National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice directs the CIA to prepare a new series of legal authorities for a program of consolidated and methodical covert action in Afghanistan. Rice later tells the 9/11 Commission that the subsequent draft CIA document prepared and presented on March 28 provided for “consolidation plus,” superseding the various Clinton administration documents.
CIA director George Tenet later writes: “These authorities would place us much more on the offensive, rather than have us reacting defensively to the terrorist threat … The authorities in the draft were very broad and would have explicitly authorized CIA or its partners to plan and carry out operations to kill UBL [sic] without first trying to capture him. We believe these authorities were unprecedented in scope.” (At the Center of the Storm, pp. 143-144) The 9/11 Commission Report (p. 210) says that Tenet argued for deciding on a policy before deciding on the legal authorities to implement it, and the Presidential Findings was subsequently be put on hold.
Day: March 8, 2021