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Mike Hurley

From: Warren Bass

Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 7:09 PM
To: Mike Hurley
Subject: Request permission to send to FO
Importance: High

March 3, 2004

Just wanted to pass along a quick update on a few NEOB issues.

EOF 5
I've just spent much of the day reviewing the first installment of the EOF 5 Clinton material.
The good news is that it's very high-impact stuff; the bad news is that it's badly overdue. EOF 5
was due more than three months ago—and we still don't have the second part of it, which is
sitting around somewhere in EOF rather than being processed and moved over to the SCIF.

Moreover, the EOF 5 material includes many documents that were explicitly covered by EOF 2
(such as the SOC for an Aug. 7,1998 PC on the East Africa bombings) and EOF 3 (such as a
slew of Clarke-Berger memos). There's also far more handwritten notes from Berger in this
installment than in any other batch of documents we've gotten. Did they only get around to
searching Berger's files now?

Either NARA is too casual about this task, or something's going wrong in the lash-up between
NARA and EOF, or something's gone awry on the White House side. We just don't have the
running room for further delays.

I'd recommend the following steps; please let me know if there's anything you'd like me to do.

1. We need to insist that the entire remainder of EOF 5 be produced, at the absolute latest,
by OOB Monday, March 8. (I'll be lucky to get through the current stack this week.) We
should also forcefully convey our view that EOF 5 production has been unacceptably
slow.
2. Contact Bruce Lindsey to find out what, if anything, NARA is still searching and to get his
sense of where the bottleneck is coming from.
3. Contact NARA directly and ask them to ensure that they've done all their due diligence to
meet our document requests (have searched all the involved staffers' files, etc.) and to
confirm that they've got enough staff on this urgent task. Dan should also convey the
extent of our concern.
4. Give Al press guidance to say—either in response to questions or on his own—that we
have reluctantly concluded that production of NSC documents is unacceptably slow and
have contacted both the White House and NARA about this.

Draft NSPD on al Qaeda

On another front, EOF is continuing to escrow my one-page summary of the first version of the
draft NSPD on al Qaeda. Karen Marmaud has checked, and EOF lawyers are maintaining that

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all notes on the draft NSPD are to be kept in escrow. This is ridiculous and unworkable; to
write anything responsibly about the NSPD, let alone prepare for the March hearings, we need
to have some kind of notes.

The cover sheet on the draft versions stipulates that the Commission may take notes on the
draft but may not publicly disclose that the draft was made available to us—the same rules that
apply to the PDDs and the final NSPD-9. It says nothing about escrowing notes.

By holding onto still more of our notes, the White House is moving the goal posts. We need to
push sharply back and get this one lousy page of notes sent to K Street. This is just silly. If
they'd like a showing of need, let's say we need it to write the monograph—which has the
overwhelming virtue of being true.

Special Access Documents

Third, let me urge again that we make a "particularized showing of need" for notes taken on the
Bush "special access documents." They're an important part of the record, and we should have
them around to prepare commissioners in the run-up to the March hearings. Moreover, I need
them to write my monograph sections.
The Coll Attack
I also hope we can file a document request with the White House, CIA, and State (not with
Coll) for transcripts of any interviews done by federal officials with Steve Coll for Ghost Wars.

The Mournful Fifth

Finally, lest they be forgotten, about 20 percent of my notes on the pre-9/n Bush period have
been sitting over at NEOB since October 2003 because they allegedly effectively recreate
documents—at least in the eyes of Dylan Cors or some other equally eminent historian. At
some point, we're going to have to resolve this, before we run out of time or the poor notes die
of loneliness...

Hope that's helpful.

Warren

3/3/2004