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ing director during the summer. Freeh's successor, Robert Mueller, took office
just before 9/11.
232
The Justice Department prepared a draft fiscal year 2003 budget that main-
tained but did not increase the funding level for counterterrorism in its pend-
ing fiscal year 2002 proposal. Pickard appealed for more counterterrorism
enhancements, an appeal the attorney general denied on September 10.
233
Ashcroft had also inherited an ongoing debate on whether and how to
modify the 1995 procedures governing intelligence sharing between the FBI
and the Justice Department's Criminal Division. But in August 2001,Ashcroft's
deputy, Larry Thompson, issued a memorandum reaffirming the 1995 proce-
dures with the clarification that evidence of "any federal felony" was to be
immediately reported by the FBI to the Criminal Division.The 1995 proce-
dures remained in effect until after 9/11.
234
Covert Action and the Predator
In March 2001, Rice asked the CIA to prepare a new series of authorities
for covert action in Afghanistan. Rice's recollection was that the idea had
come from Clarke and the NSC senior director for intelligence, Mary
McCarthy, and had been linked to the proposal for aid to the Northern
Alliance and the Uzbeks. Rice described the draft document as providing
for "consolidation plus," superseding the various Clinton administration
documents. In fact, the CIA drafted two documents. One was a finding that
did concern aid to opponents of the Taliban regime; the other was a draft
Memorandum of Notification, which included more open-ended language
authorizing possible lethal action in a variety of situations. Tenet delivered
both to Hadley on March 28. The CIA's notes for Tenet advised him that
"in response to the NSC request for drafts that will help the policymakers
review their options, each of the documents has been crafted to provide the
Agency with the broadest possible discretion permissible under the law." At
the meeting, Tenet argued for deciding on a policy before deciding on the
legal authorities to implement it. Hadley accepted this argument, and the
draft MON was put on hold.
235
As the policy review moved forward, the planned covert action program
for Afghanistan was included in the draft presidential directive, as part of an
"Annex A" on intelligence activities to "eliminate the al Qaeda threat."
236
The main debate during the summer of 2001 concentrated on the one new
mechanism for a lethal attack on Bin Ladin--an armed version of the Preda-
tor drone.
In the first months of the new administration, questions concerning the
Predator became more and more a central focus of dispute. Clarke favored
resuming Predator flights over Afghanistan as soon as weather permitted, hop-
ing that they still might provide the elusive "actionable intelligence" to target
Bin Ladin with cruise missiles. Learning that the Air Force was thinking of
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