At a briefing in late November 2001, CIA Director George “Tenet laid out for Vice President [Dick] Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice a stunning trove of new intelligence [on al Qaeda’s attempts to acquire nuclear capabilities]… Cheney, by [journalist Ron] Suskind’s account, had been grappling with how to think about ‘a low-probability, high-impact [nuclear] event.’ By the time the briefing was over, he had his answer: ‘If there’s a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.’ “ [The 25th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]
– Barton Gellman, “The Shadow War, in a Surprising New Light,” The Washington Post, June 20, 2006