Paragraph: (Sept11-reports/oanc-chapter-6-29.txt)
Sent 1: The Bush administration did not develop new diplomatic initiatives on al Qaeda with the Saudi government before 9/11.
Sent 2: Vice President Cheney called Crown Prince Abdullah on July 5, 2001, to seek Saudi help in preventing threatened attacks on American facilities in the Kingdom.
Sent 3: Secretary of State Powell met with the crown prince twice before 9/11.
Sent 4: They discussed topics like Iraq, not al Qaeda.U.S.-Saudi relations in the summer of 2001 were marked by sometimes heated disagreements about ongoing Israeli- Palestinian violence, not about Bin Laden.
Sent 5: The confirmation of the Pentagon's new leadership was a lengthy process.
Sent 6: Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz was confirmed in March 2001 and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith in July.
Sent 7: Though the new officials were briefed about terrorism and some of the earlier planning, including that for Operation Infinite Resolve, they were focused, as Secretary Rumsfeld told us, on creating a twenty-first-century military.
Sent 8: At the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Shelton did not recall much interest by the new administration in military options against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Sent 9: He could not recall any specific guidance on the topic from the secretary.
Sent 10: Brian Sheridan-the outgoing assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict (SOLIC), the key counterterrorism policy office in the Pentagon-never briefed Rumsfeld.
Sent 11: He departed on January 20; he had not been replaced by 9/11.
Sent 12: Rumsfeld noted to us his own interest in terrorism, which came up often in his regular meetings with Tenet.
Sent 13: He thought that the Defense Department, before 9/11, was not organized adequately or prepared to deal with new threats like terrorism.
Sent 14: But his time was consumed with getting new officials in place and working on the foundation documents of a new defense policy, the quadrennial defense review, the defense planning guidance, and the existing contingency plans.
Sent 15: He did not recall any particular counterterrorism issue that engaged his attention before 9/11, other than the development of the Predator unmanned aircraft system.
Sent 16: The commander of Central Command, General Franks, told us that he did not regard the existing plans as serious.
Sent 17: To him a real military plan to address al Qaeda would need to go all the way, following through the details of a full campaign (including the political-military issues of where operations would be based) and securing the rights to fly over neighboring countries.
Sent 18: The draft presidential directive circulated in June 2001 began its discussion of the military by reiterating the Defense Department's lead role in protecting its forces abroad.