21.   Police officers and store security aides searched the store in the morning and found nothing amiss, Ms. Taffet said.

22.   President Clinton approved the additional troop deployments, a substantial increase over what had been announced Saturday, after conferring with his top national security aides Sunday.

23.   President Bush met twice with his national security aides to plot military strategy, and even traveled across the Potomac to the Pentagon in the late afternoon.

24.   Returning from a visit to the United States, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called a meeting of his security aides to discuss possible further responses.

25.   The defense attache at the German Embassy, Brig. Gen. Peter Goebel, and an American security aide were also slightly injured.

26.   The reports, supported by other intelligence, were rushed to President Bush and his national security aides on Monday morning.

27.   The president and his national security aides seemed thunderstruck at first by the idea of using military power.

28.   The Senate committee must determine how the breakdown occurred and who overruled national security aides.

29.   The security aide blinked.

30.   There, too, were the national security aides from the Bush administration again, defending their unfinished war and selectively reinterpreting history in the process.