Reply #7: This how she explained it once before.

[snippy]

This was in an interview on PBS in September 2002, four months after she made the statement.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me close by asking you a couple of questions about the joint inquiry into the pre-9/11 intelligence failures because you just referred to the attack without warning.

You had said back in May, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile."

Now, as you know, the joint inquiry found otherwise; they found there was a lot of historical evidence that, one, terrorists planned and were capable of attacks in the U.S. - and two, that they talked a lot about using airplanes as weapons. Given everything that has come out, do you still believe that the attacks were unpredictable?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Yes, I do still believe that the attacks were unpredictable. Look, the 1998 reports that apparently some intelligence analysts looked at and made an analysis that perhaps al-Qaida wanted to slam planes into buildings were simply not made available to the Bush Administration.

We weren't here in 1998, and I think you have to look at the fact that this was among a host of other intelligence analyses that suggested that car bombs and attacks against nuclear plants, and other means of terrorism were more likely.

But the fact is when I spoke in May about what was presented to the president on August 6, it is absolutely the case that what was presented to the president and what was analyzed for him and what was analyzed throughout the administration was traditional methods of hijacking - in fact that the hijacking might be to try and win release of al-Qaida prisoners or something like that.

There wasn't any mention or analysis of people slamming planes into buildings; it simply wasn't there.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/july-dec02/rice_9-25.html