Matt Lauer is a serious journalist

At least he'd like us to think so in this, a second interview with Bob Woodward on his latest tome, State of Denial. Never mind that not 10 minutes later he and Meredith are bantering back and forth about how Matt does or does not resemble a Meerkat.

Meanwhile, what to think of Bob himself in response to Matt's question about the obligation to tell this horrific story:

"I wanna answer your question...Simon & Schuster, the publisher and my bosses at the Washington Post said the only, the real obligation here, to use your analogy to get up on top of the mountain and tell the full story, is to tell it before the election."

And of course the now publicized meeting between Condi Rice, CIA Director Tenet and counter-terrorism chief Cofer Black. The one that Condi says didn't happen:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied allegations in a new book that she ignored an urgent warning from then CIA director George Tenet two months before 9/11 that al-Qaeda was planning to attack the United States.

"I am quite certain that I would remember if I was told that," Rice told reporters en route to the Middle East. "The idea that I somehow would have ignored that, I find incomprehensible."
The briefing on her plane was Rice's first opportunity to comment on two new books that describe policy failures and dissension among high-level officials in the first Bush term, in which she served as White House national security adviser.

One book, State of Denial, by veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, asserts that Tenet and a senior aide, Cofer Black, held an unscheduled meeting with Rice on July 10, 2001. Woodward writes that Tenet sought the meeting because he wanted to press the administration to take action immediately against al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to disrupt a possible attack in the United States.

Rice said she recalled "a steady stream of quite alarmist reports about potential attacks" during that period but that they involved targets abroad, in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel and possibly Jordan. "There was nothing that related to an attack in the United States," she said.

Tom Maguire sounds off with this idea: Look, it may have been that Ms. Rice "was in a different place". But in her place, a Principal's Meeting occurred on Sept 4 to hash out the grand strategy for tackling Al Qaeda - that meeting may have already been scheduled as of July 10 (given vacation patterns, I doubt their was an August Principal's Meeting).

So, either Tenet's request for a new strategic approach was redundant, or his request accelerated the eventual Principal's Meeting to the next available date.

Either way, there is a huge gap between what Tenet wants in the third paragraph - "specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden" - and what was discussed in the meeting, which was apparently the need for "an overall plan and strategy".

Ms. Rice might very reasonably have reminded Tenet that (a) the strategic plan was in the works, as they both knew: (b) that as DCI Tenet was free to submit a specific, urgent request for a "finding" supporting a covert deed; and (c) as the guy who briefed President Bush each morning, Tenet was free to make his case directly to the President.

Frankly, this July 10 meeting sounds like it was brilliant only in hindsight.

Additionally, one of TM's commenters Doug notes that Tenet's memory-like-a-steel-trap appears to have holes, making it more of a sieve:

Two weeks earlier, he [Tenet] had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."

From the 9/11 Commission report:

"In late August, the Moussaoui arrest was briefed to the DCI and other top CIA officials under the heading “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.” Because the system was not tuned to comprehend the potential significance of this information,the news had no effect on warning."

Tenet's sixth sense that was working so well in July must have taken a vacation in August.

Their is no specific warning of specific attacks with specifically actionable intelligence in either the details of this meeting or in the August 6th, 2001 NIE. Yes, a warning but not anything detailed enough to move on. As JPod says of it: None of this — not a word of this, save for the fact of a meeting on July 10 — is new.

I begin to wonder whether this book means what alot of people want it to mean.