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specifics regarding time, place, method, or target. Most suggested that attacks
were planned against targets overseas; others indicated threats against unspeci-
fied "U.S. interests." We cannot say for certain whether these reports, as dra-
matic as they were, related to the 9/11 attacks.
Government Response to the Threats
National Security Advisor Rice told us that the CSG was the "nerve center"
for running the crisis, although other senior officials were involved over the
course of the summer. In addition to his daily meetings with President Bush,
and weekly meetings to go over other issues with Rice,Tenet was speaking reg-
ularly with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld. The foreign policy principals routinely talked on the telephone
every day on a variety of topics.
41
Hadley told us that before 9/11, he and Rice did not feel they had the job
of coordinating domestic agencies. They felt that Clarke and the CSG (part of
the NSC) were the NSC's bridge between foreign and domestic threats.
42
There was a clear disparity in the levels of response to foreign versus domes-
tic threats. Numerous actions were taken overseas to disrupt possible attacks--
enlisting foreign partners to upset terrorist plans, closing embassies, moving
military assets out of the way of possible harm. Far less was done domestically--
in part, surely, because to the extent that specifics did exist, they pertained to
threats overseas.As noted earlier, a threat against the embassy in Yemen quickly
resulted in its closing. Possible domestic threats were more vague.When reports
did not specify where the attacks were to take place, officials presumed that they
would again be overseas, though they did not rule out a target in the United
States. Each of the FBI threat advisories made this point.
43
Clarke mentioned to National Security Advisor Rice at least twice that al
Qaeda sleeper cells were likely in the United States. In January 2001, Clarke
forwarded a strategy paper to Rice warning that al Qaeda had a presence in
the United States. He noted that two key al Qaeda members in the Jordanian
cell involved in the millennium plot were naturalized U.S. citizens and that one
jihadist suspected in the East Africa bombings had "informed the FBI that an
extensive network of al Qida `sleeper agents' currently exists in the US." He
added that Ressam's abortive December 1999 attack revealed al Qaeda sup-
porters in the United States.
44
His analysis, however, was based not on new
threat reporting but on past experience.
The September 11 attacks fell into the void between the foreign and domes-
tic threats. The foreign intelligence agencies were watching overseas, alert to
foreign threats to U.S. interests there.The domestic agencies were waiting for
evidence of a domestic threat from sleeper cells within the United States. No
one was looking for a foreign threat to domestic targets. The threat that was
coming was not from sleeper cells. It was foreign--but from foreigners who
had infiltrated into the United States.
"THE SYSTEM WAS BLINKING RED"
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