In the months before Sept. 11, CIA chief George Tenet apparently even urged a call "to battle stations" similar to the efforts that prevented a major attack on Los Angeles International Airport in 1999, CBS said.
But Bush "never thought it was important enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject, or for him to order his national security adviser to hold a Cabinet-level meeting on the subject," Clarke said.
In formulating their reports, Clarke and the FBI and CIA experts kept excluding Iraq from blame. The reports, which had to clear the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice or a deputy, "got bounced and sent back saying, `Wrong answer. ... Do it again,'" Clarke recalled.
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