“…March 2001 CIA briefing slides for the national security advisor [Condoleezza Rice] still indicated that the judgment that al Qaeda was responsible [for the October 2000 USS Cole bombing] was ‘preliminary’ and that the CIA lacked ‘conclusive information on external command and control’ responsibility for the attack. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, both believed that the time to respond to the Cole attack had passed; it was, in Wolfowitz’s terms, ‘stale.’ The Cole bombing went unaddressed.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]
– John Farmer, The Ground Truth, Page 83