9/11 Testimony of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice Viewers' Guide - Center for American Progress Clarke says that he sent a memo to Rice on Jan. 25, 2001, seeking a Cabinet-level meeting on terrorism, and attached plans developed in the Clinton administration to eliminate al-Qaida. Out of the hundred or so meetings of the principals or cabinet level officials in the Bush administration, only one was about terrorism. Instead, the White House said it would have Vice President Dick Cheney head up a task force to analyze the threat himself. The administration waited five months to create the task force, which then never met.