Chapter 10 Summary and Analysis

Al Qaeda planned some attacks for years. The new Bush administration, if it heard Clarke--the CSG had been reclassified out of the Principals--did not pay attention to his message of imminent menace. However, during the transition, Colin Powell requested a meeting of the CSG, National Security Council (NSC), State, CIA, FBI, and the DOD to see how they interacted: they all agreed that al Qaeda posed an imminent threat. Condoleezza Rice was the fourth National Security Advisor that Clarke had reported to and the seventh he had worked with. He explained that al Qaeda wasn't just "bin Laden's group" but a network of cells in 50 countries, including the U.S.

Rice was skeptical and commented that the only difference between the NSC now and years earlier--when she had been a staffer during the Cold War--was Clarke's CSG. The NSC she saw...