Josh Marshall notes that the White House is now claiming the right to prevent the Sept. 11 commission from reading the full text of the speech that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was set to give on Sept. 11, 2001.
This speech was to be delivered in public and broadcast on television. It's intended audience was the public, the people, the world.
It was, in other words, a speech — not a classified memo, a PDB or a top-secret dossier. The notion that a public speech must be redacted before the commission can have access to it is simply absurd.
Marshall also provides a link to Sen. Joe Biden's speech from Sept. 10, 2001.
A little context: Biden and Rice both appeared on Meet the Press on Sept. 9, 2001, where they disagreed — sharply — over America's national security priorities.
Rice argued that missile defense ought to be the No. 1 priority. Biden countered that this expensive and ineffective program would undermine and distract from what he said were more urgent priorities — including modernizing and upgrading conventional weapons systems, defending the U.S. from domestic terrorist attacks and preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
The Delaware Democrat, who was then chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, continued this debate with Rice the following day in a speech at the National Press Club titled "Defining Our Interests in a Changing World."
Because that speech made reference to "terrorist attacks at home or abroad" as a likelier and more urgent threat, it has been hailed since then as prescient. Less noted, and more important for the work of the Sept. 11 commission, is that this entire speech was a response — a rebuttal — of the positions staked out by Rice and the Bush administration.
Rice's speech the following day was intended to argue that Biden got it wrong. She never delivered the speech, of course, because events intervened, confirming that Biden got it right.
Regarding their debate over security priorities on Meet the Press, Biden said of Rice:
I don't know what she's talking about. We're getting briefed by two different groups of CIA people, I guess …
That's perhaps the most telling comment in the interrupted argument between Biden and Rice. Both had access to the same intelligence, both were briefed by the same CIA. Yet they drew very different conclusions from that intelligence about the relative urgency of missile defense and counterterrorism. (And, yes, this provides even more support for Richard Clarke's account of that intelligence and how it was received.)
Biden did not speak from a prepared text at the press club and his rambling remarks include only a few passing references to the threat of terrorist attacks. But let's avoid the silly practice, recently becoming quite popular, of playing "count the words" and remember what the entire point of the speech was.
The senator argued forcefully that missile defense was the wrong priority. It took away money needed elsewhere, for more urgent priorities. And it took the administration's eye off the ball, keeping them from paying sufficient attention to those more-urgent priorities — among them the threat of domestic terrorist attacks.
Condoleezza Rice was going to speak from a prepared text. It was a text prepared to counter Biden's argument. A text prepared to argue that no priority was higher, more urgent or more deserving of funding than that of missile defense. It was a text prepared to be delivered on Sept. 11, 2001.
It's not surprising that now the White House wants to prevent anyone from reading that text.
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