Doug,

President George Bush’s first day in office was January 25th, with delays in confirming persons to head the various branches of Government involved including DoD and State, there was no working group of Principles to even look at the stuff until late February.

The memo while dated January 25th lacks actionable detail, but has proposals for meeting a threat and indicates two policies left for the incoming president to determine. At the time Saddam was shooting at our pilots in the no fly zone. And CIA had, as we now know, little to no contact with the Northern Alliance or Southern Afghanistan tribes. Even if they had relations with the NA, it would have taken the CIA and analyst-ists months to determine what policy they wanted the Bush administration to follow. As was the case post 9/11, so much more so was the case prior to 9/11.

I imagine the two policy papers, one from 1998 and the other from December of 2000, both no doubt had the hall mark of President Clinton style, and would have to be revised, and revisited before putting any policy forward.