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Dan Marcus

From: Philip Zelikow

Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 6:21 PM
To: 'Gorelick, Jamie'; Commissioners; Chris Kojm; Dan Marcus; Steve Dunne
Subject: Reply to Jamie's Message re Cole Intelligence

Jamie, and Commissioners -

You are right that we should be careful in how we discuss the issue of what analysts were told about analyzing
the Cole.

The current draft (pp. 17-18) says that analysts received instructions not to publish (within the government)
analyses discussing the issue of responsibility for the attack.

That testimony appears to be supported by known facts. Though we did not include this information in our draft
chapter, intelligence briefs for senior decisionmakers analyzed the issue of responsibility for the Cole on October
13, October 20, and October 23. The next such published analysis was distributed on January 25, 2001. To the
best of our knowledge, the CIA did not prepare a disseminated internal analysis of Cole responsibility of any kind
in the three months between October 23 and January 25. (We long ago did a document request on this. I
checked today with Team One to confirm this statement.)

The presentations we quote in our draft on November 10 and December 21 are from slides prepared for personal
briefings to the Small Group, not from analyses that were disseminated within the government.

As you know, Sandy was very worried about the numbers of people who see even highly classified and
compartmented documents. He detailed these concerns in his interview as a reason why he favored the
extremely compartmented decisionmaking structure used in August 1998, and why he favored the 'Small Group'
process, circulating few - sometimes no - documents, including no circulated summaries of conclusions from
these meetings. (I believe we were also told, by different people, about the effort to carefully limit dissemination
of reports discussing responsibility for Khobar Towers, perhaps one reason why a special codeword compartment
was created years earlier for handling such material.)

The analysts did not say, and we do not assert, that they were instructed to use the "preliminary judgment"
qualifier. From the evidence we have so far, that appears to have been their choice.

We undertook to address the concerns about the presentation of this material by reworking the section, to explain
more clearly what was going on, discuss White House receptivity to receiving informal updates and assessments
of culpability, and put the draft chapter's paragraphs into a more appropriate context.

If you believe it would be helpful to conduct further interviews of Sandy or Dick Clarke, we can do so. We could
then array the competing accounts in a more fulsome way. But this might then look like a battle of warring
assertions and credibility - CIA analysts vs the White House officials. Given the description above, I'm not sure
that would be clarifying or constructive, and it might distract the reader from the basic narrative.

In other words, the analogy to our treatment of the truly direct clash of testimony we had over covert action
authorities may not be a good one. Perhaps this is a problem that might be better solved instead by rearranging
the material we already have.

Philip

—Original Message
From: Gorelick, Jamie [mailto:Jamie.Gorelick@wilmerhale.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 2:19 PM
To: Commissioners; Philip Zelikow; Chris Kojm; Dan Marcus; Steve Dunne
Subject: Cole Intelligence

6/18/2004
 Page 2 of2

I feel strongly that the allegation that the relevant folks at the CIA assessing responsibility for the Cole
were told not say they had reached any more than "preliminary" conclusions is a fairly incendiary one. It
is also something that we have not previously surfaced in staff statements or otherwise, because it is new
to us, so we don't know if there are more facts out there. Nor have we confronted witnesses/players up
the line with this information.

Since we have Berger and Clarke saying that they were awaiting a more definitive statement, I think we
need to ask those above the person/persons who gave us this info what they recall to see if we can locate
where this decision came from. This is somewhat similar to our discussion of the proposed covert action
that line folks at the CIA thought they could do and couldn't understand why those above them - the
implication being the White House -- had said no; but the staff's investigation reflected that Pavitt and
then Tenet had advised against it. We need to run this to ground, in my view.

Jamie

Jamie S. Gorelick
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP
2445 M Street NW
Washington, DC 20037 USA
+1 202 663 6500
+1 202 663 6363 fax
jamie.gorelick@wilmerhale.com

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6/18/2004