The New York Times reported on Sunday that “details of the meeting on July 10, 2001” between former CIA director George Tenet, then-national security adviser Condolleezza Rice, and Tenet counterterror chief Cofer Black, “were first reported last week in a new book by Bob Woodward.” It proceeds to quote outraged members of the 9/11 Commission who were “furious” they had not heard of the meeting before.
In fact, as reader KF notes, it appears Time magazine reported that meeting in August 2002, nearly two years before the panel released its final report — and more than four years before Woodward’s book, “State of Denial,” was published. The magazine described the meeting like this:
In mid-July, Tenet sat down for a special meeting with Rice and aides. “George briefed Condi that there was going to be a major attack,” says an official; another, who was present at the meeting, says Tenet broke out a huge wall chart (“They always have wall charts”) with dozens of threats. Tenet couldn’t rule out a domestic attack but thought it more likely that al-Qaeda would strike overseas.
Despite that, the 9/11 Commission did not mention it in its report, and appears not to have known about it. âNone of this was shared with us in hours of private interviews, including interviews under oath, nor do we have any paper on this,â panel member Timothy Roemer told the New York Times. âIâm deeply disturbed by this. Iâm furious.â
