I couldn't agree with Robomatic more regarding the hearings. I watched and listened to Tenet, Berger and Clarke yesterday.

Of the three performances, Tenet was comfortable, Berger was superb, Clarke impressive, although of the three, his body language indicated that he was the most ill-at-ease.

Now, what did I get from it all.

1. In an earlier post I said that terrorism within the US has never been a priority. That remark I retract, with the qualifier that compared to European countries faced with terrorist activity, activity on the part of the two administrations concerned in the US have always appeared (to me on this side of the pond) to have been very low key, very much behind the scenes.

2. Like the proud mum who goes to see her son's passing out parade and comments as her son's squad passes, "Oh look, they're all out of step except our Jimmy". That summed up Tuesday's and Wednesday's evidence, with regard to what Clarke had to say.

3. Berger clearly stated the options open to the US Government of Bill Clinton, as proposed by Clarke. He also stated with regard to hitting Al-Qaeda all of those options were simply just not feasible. He also stated that what action the Clinton administration did take (i.e. the cruise missile attacks) only succeeded in making Al-Qaeda look good and the US look feeble. He also explained that the cruise missile attack that Clinton did order was fraught with danger, given the required trajectory of the strike and the situation on the Indian sub-continent at the time.

4. On the USS Cole attack, Berger clearly explained that through December 2000, and into January 2001, the CIA had reached a "Preliminary Judgement" that Al-Qaeda was responsible and that a response to that attack could not, and should not, be launched on such a judgement, the case needed to be more compelling. Clarke on the other hand wanted Afghanistan bombed immediately, and continued with that line once the Bush administration took up the reins of government in January 2001. Clarke in recommending such a course of action, on which he was adamant, completely ignores the fact that Pakistan would, at that time, never have allowed such a violation of it's air-space.

5. The title, "Terrorism Tsar", Clarke himself rubbished, he clearly stated that that title was coined by the media. Under the Clinton administrations he (Clarke) had direct access to what he described as the "principals". Under the Bush administration his line of reporting was through their (the principal's) assistants. It was obvious that he felt that that represented a demotion, summed up by his comment that under the system as run by the Bush administration he had all the responsibility, but none of the authority. Considering some of his recommendations that does not surprise me and I do not believe it would have surprised Samuel Berger. The impression I got was that Berger/Tenet had a few "heated" discussions, while Berger/Clarke had many. On "actionable intelligence" and apparent lack of will on the part of the CIA to take direct action, Clarke's explanation regarding the pervading philosophy at Langley was excellent and probably very true.

6. The hand over in January 2001 between Berger and Rice consisted of three very comprehensive briefings. The first by Berger himself, the others were given to Rice by assistants (Clarke being one of them).

7. Considering the reported threat posed by Al-Qaeda according to Clarke, the differences in approach between the Clinton and Bush administrations were interesting. The Clinton administration were pursuing a policy of containment, of "rolling up" Al-Qaeda, to reduce its effectiveness over a period of 3 to 5 years. The Bush administration from the outset gave instructions that their policy would be to "eliminate" that organisation within 3 years. Now that is quite a radical change and it is clear that would obviously take time to put into practice. Equally clear was that this change, although welcomed by Clarke, also greatly frustrated him.

8. On the 9/11 attacks themselves, and the lead up to them, all three (but particularly Clarke and Tenet) commented on the amount of general intelligence regarding Al-Qaeda that had to be weighed through. They knew that an attack was being mounted, opinion was split over where that attack would fall, and how that attack would be carried out. General concensus, was that the attack would fall outside the US as that is where the bulk of intelligence information, at the time, pointed. Another factor causing people to consider an external target more likely, was the success in thwarting the "millenium" attempts by Al-Qaeda, and the number of cells broken in the US during those operations. Clarke alone was of the opinion that the attack would be made in the US. Action was taken to cover both possibilities. None considered an attack of the type that did actually occur (Clarke included). They did take into account that it could involve aircraft and warnings were issued during the summer of 2001 to the FAA and other associated agencies. Clarke was scathing in his opinions of the capabilities of the FBI. So low was his opinion of them that he recommended a seperate "secret police" to counter terrorism within the US. Berger was slightly more conciliatory towards the FBI, saying that due to the information load, it was probably true that the FBI didn't know, or realise, the importance of the information they actually had. Two factors, heavier than usual work-load, coupled with poor inter-departmental, inter-agency flow and exchange of information.

8. From his recommendations Clarke viewed Al-Qaeda as a fixed centralised organisation that could be attacked. Tenet did not hold the same view. From it's inception Al-Qaeda during the years of the Clinton administration successfully carried out a number of attacks against the US and attempted more. To date during the Bush administration Al-Qaeda scored it's greatest success with the attacks of 9/11. It was an attack that, given the set up in the US at the time, could not have been averted, even had bin Laden been killed - things were already too far down the track. The form of attack was not even considered, Clarke, himself, said that indications and assessments regarding such a form of attack amounted to a hand-full of papers dating back to 1995 buried among hundreds of thousands of bits of paper. One thing Berger did say was that Clarke's recommendations with regard to destroying Al-Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan only became feasible AFTER 9/11 - he was adamant that it could not have been done before.

9. So did the Bush Administration "drop the ball" as Richard Clarke contends? Given the circumstances, all-in-all, no I don't think they did.