Condoleezza Rice on the Moment She Thought President Bush Could Have Been Poisoned, page 1

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Topic started on 1-11-2011 @ 10:03 AM by Veritas1

gma.yahoo.com...
I really don't know what is scarier about this, the fact that the president could have been poisoned and nobody knew at first, or the fact that Cheney would have become president if it were true. This is thing nightmares are made of. In all seriousness though, I don't think anybody knew about this except those that were close to the administration. I wonder about all the things we didn't hear about.

It was just a few weeks after September 11, 2001 when Condoleezza Rice accompanied the president on a trip to China for the APEC summit. In Shanghai Vice President Cheney appeared on a secure video conference line and delivered President George W. Bush this message: “The Vice President came on the screen and said that the White House detectors have detected botulinum toxin, and we were all– those of who exposed were going to die,” Rice told me. He said that? “Yes, he said that. And I remember everybody just sort of freezing, and the President saying, ‘What was that? What was that, Dick?’” Rice, who was the National Security Advisor at the time, said. Botulinum toxin is, according to the Center for Biosecurity, the “most poisonous substance known” and “extremely potent and lethal.”

The exposure time meant that she and those on the trip — Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Chief of Staff Andy Card — were all at risk, Rice told me. “We were just a little unnerved,” she said. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson sent the samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be tested on laboratory mice, she said. Rice writes in her new memoir, “No Higher Honor”, that after that call Bush directed her to “find out what the hell is going on” from her deputy, Steven Hadley. “[Hadley] has this very dry sense of humor. And he said, ‘Let me put it this way. If the mice are feet up, we’re toast. If the mice are feet down, we’re fine,’” Rice told me. “Wait a second. For 24 hours we didn’t know if the President had been poisoned?” I asked. “For 24 hours, we were in Shanghai, we did not know the results of those tests,” she said. Rice writes that they acted “as if nothing had happened,” but she wondered if “we’d get home before the toxin acted.” Around noon the next day Hadley called Rice to give her the results – it was a false alarm. “He said, ‘The mice are feet down.’

I went back to the President, and he was sitting next to the Chinese, and I said ‘The mice are feet down.’ And the President said, ‘That’s a good thing,’ and I’m sure the Chinese who probably got a translation thought it was some sort of code,” Rice told me.

edit on 1-11-2011 by Veritas1 because: (no reason given)

reply posted on 1-11-2011 @ 10:48 AM by Ittabena

reply to post by Veritas1

So we have two threads with identical titles posted on the same morning? You guys need to lighten up on the cut and paste work and do a little creating of your own. As in titles...

edit on 1-11-2011 by Ittabena because: (no reason given)

reply posted on 1-11-2011 @ 12:06 PM by LucidDreamer85

ahh who cares about the title.

It was a good read and thanks OP for posting it.

Shows how powerless people really are.

We really are not as well prepared as we think we are. But we keep telling ourselves we are.

reply posted on 1-11-2011 @ 12:35 PM by Veritas1

reply to post by Ittabena

what are you talking about? I put the title exactly as it says in the original...

but, with all due respect, your titles aren't all that creative either