“Back in May [8] 2001, [President] Bush had with great fanfare charged [Vice President Dick] Cheney with overseeing a ‘national effort’ to coordinate all federal programs for responding to domestic attacks in league with a new Office of National Preparedness at FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]… The vice president had publicized this assignment from the president at the time, going on CNN to say that ‘one of our biggest threats as a nation’ may include ‘a terrorist organization overseas.’ Cheney vowed ‘to take on the responsibility of overseeing all of that, reviewing the plans that are out there today,’ and Bush himself said he would ‘periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.’ …Months later, after the attacks of 9/11, the new Homeland Security impresario, Tom Ridge, went on the Today show to reassure America that he would ‘continue the work the vice president started back in May of 2001.’ But no such work had been done in the first place by the vice president, and no National Security Council meetings chaired by the president had ever reviewed these nonexistent efforts.”
– Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, Page 51