During a July 10, 2001, meeting of CIA Director George Tenet and Counterterrorism Chief Cofer Black with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, “Black calculated that if they [the Bush Administration] had given him $500 million of covert action funds right then and reasonable authorizations from the president to go kill bin Laden, he would have been able to make great strides if not do away with him.” The meeting “stood out in the minds of both Tenet and Black as the starkest warning they had given the White House on bin Laden and al Qaeda.”
– Bob Woodward, State of Denial, Pages 51-52