Condi: Bush Met Tenet Every Day (Clinton Didn't)

President Bush met with CIA Director George Tenet every single day during the eight months he was president before the 9/11 attacks, National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice revealed on Friday, noting that the practice was a shift from the previous administration's policy.

Appearing for an exclusive interview with nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity, Dr. Rice addressed a finding by the 9/11 Commission that President Clinton had ordered the CIA to capture but not kill Osama bin Laden.

"There may have been some confusion [in the Clinton administration]," Dr. Rice told Hannity. "I do know that on our watch George Tenet never felt that he lacked the authority that he needed to do his job."

The top national security official explained why no such confusion plagued Tenet after Bush took over.

"George Tenet met with the president every morning," she told Hannity. "And so if he needed any more authority from us he would have been right there to ask the president. I know he wouldn't have been shy about it."

Rice noted that the daily meetings between Bush and Tenet represented a policy change from the Clinton years.

"That's a practice the president re-instituted," she said. "I don't believe President Clinton met with the DCI every morning. George Tenet met with [this] president every morning."

Dr. Rice also gave new details about a terrorist threat spike in the summer of 2001 that critics have erroneously suggested gave warning of the coming attack against America.

"In the period leading up to September 11, we did have a lot of threat reporting, particularly in June and July," she told Hannity. "Really, all of it pointed to an attack that might come in the Persian Gulf, or that might come against Israel or that might come against the G-8 leaders meeting in Genoa, Italy, that year."

Still, despite the fact that the warnings suggested coming attacks on other nations, Rice said the Bush administration took them seriously.

"We responded to those threats in a very active and aggressive way," she insisted. "I had Dick Clarke call together the domestic agencies so that the FAA could issue warnings, so that the FBI could issue warnings. We did everything that we knew how to do to prepare the country."

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