At the bush administration's first high-level meeting on terrorism in April 2001, Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism czar, was briefing on al-Qaeda. "Wait a minute," Clarke recalls Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz saying. "Why are we talking about al-Qaeda? We have to talk about Iraqi-sponsored terrorism." Clarke says that Wolfowitz insisted that al-Qaeda was incapable of mounting a major attack without the help of Saddam Hussein. (A spokesman for Wolfowitz told TIME, "The allegation that [Wolfowitz] dismissed the threat from al-Qaeda is false," and a senior Administration official present at the meeting insisted that "Wolfowitz couldn't possibly have said it, because...
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