From the Post: While defending U.S. actions since Sept. 11 that he said had made terrorist action against the United States more difficult, Rumsfeld cautioned that it is impossible to defend against all terrorists attacks, all the time, everywhere in the world. "We could have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world tomorrow," he said. Questioned about whether the 2001 attacks could have been headed off, Rumsfeld said, "I knew of no intelligence during the six-plus months leading up to September 11th that indicated that terrorists would hijack commercial airliners and use them as missiles" against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. Rumsfeld was challenged on this by commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor, who listed at least eight examples of known terrorist plots between 1994 and 2001 that involved airplane hijackings or using aircraft as weapons. They included a 1995 plot to fly a small plane laden with explosives into CIA headquarters in a suicide bombing and information received in August 2001 about a plan to fly a plane into the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. "Everyone was looking in the wrong direction," Ben-Veniste said. "Why weren't people thinking about protecting the United States," instead of focusing on terrorist threats overseas? "I didn't say we didn't know; I said I didn't know," Rumsfeld said. "I was confessing ignorance." He said the hijacking of civilian aircraft "was a law enforcement matter to be handled by law enforcement and aviation authorities." ...In his testimony, Powell acknowledged that Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary who was key in the move toward war with Saddam Hussein, suggested an attack on Iraq during a meeting at Camp David four days after the Sept. 11 attacks. President Bush "said first things first," Powell said. "He decided on Afghanistan."