Nov.

17,2003

My first glance through the Clinton EOF 3 documents this afternoon made it clear we face
several problems here.

First, the documents are a mess. Beyond the disorganization, the story they tell is still
fragmentary. Small Group and other meetings are alluded to but not memorialized. We can
do some inventive stitching, and I hope it'll become clearer in the writing, but we're still
going to have gaps.

Second, the documents raise serious questions about access to information that went directly
to President Clinton. Dylan Kors, one of the White Hbuse kwyers, told me today that many
memoranda to the president were removed since they represented "the heart of the
privilege." But these documents also represent the heart of our inquiry.

These memoranda— some draft, some not— come from both NSC staffers responding to
presidential queries scrawled on PDBs and from both Berger and Clarke. They speak directly
to our mandate, and to the core question of presidential leadership in fighting al-Qa'ida.

Among the documents that our current arrangements have not yet secured access to are
several memoranda rekted to the Oct. 2000 attack on the USS Cole— including one to
President Clinton that specifically mentions response options. These are, by far, the best
documents we've heard of about the Cole; we lack SOCs, options papers, or any other
significant documentation of Clinton administration meetings considering the Cole.

Any account we produce of the Cole will be gravely compromised if we don't get access to
these documents. And frankly, on the basis of the documents we currently have in hand, I'm
not sure there's much intelligent I can write about the Cole. Even good interviews are no
substitute for documents— particularly ones lying tantalizingly close to our grasp.

Moreover, I continue to believe that we cannot tell the 9/11 story properly if we don't have
relevant documents from the national security adviser or vice president to the president.
Surely now is the time to ask for them.

Here's a few unsolicited thoughts about the options we might use to prise these documents
loose, which would include vintage Marcus/Dunne silver-tongued kwyering, the threat of
subpoenas, or actual subpoenas. On these particukr documents, we may have another
creative tactic at hand: getting President Clinton, via Sandy Berger or Bruce Lindsay, to say,
as it were, "Let my records go." All of this may mean a looming fight, but I'm not sure I see
any way to avoid it. Our strategy has gotten us to the banks of the Jordan; now we need to
get into the Promised Land.

Hope that's helpful.

Warren