U.S. Department of State [...]
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING
Richard Boucher, Spokesman
Washington, DCSeptember 24, 2001
QUESTION: Can you elaborate on the Secretary's words of yesterday about this white paper, or whatever you want to call it, that might be sent to countries to justify…
MR. BOUCHER: I am not going to -- I don't think there is much to elaborate at this point. First of all, the Secretary didn't use the phrase "white paper." He talked about a paper or a document in the near future. Dr. Rice yesterday talked about laying out the evidence to friends, allies, the American people and others. She talked about making the case and those sorts of things. So we do intend to put out information.
I think the Secretary and the President both discussed this again this morning and said that, first of all, we have an abundance of evidence from law enforcement and intelligence that indicates very clearly to us who did this. Second of all, we always remember that Usama bin Laden and his organization, al-Qaida, have already been indicted for various crimes before, especially the bombings of our embassies in East Africa. So there is no question that they are responsible for those actions in our mind.
And third, we have a lot of intelligence and law enforcement cooperation with foreign governments, so I think the case is becoming better known internationally to other governments. We do want to make available information to the publics and to other foreign governments, and that is what the Secretary and the President talked about this morning, making that information available as we can, when we can. But people should not conclude from what Dr. Rice or the Secretary said yesterday, or he and the President said today, that we're on the verge of some imminent release of a so-called "white paper."
QUESTION: Can you give us some sort of a timeline on when you think this information might be released?
MR. BOUCHER: I can't give you a real timeline at this point. I think the Secretary sort of said this morning that as we find information that is unclassified, we'll try to make it available. There's no particular fixed date or target at this point for doing that in a big show or anything.
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