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The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, “I want you to find whether Iraq did this.” … I said, “Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking into this. We looked at it with an open mind. Mr. President, there’s no connection.” … He came back at me and said, “Iraq. Saddam. Find out if there’s a connection.” … We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. They all cleared the report, and we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the national security adviser or deputy. It got bounced and was sent back saying, “Wrong answer. Do it again.” … And I don’t think he, the president, sees memos that he wouldn’t like the answer.
— Richard Clarke, White House head of counterterrorism, recounting what happened on September 12, 2001
