question: How many years passed between the cruise missile strikes mentioned and the text and the Rice's CIA briefing? answer: 3 years paragraph: On January 25, Tenet briefed the President on the Cole investigation. The written briefing repeated for top officials of the new administration what the CIA had told the Clinton White House in November. This included the "preliminary judgment" that al Qaeda was responsible, with the caveat that no evidence had yet been found that  Bin Laden himself ordered the attack. Tenet told us he had no recollection of a conversation with the President about this briefing. In his January 25 memo, Clarke had advised Rice that the government should respond to the Cole attack, but "should take advantage of the policy that 'we will respond at a time, place and manner of our own choosing' and not be forced into knee-jerk responses." Before Vice President Cheney visited the CIA in mid-February, Clarke sent him a memo-outside the usual White House document-management system-suggesting that he ask CIA officials "What additional information is needed before CIA can definitively conclude that al-Qida was responsible" for the Cole. In March 2001, the CIA's briefing slides for Rice were still describing the CIA's "preliminary judgment" that a "strong circumstantial case" could be made against al Qaeda but noting that the CIA continued to lack "conclusive information on external command and control" of the attack. Clarke and his aides continued to provide Rice and Hadley with evidence reinforcing the case against al Qaeda and urging action. The President explained to us that he had been concerned lest an ineffectual air strike just serve to give  Bin Laden a propaganda advantage. He said he had not been told about Clinton administration warnings to the Taliban. The President told us that he had concluded that the United States must use ground forces for a job like this. Rice told us that there was never a formal, recorded decision not to retaliate specifically for the Cole attack. Exchanges with the President, between the President and Tenet, and between herself and Powell and Rumsfeld had produced a consensus that "tit-for-tat" responses were likely to be counterproductive. This had been the case, she thought, with the cruise missile strikes of August 1998. The new team at the Pentagon did not push for action. On the contrary, Rumsfeld thought that too much time had passed and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, thought that the Cole attack was "stale." Hadley said that in the end, the administration's real response to the Cole would be a new, more aggressive strategy against al Qaeda. The administration decided to propose to Congress a substantial increase in counterterrorism funding for national security agencies, including the CIA and the FBI. 