contrapositive

RICE WRAP There were few revelations during Thursday's 9/11 Commission hearing. But one kernel of new information did surface during an exchange between Rice and former Sen. Bob Kerrey.

Characterizing the (still classified) Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) of August 6, 2001--the one titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States"--Rice told Kerrey:

It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.

As Atrios has pointed out, minutes later Kerrey closed out his section of the hearing with this:

KERREY: In the spirit of further declassification, this is what the August 6th memo said to the president: that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking. That's the language of the memo that was briefed to the president on the 6th of August.

RICE: And that was checked out and steps were taken through FAA circulars to warn of hijackings.

In Friday's editions of The New York Times, Philip Shenon interprets Kerrey's remark--and Rice's tacit acceptance of it--as confirming that the PDB itself included the sentence:

"The F.B.I. indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."

Now, I'm inclined to believe that Shenon has done his homework here.

And if he's right, it means Rice believes there's more than a semantic difference between the President having been alerted to suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijacking and the President being given warning of a threat.

The distinction, for Rice, seems to hinge on whether the information was derived from a specific nugget of new threat information, or was instead the product of ongoing analysis of available intelligence. (At least, that's the best I can do to unpack what she might have in mind.)

But if that even counts as a true distinction, it's one that doesn't carry much of a difference.

Which is to say that, while Rice's core claim may be "legally accurate," it's more about spin than substance.

The problem with her line of reasoning is that it depends on a vision of the presidency as a fundamentally passive office, and of the PDB as a kind of classified Page Six--full of interesting gossip and juicy details, but not the kind of source you'd consult if you were trying to figure out how to plan your next month.

To Rice, it seems, only the communication of a specific threat by the FBI to a particular target within a defined period of time would have been enough to trigger presidential action.

Which sort of makes the entire intelligence gathering and sorting process--a business based, almost by definition, on the analysis of incomplete information--seem like a vast waste of time.

ANOTHER POINT: I do think Rice was legally accurate in her testimony. But calling "historical information" what the FBI clearly meant to characterize as an ongoing pattern of behavior (actions "consistent with preparations for hijacking") is pretty close to the line.

A FINAL QUESTION: What was Kerrey doing, exactly, when he said, "In the spirit of further declassification..."? Was he truly taking it upon himself to go public with classified information? I know he's gutsy--but is he really that gutsy?

UPDATE: Saturday's Times adds context and TAPPED has more analysis.