Word: cheneyism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...months had passed since 9/11, and at the highest levels of government, officials were worrying about a second wave of attacks. CIA Director George Tenet was briefing Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in the White House Situation Room on the agency's latest concern: intelligence reports suggesting that Osama bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had met with a radical Pakistani nuclear scientist around a campfire in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Absorbing the possibility that al-Qaeda was trying to acquire a nuclear weapon, Cheney remarked that America had to deal with...
Tenet's response was dispiriting. He told Bush and Cheney that interrogations of both the Bahraini trio and the Saudi trio still in custody had, thus far, yielded nothing. Saudi intelligence said it was keeping track of the whereabouts of the trio that recently had been let go. Short of al-Zawahiri, the only person who could potentially identify the U.S. mubtakkar cell was al-Ayeri...
...Cheney was grim. The priorities were clear, he intoned. Al-Ayeri - writing shrewd assessments of Iraq's future, going head-to-head with al-Zawahiri, managing al-Qaeda affairs in Saudi Arabia and, possibly, guiding the only operational WMD attack in America - might be the most important active member of al-Qaeda. He must be found. As things heated up in the kingdom, calls from the White House and the CIA to the top of the Saudi hierarchy were urgent and clear: Make sure al-Ayeri is captured, alive. (See what would happen to the accused 9/11 plotters...
Tenet brought the bad news to Bush and Cheney at the next morning briefing. Bush was angry. At the very least, he told Tenet, tersely, someone should be sent to Riyadh to get the Saudis to rearrest the trio that had recently been released. A few days later, Mowatt-Larssen entered the chambers of Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, at the Royal Palace in Riyadh. He knew not to expect much. Meetings with Nayef were often short and nonproductive...
Tenet and his briefers informed Cheney and President Bush of the intercepted communications. Then they went to see Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bandar greeted the delegation arriving at his palatial home in northern Virginia, Tenet and his small band of deputies. They hugged. Tenet is a hugger. He and Bandar have passed countless hours together, trust building, a Tenet specialty...