T3 B5 White House Restrictions Fdr- 3-3-04 And 3-4-04 Emails From Bass Re Eop Document Requests- Notes And Access 034

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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. EOPs 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

3/3/2004

Page 2 of2 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-g. 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/ii 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

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Mike Hurley From:

Mike Hurley

Sent:

Thursday, March 04, 2004 4:47 PM

To:

Dan Marcus; Chris Kojm; Steve Dunne

Cc:

Mike Hurley

Subject:

FW: NEOB issues

Importance: High

Chris: I briefed both Steve and Dan about Warren's memo. He makes some good points. I wanted to flag them to the three of you for your action/response; and I leave it to you to decide whether the points should be brought to Philip's attention. Mike Original Message From: Warren Bass Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 4:06 PM To: Mike Hurley Cc: Team 3 Subject: NEOB issues Importance: High

Just wanted to pass along a quick update on a few NEOB issues. Mike, please let me know how you'd like to follow up. EOF 5 I've spent much of past two days reviewing the first installment of the EOF 5 Clinton material. The good news is that it's some of the best stuff I've seen during the whole life of the Commission; the bad news is that it's badly overdue and, I very much fear, incomplete. On timing: 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 numerous TNTprepared briefing papers for Small Group meetings) and EOF 3 (such as a slew of ClarkeBerger 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? Wasn't that a pretty obvious step even before we listed the names of people to search in EOF 5? Indeed, except for some McCarthy memos on intel issues, pretty much everything else I've read this week should have been produced by either June 25,2003 (for EOF 2) or Aug. 13, 2003 (for EOF 3).

3/4/2004

Page 2 of3 Moreover, the very fact that the EOF 5 documents are so rich leaves me deeply concerned that we may still be missing other essential documents. Either NARA is being 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 and our deep concern at finding so much EOF 2 and 3 material in it. 2. Contact EOF to underscore our view that every effort ought to be made to ensure that production for EOF 1-5 be complete. 3. Contact Bruce Lindsey to find out what, if anything, NARA is still searching, to find out if he has any sense we're missing anything, and to get his sense of where bottlenecks may be coming from. 4. 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. 5. 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 all notes on the draft NSPD are to be kept in escrow. This is just 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-g. It says nothing about escrowing notes. Moreover, both Rice and Hadley have already discussed the draft with us. It's tough to see this as anything other than silly. We need to get this one lonesome page of notes sent to K Street. 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. Dan placed a call on this, but I'm not sure what, if anything, resulted.

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. If the White House is going to give us a hard time about these notes, I'd rather start the hassle sooner rather than later. 3/4/2004

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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-9/11 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, either before we run out of time or the poor notes die of loneliness... Hope that's helpful. Warren

3/4/2004