Memo urged Rice to meet on Al-Qaeda before Sept. 11 attacks (Clarke) [View All]

[underpants]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/usattacksriceqaeda

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Eight months before the September 11, 2001, attacks, the White House's then counterterrorism adviser urged then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) to hold a high-level meeting on the Al-Qaeda network, according to a memo made public.


"We urgently need such a principals-level review on the Al-Qaeda network," then White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke wrote in the January 25, 2001 memo.


Clarke, who left the White House in 2003, made huge headlines in the heat of the US presidential campaign last year when he accused the Bush White House of having ignored Al-Qaeda's threats before September 11.

However, Rice wrote in a March 22, 2004 column in The Washington Post, "No Al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration."

The document was released by the National Security Archive, an independent group that solicits government documents for public review.