The Condoleezza Rice meeting
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The Condoleezza Rice meeting was a White House appointment John Kiriakou was travelling to with Cofer Black on the morning of 11 September 2001, and which the attacks pre-empted.

The problem

Kiriakou has said that the White House had ordered the publication and declassification of historical CIA cables covering the years 1947 to 1969. On review, three of those cables were found to have identified sources of the agency who were still alive. 

The purpose of the meeting was to ask Rice, then National Security Advisor, to pull those cables out of the finished product. Kiriakou has said she kept refusing, on grounds of transparency and declassification, and that Black proposed going down there in person to make the pitch. Kiriakou agreed. 

What happened instead

The car was ready and Kiriakou walked to Black's office to collect him. On the television in the outer office the North Tower was already burning, and the second aircraft struck while he stood there.  

The meeting never took place.

Rice in Kiriakou's later account

Kiriakou has been sharply critical of Rice's competence on the Middle East in the same conversation, describing her as the United States government's leading expert on the Soviet Union at a moment when the Soviet Union no longer existed, and as knowing very little about Iraq. He adds that everybody was afraid of Dick Cheney. 

See also

- The second plane
- Condoleezza Rice
- Cofer Black
- "We're at war today"
