June 28, 2002  |  WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times
in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions, officials say.

The White House acknowledged the dearth of top-level meetings devoted to the subject of terrorism by the "principals committee" of the National Security Council. Yet it has aggressively defended the level of attention, given only scattered
hints of al-Qaida activity.

One current security council official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that intensive planning of anti-terrorism
strategies was largely the role of midlevel committees at the NSC -- not the Cabinet-level players.

"The president was being briefed. The principals were being briefed, perhaps not together," this official said.

The description of the 90 to 100 meetings was confirmed by three White House officials.

Critics said the low number of terrorism meetings by the most senior members of the security council indicated the administration's priorities were elsewhere.

"What were the principals doing to bring this to the attention of the president?" asked P.J. Crowley, council spokesman
for the Clinton administration. "Given our growing understanding of this threat that we built in '90s about the emerging
threat of terrorism, they just didn't seem to get it."

Clinton officials said their council principals met every two to three weeks to discuss terrorist threats after mid-1998.
Those meetings increased during times of heightened terrorist concerns, such as immediately prior to the millennium celebrations, when the principals met nearly every day to discuss threat levels.

Bush's principals committee was focused on missile defense, Iraq, China, international economic policy, global warming
and the U.S. stance toward Russia, a subject of particular interest to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice,
a Russian expert who has now worked for both Bush presidents.

In addition to Rice, the principals usually included CIA Director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

One discussion on terrorism occurred July 3, amid escalating concerns about a likely attack by al-Qaida, one official said.
But experts believed al-Qaida would attack American targets overseas, not inside the United States.

The other terrorism meeting occurred Sept. 4 as the security council put finishing touches on a proposed national
security policy review for the president.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has described the council's review as a "comprehensive, multi-front plan to dismantle the al-Qaida." It included instructions for the Pentagon to develop military strikes, plans to work closely with Afghanistan's Northern Alliance against al-Qaida and proposals to freeze bank accounts linked to Osama bin Laden's group.

That review was finished Sept. 10 and was awaiting Bush's approval when the first plane struck the World Trade Center.

Bush himself said in February 2001 that the nation hadn't done enough to prepare for possible terrorist attacks,
and he pledged: "I will put a high priority on detecting and responding to terrorism on our soil."

A few weeks earlier, Tenet had told Congress, "The threat from terrorism is real, it is immediate, and it is evolving."
He described bin Laden and his global network as a serious and immediate threat.

In the last months of the Clinton administration, as early as November 2000, the security council had determined that
al-Qaida was responsible for the Oct. 12 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors. Bush first
linked al-Qaida to the Cole bombing publicly in his speech to Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"This was a failure in the Bush administration to recognize the nature of terrorism and its impact on the United States,"
said Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis. "Everybody felt that it was
a chronic phenomenon, it would continue and the best we could hope was to contain it."

One official argued that the lack of regular meetings devoted to terrorism among Bush's upper-echelon advisers did
not mean inadequate attention was paid to the subject. More work was done by lower-level council staffers, who
regularly briefed the principals individually, even if the principals didn't meet frequently on the issue, this official said.

Crowley, who worked under Clinton, argued that senior-level meetings are necessary for important work to be done.

"You really get the pull of the best information that each agency has when you bring together the principals with the
purpose of making decisions and teeing up recommendations to the president," Crowley said. "It's the only way
that you overcome those bureaucratic barriers."

Rice has described the work of the council's Counterterrorism Security Group, directed by Special Assistant Richard
Clarke, which met several times each week during July and August. By Aug. 6, Bush received a briefing report with
the heading, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike the United States." The report discussed the possibility of traditional
airline hijackings.

"To say that the principals never talked about it before Sept. 4 is wrong," another official said. "There were lots of conversations on the margins at meetings or informal meetings. But the first formal meeting was to review the draft policy."