration, and he's been intimately involved in the interagency deliberations on our counterterrorism policies. And of course he also participated in what are known as principals, as well as National Security Council meetings whenever I was on travel or otherwise unavailable.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, I leave Washington this evening to represent President Bush and the American people at the memorial service in Madrid, Spain, honoring the over 200 victims of the terrorist attacks of 3/11, March 11th, 2004. With deep sympathy and solidarity, our heart goes out to their loved ones and to the people of Spain.

And just last Thursday, in the garden of our embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, I presided at a memorial service in honor of two State Department family members, Barbara Green and her daughter Kristen Wormsley, who were killed two years ago by terrorists while they worshipped in a church on a bright, beautiful spring morning.

I know that the families and friends of the victims of 9/11, some of whom are listening and watching today, grieve just as the Spanish are grieving, and just as we at the Department of State did and still do for Barbara and Kristen.

Mr. Chairman, I am no newcomer to the horrors of terrorism.

In 1983, Secretary Armitage and I were working for Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger, as was Secretary Lehman at that time, when 243 wonderful, brave Marines and Navy corpsmen were killed in Beirut, Lebanon. I was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993 when the first bombing of the World Trade Center took place. In 1996 I may have been out of government, but I followed closely the events surrounding the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

Khobar and all the other terrorist attacks over the years were very much a part of my consciousness as I prepared to assume the office of secretary of State under President George Bush. I was well aware of the fact that I was going to be sworn into office just three months after the U.S.S. Cole was struck in the harbor at Aden, Yemen, taking the lives of 17 sailors and wounding 30 others. I was well aware -- very well aware -- that our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had been blown up in 1998, injuring some 4,000 people and killing 220, 12 of them Americans -- the highest number of casualties in a single incident in the State Department's history.

As the new chief executive officer of the Department of State, I was acutely aware that I would be responsible to President Bush -- he made this clear that this was my responsibility -- for the safety of the men and women serving at our posts overseas as well as for the safety and welfare of private American citizens traveling and living abroad. The 1999 Crowe Commission report on embassy security became our blueprint for upgrading the security of all of our facilities.

Admiral Crowe had done an extensive review and made some scathing criticisms on how lax our country was in protecting our personnel who were serving abroad from terrorist attacks, and one of my first actions was to ask retired Major General Chuck Williams of the Army Corps of Engineers to come into the department and head our building operation. We wanted him to move aggressively to implement the Crowe recommendations and to protect our people and our installations, and he has done a tremendous job of that. At the beginning of this Administration we were building one new secure embassy a year. Today we are building 10 new secure embassies every single year.

As the President's principal foreign policy advisor I was well aware, as was the President and all the members of the new national security team, that communism and fascism, our old foes of the past century, had been replaced by a new kind of enemy, terrorism. We were well aware that no nation is immune to terrorism. We were well aware that this adversary is not necessarily a state and it often has no clear return address. We knew that this monster is hydra-headed, many-tentacled.

We knew that its evil leaders and followers espoused many false causes but have one common purpose, to murder innocent people.

Mr. Chairman, President Bush and all of us on his team knew that terrorism would be a major concern for us, as it has been for the past several administrations. During the transition from the Clinton to the Bush administration, we were pleased to receive the briefings and information that Secretary Albright and her staff provided us on President Clinton's counterterrorism policies and what they had done for the previous eight years before we came into office.

Indeed, on December 20th, four days -- four days -- after President Bush announced that I would be the next secretary of State, I asked for and got a briefing on our worldwide terrorism actions and policies from President Clinton's counterterrorism security group, headed by Mr. Dick Clarke. In addition to Mr. Clarke at this briefing, my very first briefing during the transition, also present were the CIA's counterterrorism director, Mr. Cofer Black; from the FBI, Dale Watson; also present were representatives from the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from within the State Department, representatives of our own Bureau of Intelligence and Research, as well as our acting coordinator for counterterrorism. A major component of this briefing was al Qaeda's growing threat to the United States, our interests around the world and Afghanistan's role as a safe haven for al Qaeda. As a matter of fact, that part of the briefing got my attention, so much so that later I asked Mr. Armitage when he got sworn in to get directly involved in all these issues, and he did.

In addition, in my transition book that was provided to me by Secretary Albright, there was a paper from Mike Sheehan, Secretary Albright's counterterrorism coordinator. And I read it very carefully. That transition paper, under the rubric, "Ongoing Threat Environment," stated that, quote, "In close coordination with the intelligence community, we must ensure that all precautions are taken to strengthen our security posture, warn U.S. citizens abroad and maintain a high level of readiness to respond to additional incidents that might come along." The paper informed me that, quote, "The joint U.S.-Yemeni investigation of the U.S.S. Cole bombing continues to develop new information and leads but that it is still too early to definitely link -- definitively link the attack to a sponsor, i.e., Osama Bin Ladin." And under Taliban, the paper records that we must continue to rally international support for a new round of U.N. sanctions, including an arms embargo against the Taliban. The paper further stated we should maintain the momentum of getting others, such as the G-8, Russia, India, the Caucasus states, Central Asia, to isolate and pressure the Taliban.

It continued: "If the Cole investigation leads back to Afghanistan, we should use it to mobilize the international support needed for further pressures on the Taliban."

Let me emphasize that the paper covered a range of terrorism- related concerns and not just al Qaeda and the Taliban.

So the outgoing administration provided me and others in the incoming Administration with transition papers, as well as briefings, based on their eight years of experience, that reinforced our awareness of the worldwide threat from terrorism. All of us on the Bush national security team, beginning with President Bush, knew we needed continuity in counterterrorism policy. We did not want terrorists to see the early months of a new administration as a time of opportunity.

And for continuity, President Bush retained Director Tenet at the CIA. Director Tenet's Counterterrorism Center remained under the leadership of Cofer Black. He was kept on there until he joined the State Department last year to become my assistant secretary for Counterterrorism.

Dick Clarke was retained at the National Security Council. I retained Ambassador Edmund Hull as acting coordinator for Counterterrorism until I was able to bring a new team in a little bit later in the year, under the leadership of former Brigadier General Frank Taylor of the United States Air Force's Office of Special Investigations. He was Cofer Black's immediate predecessor.

I also retained David Carpenter as assistant secretary for Diplomatic Security and kept Tom Fingar on as acting assistant secretary for Intelligence and Research. Christopher Kojm, now a staff member of your commission, was a political appointee from the prior administration, and we kept him on as well, in order to show continuity during this period. And of course, FBI Director Louie Freeh provided continuity on the domestic side.

Early on we made clear to the Congress and to the American people that we understood the scope and compelling nature of the threat from terrorism. For example, on February 7th, 2001, just a few weeks into the Administration, my acting assistant secretary for Intelligence, Tom Fingar, who had served in the same capacity in the previous administration, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding threats to the United States. In the first part of his testimony, he highlighted the threat from unconventional forces, saying, "The magnitude of each individual threat is small, but in aggregate, unconventional threats probably pose a more immediate danger to Americans than do foreign armies, nuclear weapons, long- range missiles, or the proliferation even of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems."

Fingar then went on -- Mr. Fingar then went on to single out Osama Bin Ladin, saying that plausible, if not always credible, threats linked to his organizations target Americans and America's friends or interests on almost every continent.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, the Department of State was well aware of the terrorist threat.

The new Bush administration, as had the Clinton administration, created counterterrorism and regional interagency committees to study the counterterrorism issue in a comprehensive way. The committees, in turn, reported to a Deputies Committee chaired by Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, on which Mr. Armitage was my representative. The deputies, in turn, reported to Cabinet-level Principals Committees, which answered to the National Security Council chaired by the President.

These committees, however, were not by any means the sum and substance of our interagency discussions on counterterrorism, nor did they represent all that was happening within the Administration on a day-to-day basis.

In order to keep in constant touch on counterterrorism issues, as well as all of the other items on our agenda, Secretary Rumsfeld, Dr. Rice and I held a daily coordination phone call meeting on every morning that were in town at 7:15. In addition to our regular and frequent meetings at the State Department, every morning at 8:30 I met with my staff and immediately had available at 8:30 information from my INR section, my intelligence people, as well as my counterterrorism coordinator, as well as the assistant secretary in charge of diplomatic security. We formalized regular luncheons with Dr. Rice, myself, the Vice President and Secretary Rumsfeld in order to make sure that we stayed in closest touch with each other not only on terrorism, but on all issues.

Above all, from the start, the President, by word and deed, made clear his interests and his intense desire to protect the nation from terrorism. He frequently asked and prodded us to do more. He decided early on that we needed to be more aggressive in going after terrorists, and especially al Qaeda. As he said in early spring, as we were developing our new comprehensive strategy, quote, "I'm tired of swatting flies." He wanted a thorough, comprehensive, diplomatic, military, intelligence, law enforcement and financial strategy to go after al Qaeda. It was a demanding order, but it was a necessary one.

There were many other compelling issues that were on our agenda that a new administration has to take into account: a Middle East policy that had just collapsed; the sanctions on Iraq had been unraveling steadily since 1998; relations with Russia and China were complicated by the need to expel Russian spies in February, and the plane collision with the Chinese fighter in April. There were many foreign leaders who were coming to the United States or wanted us to visit them to get engaged with the new administration. Yes, we had to deal with all of these pressing matters and more, but we also were confident that we had an experienced counterterrorism team in place.

President Bush and his entire national security team understood that terrorism had to be among our highest priorities, and it was.

Now, what did we do to act on that priority? Our counterterrorism planning developed very rapidly considering the challenges of transition and of a new administration. We were not given a counterterrorism action plan by the previous administration. As I mentioned, we were given good briefings on what they had been doing with respect to al Qaeda and with respect to the Taliban. The briefers as well as the principals conveyed to us the gravity of the threat posed by al Qaeda, but we noted early on that the actions that the previous administration had taken had not succeeded in eliminating the threat. As a result, Dr. Rice directed a thorough policy review, aimed at developing a comprehensive strategy to eliminate the al Qaeda threat, and this was in her first week in her new position as national security advisor. This decision did not await any deputies' or principals' committee review. She knew what we had to do and she put us to the task of doing it.

We wanted the new policy to go well beyond tit-for-tat retaliation. We felt that lethal strikes that largely missed the terrorists if you don't have adequate targeting information, such as the cruise missile strikes in 1998, might lead al Qaeda to believe that we lack resolve. These strikes had obviously not deterred al Qaeda from subsequently attacking the U.S.S. Cole. We wanted to move beyond the rollback policy of containment, criminal prosecution and limited retaliation for specific terrorist attacks. We wanted to destroy al Qaeda.

We understood that Pakistan was critical to the success of our long-term strategy. To get at al Qaeda, we had to end Pakistan's support for the Taliban, so we had to recast our relations with that country. But nuclear sanctions caused by Pakistan's nuclear weapons tests and the nature of the new regime, the way President Musharraf took office, made it difficult for us to work with Pakistan. We knew, however, that achieving sustainable new relations with Pakistan meant moving more aggressively to strengthen our -- shape our relations with India as well. So we began this rather more complex diplomatic approach very quickly upon assuming office, even as we were putting the strategy on paper and deciding its other, more complicated elements.

For example, in February of 2001 Presidents Bush and Musharraf exchanged letters. Let me quote a few lines from President Bush's February 16th letter to President Musharraf of Pakistan. This was just a few weeks after coming into office. Quote, the President said to President Musharraf, "Pakistan is an important member of the community of nations and one with which I hope to build better relations, particularly as you move ahead to return to civilian constitutional government. We have concerns of which you are aware, but I am hopeful we can work together on our differences in the years ahead.î

"We should work together," the President continued, "to address Afghanistan's many problems. The most pressing of these is terrorism, and it inhibits progress on all other issues.

The continued presence of Osama Bin Ladin and his al Qaeda organization is a direct threat to the United States and its interests that must be addressed.

"I believe al Qaeda also threatens Pakistan's long-term interest. We join the United Nations in passing additional sanctions against the Taliban to bring Bin Ladin to justice and to close the network of terrorist camps in their territory."

The President concluded: "I urge you to use your influence with the Taliban to bring this about."

President Bush was very concerned about al Qaeda and about the safe haven given them by the Taliban. But he knew that implementing the diplomatic road map we envisioned would be difficult. The deputies went to work, reviewing all of these complex regional issues. Early on, we realized that a serious effort to remove al Qaeda's safe haven in Afghanistan might well require introducing military force, especially ground forces. This without the cooperation of a Pakistan would be out of the question. Pakistan had vital interests in Afghanistan and was deeply suspicious of India's intentions. Pakistan's and India's mutual fears and suspicion threatened to boil over into nuclear conflict as the Administration got into the early months of its existence. To put it mildly, the situation was delicate and dangerous. Any effort to effect change had to be calibrated very carefully to avoid misperception and miscalculation. Under the leadership of Steve Hadley, deputy national security advisor, the deputies met a number of times during the spring and summer to craft a strategy for eliminating the al Qaeda threat and dealing with the complex implications for Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

So we began to develop this more aggressive and more comprehensive strategy, and while we did so, we continued activities that had been going on in the previous administration aimed at al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, including intelligence activities. For example, during the summer of 2001 the CIA succeeded in a number of disruption activities against terrorist groups. These are activities where our agents create turmoil among those groups they know to be associated with terrorists so that the terrorists cannot assemble, cannot communicate, can't effectively plan, receive any support or money, and are generally unable to act in a coordinated fashion. You will hear more about these activities from Director Tenet tomorrow, but I want to emphasize that notwithstanding all these intelligence activities that were under way, at no time during the early months of our administration were we presented with a vetted, viable, operational proposal which would have led to an opportunity to kill, capture or otherwise neutralize Osama Bin Ladin.

We never received any targetable information.

Let me return now to our diplomatic efforts. From early 2001 onward, we pressed the Taliban directly and sought the assistance of the government of Pakistan and other neighboring states to put additional pressure on the Taliban to expel Bin Ladin from Afghanistan and to shut down al Qaeda.

On February 8th, 2001, less than three weeks into the Administration, we closed the Taliban office in New York, implementing the U.N. resolutions passed the previous month, I must say with the strong support and the de