On January 25, 2001, counterterrorism czar “Richard Clarke wrote National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that a cabinet-level review of al-Qaeda policy was ‘urgently’ needed. Attached to the memo was a [13-page paper] paper titled ‘Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al Qida.’ In the memo Clarke suggested arming Predator drones with Hellfire missiles to take out the group’s leaders, giving ‘massive’ support to [Ahmed Shah] Massoud’s Northern Alliance, destroying terrorist training camps and Taliban command-and-control facilities using U.S. Special Forces, and expanding a deal with Afghanistan’s northern neighbor, Uzbekistan, to allow U.S. assets like the Predator drones to be based there. But Rice seemed content to let her deputy Stephen Hadley move ahead at a businesslike but not urgent pace with an al-Qaeda policy review and otherwise do nothing. (The strategy that Clarke had outlined in the memo to Rice was essentially the same one that President Bush finally adopted after 9/11.)”
– Peter Bergen, The Longest War, Page 42