forced into knee-jerk responses."
House document-management system--suggesting that he ask CIA officials
"what additional information is needed before CIA can definitively conclude
that al-Qida was responsible" for the Cole.
a "strong circumstantial case" could be made against al Qaeda but noting that
the CIA continued to lack "conclusive information on external command and
control" of the attack.
had not been told about Clinton administration warnings to the Taliban.The
President told us that he had concluded that the United States must use ground
forces for a job like this.
President and Tenet, and between herself and Powell and Rumsfeld had pro-
duced a consensus that "tit-for-tat" responses were likely to be counterproduc-
tive. This had been the case, she thought, with the cruise missile strikes of
August 1998.The new team at the Pentagon did not push for action. On the
contrary, Rumsfeld thought that too much time had passed and his deputy, Paul
Wolfowitz, thought that the Cole attack was "stale." Hadley said that in the end,
the administration's real response to the Cole would be a new, more aggressive
strategy against al Qaeda.
the FBI.This included a 27 percent increase in counterterrorism funding for
the CIA.
In early March, the administration postponed action on proposals for increas-
ing aid to the Northern Alliance and the Uzbeks. Rice noted at the time that
a more wide-ranging examination of policy toward Afghanistan was needed
first. She wanted the review very soon.
als for rolling back al Qaeda but felt that catching terrorists one by one or even
cell by cell was not an approach likely to succeed in the long run. At the same
time, he said, he understood that policy had to be developed slowly so that diplo-
macy and financial and military measures could mesh with one another.