Report questions Rice's statements

WASHINGTON - The congressional report on pre-Sept. 11 intelligence calls into question answers that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice gave the public last year about the White House's knowledge of terrorism threats.

Rice's remarks about prewar Iraq information also have been questioned by members of Congress.

President Bush's adviser told the public in May 2002 that a pre-Sept. 11 intelligence briefing for the president on terrorism contained only a general warning of threats and largely historical information, not specific plots.

But the authors of the congressional report, released last week, said the briefing given to the president a month before the suicide hijackings included recent intelligence that al-Qaida was planning to send operatives into the United States to carry out an attack using high explosives.

The White House defended Rice, saying her answers were accurate, given what she could state publicly at the time about still-classified information.

The Sept. 11 congressional investigators underscore their point three times in their report, using nearly identical language to contrast Rice's answers with the actual information in the briefing.

The briefing on Aug. 6, 2001, contained "information acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives," the report stated.

A footnote to that passage compares the information with what Rice told the public at a May 16, 2002, news conference.

Rice "stated, however, that the report did not contain specific warning information, but only a generalized warning."

At the same briefing, Rice also said, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."

But the congressional report states, "From at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons."

The report says that Rice and other top officials seemed unaware of the intelligence and concludes the information must not have been widely circulated.

WASHINGTON - Saudi Arabia's foreign minister flew here Monday for talks with President Bush amid a raging controversy over a congressional report on the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The Associated Press reported that Minister Saud al-Faisal's visit was disclosed by two administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Also Monday, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., called on President Bush to declassify a 28-page section of the congressional report dealing with foreign support for the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Releasing the report will "allow the American people to make their own judgment about who are our true friends and allies in the war on terrorism," Graham wrote. Graham, who co-chaired the inquiry, is a presidential candidate.

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