The Truth about Bill Clinton and Terrorism (FR Compilation Thread)

Please use this thread to add DOCUMENTED and SOURCED links and/or article concerning FACTS regarding Bill Clinton's legacy on terrorism.

I figured we might as well have a thread to GATHER up all these links and stories we're posting on all these ABC threads!

Here's an interesting one found by Txsleuth listening to BOR radio show this morning.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1695809/posts?page=385#385

Complete Richard Miniter interview:

September 11, 2003, 11:45 a.m.
Clinton’s Loss?
How the previous administration fumbled on bin Laden.

A Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez

ichard Miniter is a Brussels-based investigative journalist. His new book, Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror has just been released by Regnery. He spoke to NRO early today about the run-up to the war on terror.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What did the Clinton administration know about Osama bin Laden and when did they know it?

Richard Miniter: One of the big myths about the Clinton years is that no one knew about bin Laden until Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, the bin Laden threat was recognized at the highest levels of the Clinton administration as early as 1993. What's more, bin Laden's attacks kept escalating throughout the Clinton administration; all told bin Laden was responsible for the deaths of 59 Americans on Clinton's watch.

President Clinton learned about bin Laden within months of being sworn into office. National Security Advisor Anthony Lake told me that he first heard the name Osama bin Laden in 1993 in relation to the World Trade Center attack. Lake briefed the president about bin Laden that same year.

In addition, starting in 1993, Rep. Bill McCollum (R., Fla.) repeatedly wrote to President Clinton and warned him and other administration officials about bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists. McCollum was the founder and chairman of the House Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare and had developed a wealth of contacts among the mujihedeen in Afghanistan. Those sources, who regularly visited McCollum, informed him about bin Laden's training camps and evil ambitions.

Indeed, it is possible that Clinton and his national-security team learned of bin Laden even before the 1993 World Trade Center attack. My interviews and investigation revealed that bin Laden made his first attack on Americans was December 1992, a little more than a month after Clinton won the 1992 election. His target was 100 U.S. Marines housed in two towering Yemen hotels. Within hours, the CIA's counterterrorism center learned that the Yemen suspected a man named Osama bin Laden. (One of the arrested bombing suspects later escaped and was detained in a police sweep after al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in 2000.) Lake says he doesn't remember briefing the president-elect about the attempted attack, but that he well might have.

So it is safe to conclude that Clinton knew about the threat posed by bin Laden since 1993, his first year in office.

Lopez: What exactly was U.S. reaction to the attack on the USS Cole?

Miniter: In October 2000, al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed in the blast. The USS Cole was almost sunk. In any ordinary administration, this would have been considered an act of war. After all, America entered the Spanish-American war and World War I when our ships were attacked.

Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke had ordered his staff to review existing intelligence in relation to the bombing of the USS Cole. After that review, he and Michael Sheehan, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, were convinced it was the work of Osama bin Laden. The Pentagon had on-the-shelf, regularly updated and detailed strike plans for bin Laden's training camps and strongholds in Afghanistan.

At a meeting with Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Attorney General Janet Reno, and other staffers, Clarke was the only one in favor of retaliation against bin Laden. Reno thought retaliation might violate international law and was therefore against it. Tenet wanted to more definitive proof that bin Laden was behind the attack, although he personally thought he was. Albright was concerned about the reaction of world opinion to a retaliation against Muslims, and the impact it would have in the final days of the Clinton Middle East peace process. Cohen, according to Clarke, did not consider the Cole attack "sufficient provocation" for a military retaliation. Michael Sheehan was particularly surprised that the Pentagon did not want to act. He told Clarke: "What's it going to take to get them to hit al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?"

Instead of destroying bin Laden's terrorist infrastructure and capabilities, President Clinton phoned twice phoned the president of Yemen demanding better cooperation between the FBI and the Yemeni security services. If Clarke's plan had been implemented, al Qaeda's infrastructure would have been demolished and bin Laden might well have been killed. Sept. 11, 2001 might have been just another sunny day.

Lopez: When the World Trade Center was first bombed in '93, why was it treated at first as a criminal investigation?

Miniter: The Clinton administration was in the dark about the full extent of the bin Laden menace because the president's decision to treat the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a crime. Once the FBI began a criminal investigation, it could not lawfully share its information with the CIA — without also having to share the same data with the accused terrorists. Woolsey told me about his frustration that he had less access to evidence from the World Trade Center bombing — the then-largest ever foreign terrorist attack on U.S soil — than any junior agent in the FBI's New York office.

Why did Clinton treat the attack as a law-enforcement matter? Several reasons. In the first few days, Clinton refused to believe that the towers had been bombed at all — even though the FBI made that determination within hours. He speculated a electrical transformer had exploded or a bank heist went bad.

More importantly, treating the bombing as a criminal matter was politically advantageous. A criminal matter is a relatively tidy process. It has the political benefit of insulating Clinton from consequences; after all, he was only following the law. He is not to blame if the terrorists were released on a "technicality" or if foreign nations refuse to honor our extradition requests. Oh well, he tried.

By contrast, if Clinton treated the bombing as the act of terrorism that it was, he would be assuming personal responsibility for a series of politically risky moves. Should he deploy the CIA or special forces to hunt down the perpetrators? What happens if the agents or soldiers die? What if they try to capture the terrorists and fail? One misstep and the media, Congress, and even the public might blame the president. So Clinton took the easy, safe way out, and called it a crime.

Lopez: Bill Clinton was actually offered bin Laden? Could you set the scene a little and clue us in on why, for heavens sakes, he would not take advantage of such opportunities?

Miniter: On March 3, 1996, U.S. ambassador to Sudan, Tim Carney, Director of East African Affairs at the State Department, David Shinn, and a member of the CIA's directorate of operations' Africa division met with Sudan's then-Minister of State for Defense Elfatih Erwa in a Rosslyn, Virginia hotel room. Item number two on the CIA's list of demands was to provide information about Osama bin Laden. Five days later, Erwa met with the CIA officer and offered more than information. He offered to arrest and turn over bin Laden himself. Two years earlier, the Sudan had turned over the infamous terrorist, Carlos the Jackal to the French. He now sits in a French prison. Sudan wanted to repeat that scenario with bin Laden in the starring role.

Clinton administration officials have offered various explanations for not taking the Sudanese offer. One argument is that an offer was never made. But the same officials are on the record as saying the offer was "not serious." Even a supposedly non-serious offer is an offer. Another argument is that the Sudanese had not come through on a prior request so this offer could not be trusted. But, as Ambassador Tim Carney had argued at the time, even if you believe that, why not call their bluff and ask for bin Laden?

The Clinton administration simply did not want the responsibility of taking Osama bin Laden into custody. Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger is on the record as saying: "The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States." Even if that was true — and it wasn't — the U.S. could have turned bin Laden over to Yemen or Libya, both of which had valid warrants for his arrest stemming from terrorist activities in those countries. Given the legal systems of those two countries, Osama would have soon ceased to be a threat to anyone.

After months of debating how to respond to the Sudanese offer, the Clinton administration simply asked Sudan to deport him. Where to? Ambassador Carney told me what he told the Sudanese: "Anywhere but Somalia."

In May 1996 bin Laden was welcomed into Afghanistan by the Taliban. It could not have been a better haven for Osama bin Laden.

Steven Simon, Clinton's counterterrorism director on the National Security Council thought that kicking bin Laden out of Sudan would benefit U.S. security since "It's going to take him a while to reconstitute, and that screws him up and buys time." Buys time? Oh yeah, 1996 was an election year and team Clinton did not want to deal with bin Laden until after it was safely reelected.

Lopez: This amazes me every time I hear it: You write, "When a small plane accidentally crashed into the White House lawn in 1994, West Wing staffers joked that it was [Jim] Woolsey trying to see the president..." How could the CIA director have that bad a relationship with his president? And this, after the first WTC attack. Did no one in the West Wing get it?

Miniter: Never once in his two-year tenure did CIA director James Woolsey ever have a one-on-one meeting with Clinton. Even semiprivate meetings were rare. They only happened twice. Woolsey told me: "It wasn't that I had a bad relationship with the president. It just didn't exist."

One of the little scoops in the book is the revelation that Clinton froze Woolsey out because the CIA director refused to put a friend of Bill on the agency's payroll. This account was confirmed by both Woolsey and the Clinton's consigliore Bruce Lindsey.

Considering the Justice Department's experience with Webster Hubbell, another Friend of Bill, Woolsey's decision may have done the CIA a great deal of good. But Clinton's pique did not make America any safer from bin Laden.

Another Clinton intelligence failure involved a refusal to help the CIA hire more Arabic language translators. In 1993, Woolsey learned that the agency was able to translate only 10 percent of its Arabic intercepts and badly wanted more translators. But Sen. Dennis DeConcini refused to approve the funds unless Clinton phoned him and said it was a presidential priority. Despite entreaties, Clinton never phoned the Democratic senator and the CIA didn't get those translators for years.

Lopez: In sum, how many times did Bill Clinton lose bin Laden?

Miniter: Here's a rundown. The Clinton administration:

1. Did not follow-up on the attempted bombing of Aden marines in Yemen.

2. Shut the CIA out of the 1993 WTC bombing investigation, hamstringing their effort to capture bin Laden.

3. Had Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key bin Laden lieutenant, slip through their fingers in Qatar.

4. Did not militarily react to the al Qaeda bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

5. Did not accept the Sudanese offer to turn bin Laden.

6. Did not follow-up on another offer from Sudan through a private back channel.

7. Objected to Northern Alliance efforts to assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.

8. Decided against using special forces to take down bin Laden in Afghanistan.

9. Did not take an opportunity to take into custody two al Qaeda operatives involved in the East African embassy bombings. In another little scoop, I am able to show that Sudan arrested these two terrorists and offered them to the FBI. The Clinton administration declined to pick them up and they were later allowed to return to Pakistan.

10. Ordered an ineffectual, token missile strike against a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory.

11. Clumsily tipped off Pakistani officials sympathetic to bin Laden before a planned missile strike against bin Laden on August 20, 1998. Bin Laden left the camp with only minutes to spare.

12-14. Three times, Clinton hesitated or deferred in ordering missile strikes against bin Laden in 1999 and 2000.

15. When they finally launched and armed the Predator spy drone plane, which captured amazing live video images of bin Laden, the Clinton administration no longer had military assets in place to strike the archterrorist.

16. Did not order a retaliatory strike on bin Laden for the murderous attack on the USS Cole.

Lopez: You sorta defend Clinton against "wag the dog" criticisms in regard to that infamous August 1998 (Monica times) bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan and some bin Laden strongholds in Afghanistan. That wasn't the problem, was it — that we fired then?

Miniter: Certainly the timing is suspicious. The day before the East African-embassy bombings, Monica Lewinsky had recanted her prior affidavit denying a sexual relationship with Clinton. The sex scandals kicked into overdrive.

Still, the president wasn't doing too much in combating bin Laden because of his sex scandals — he was doing too little. He should have launched more missile strikes against bin Laden and the hell with the political timing. Besides, after the East African-embassy bombings, any president would have been negligent not to strike back. If he had not, it would be open season on Americans. He would have been as ineffectual as Carter was during the Tehran hostage crisis. Indeed, this was the mistake made following the attack on the USS Cole.

But Clinton was distracted by sex and campaign-finance scandals and his political support was already heavily leveraged to get him through those scandals. If he fought bin Laden more vigorously, the leftwing of the Democratic party might have deserted him — which could have cost him the White House.

Instead Clinton's token, ineffectual missile strikes that only emboldened bin Laden. He believed that America was too intimidated to fight back — and was free to plan one of the most-murderous terrorist attacks in history.

Lopez: How did George Tenet perform during the Clinton years vis-à-vis al Qaeda/bin Laden?

Miniter: Tenet seemed to take a too legalistic view of CIA operations. He was risk-averse, wanting almost absolute certainty before recommending action, focused on safeguards against error and unintended consequences. Tenet seemed more concerned with not getting in trouble rather than relentlessly pursuing results to safeguard Americans against terrorism, the focus of a warrior.

Each time U.S. intelligence pinpointed bin Laden, Tenet was against a missile strike on the grounds that the information was "single threaded" — a pet phrase of the director which means single source. The predator was armed and fitted with video cameras mostly to overcome Tenet's objections to taking out bin Laden.

Lopez: Madeline Albright — frequently called upon expert nowadays — what's her record vis-à-vis al Qaeda?

Miniter: Albright always insisted that diplomatic efforts would best yield results on bin Laden. Even after the Cole bombing, Albright urged continued diplomatic efforts with the Taliban to turn him over, even though that effort had been going on for two years with no progress. Two simple facts should have made Albright aware that the Taliban would never turn over bin Laden: Osama had married off one of his sons to Mullah Omar's daughter. The Taliban weren't about to surrender a member of the family — especially one that commanded thousands of armed fighters who helped maintain Omar's grip on power.

Lopez: What exactly is the Iraq-al Qaeda connection?

Miniter: Osama bin Laden's wealth is overestimated. He had been financially drained during his years in Sudan and financing terrorist operations in dozens of countries, including training camps, bribes, etc., requires a large, constant cash flow. Saddam Hussein was unquestionably a generous financier of terrorism. Baghdad had a long history of funding terrorist campaigns in the bin Laden-allied region that straddles Iran and Pakistan known as Beluchistan. Documents found in Baghdad in April 2003 showed that Saddam funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden since the 1990s. Saddam openly funded the Iraqi Kurdish Group and its leader, Melan Krekar, admitted that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan. George Tenet testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iraq had provided training in forging documents and making bombs. Farouk Harazi, a senior officer in the Iraqi Mukhabarat reportedly offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq. Salah Suleiman, an Iraqi intelligence operative, was arrested in October 2000 near the Afghan border, apparently returning from a visit to bin Laden. One of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, Abdul Rahman Yasin, reportedly fled to Baghdad in 1994. Iraq ran an extensive intelligence hub in Khartoum; Sudanese intelligence officers told me about dozens of meeting between Iraqi Intel and bin Laden. Tellingly, reports that Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague several times in 2000 and 2001 have not been disproved. I have far more on this in Appendix A of Losing bin Laden.

Lopez: What most surprised you to learn about the Clinton years and terrorism?

Miniter: Three things:

1) That the Sept. 11 attacks were planned in May 1998 in the Khalden Camp in southeastern Afghanistan, according to American and British intelligence officers I interviewed. In other words, the 9/11 attacks were planned on Clinton's watch.

2) The sheer number of bin Laden's attacks on Americans during the Clinton years.

3) And how much senior Clinton-administration officials knew about bin Laden and how little they did about it.

Lopez: This sounds like this could all be right-wing propaganda. How can you convince readers otherwise?

Miniter: Most of my best sources were senior Clinton officials, including both of his national-security advisers, his first CIA director, Clinton's counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, Madeline Albright, and others. Plus, I interviewed scores of career federal officials. None of them are card-carrying members of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

And, while I shine the light on Clinton's shortcomings in dealing with bin Laden, I also give credit where it is due. Chapter nine is all about one of the greatest (and least-known) Clinton victories over bin Laden — the successful thwarting of a series of plots to murder thousands of Americans on Millennium night, 1999.

If anyone has any doubts about the credibility of this book, they should read the acknowledgements, which list many of my sources. Or peruse the more than 15,000 words of footnotes, that allow the reader to see exactly where information is coming from. Or examine the intelligence documents reproduced in Appendix B. Or pick a page at random and read it. Any fair-minded reader will see a carefully constructed and balanced account that attempts to lay out the history of Clinton and bin Laden.

Thanks.

Keep 'em coming!

Great post; saved.

http://www.webcommentary.com/asp/ShowArticle.asp?id=jordans&date=040721

Berger’s Bonfire

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Berger’s record of inattention and malfeasance--and, yes, "sloppiness"--is unshreddable.
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"[Lindsey's] nicknames have run the gamut from "the Enforcer" to "the Consigliere," the Sicilian word for a trusted counsel to a Mafia chieftain." --Time Magazine, March 23 1998 [1]

The astonishing admission of Samuel “Sandy” Berger, Bill Clinton’s longtime National Security Advisor, that he stuffed “code-word”-class secret documents into his pants, sneaked them out of a secure review room at the National Archives and “inadvertently” destroyed them is highly disquieting to those familiar with Berger’s background and activities in the Clinton Administration.

In particular, the Washington Post reports [2] that Berger purloined all draft revisions of a key critique of the government's response to the millennium terrorism threat, a document that detailed Administration knowledge – and inaction – regarding al Qaeda presence in the U.S. in 1999 and 2000. Stolen were crucial notes in the margins of these drafts which reveal the thinking and agendas of the Clinton Administration relating to the mounting terrorist threat.

Cui bono? And when the losses were discovered, why did the Archives staff notify Bruce Lindsey? Lindsey, whom Time Magazine called Clinton’s consigliere, is the brilliant legal tactician both Clintons can thank for their continued freedom.

Berger has an impressive resume, but not one that obviously qualified him as NSA. He entered White House service a millionaire lawyer and lobbyist with a career centered on expanding trade with China [3]. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh opined that “he was a public-relations hack, interested in how something would play in the press” [4]. Indeed, Clinton’s brilliant poll-meister, Dick Morris, noted Berger “seemed to work overtime at opposing tough measures against terror” [5], advising vetoes of legislation aimed at crippling Iranian terror funding and working to block antiterror sanctions. It was Berger who repeatedly rebuffed Sudanese offers to hand Osama bin Laden to the United States in a deal brokered by a $900,000 contributor to Democrat campaigns [6,7]. It was Berger who allowed bin Laden and his top lieutenants to escape to Afghanistan [8]. It was Berger whose calls Bill Clinton ducked in 1998 when bin Laden was briefly vulnerable to missile attack [9]. It was Berger who was singled-out by former UN Inspector Scott Ritter for the collapse of UN inspections efforts in Iraq [10]. It was Berger who helped broker the farcical antinuclear treaty with North Korea. It was Berger who ultimately admitted that the Clinton Administration had failed to develop a war plan to fight al Qaeda [11].

At the same time, it was Berger who was the go-to man in the Administration on matters regarding China policy in the years when Communist Chinese money was being funneled into Democrat Party coffers in exchange for policy concessions and strategic nuclear technology. It was Berger whom DNC Chairman Don Fowler approached for favors for George Chao-chi Chu, a Chinagate-linked John Huang crony described as having "unusual access to high-ranking Communist officials in China" who, like the just-exited chief-foreign-policy-advisor Berger, has current ties to John Kerry [12]. And it was Berger who the Energy Department approached with warnings of Chinese spying in Los Alamos, and who stonewalled the matter for three years [13].

The list goes on and on [14]: Berger was not just the malfeasant, poll-driven, cowardly hack at the helm of our national security apparatus who enabled the global metastasis of bloodthirsty jihad; he was not just one of the key people who roadblocked cooperation between law enforcement and foreign intelligence, stacking “Gorelick’s Wall” ever higher. In fact, as bagman for the Communist Chinese, Sandy Berger was himself likely one of the key beneficiaries of Gorelick’s Wall.

Viewed against his record, Berger’s theft and destruction of “code-word”-level secret documents – and “The Consigliere’s” stealthy involvement – is all too readily understood.

Scott Jordan

Notes:

[1] TIME, "The Ubiquitous Mr. Fix-It", Adam Cohen, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/03/16/time/bruce.lindsey.html

[2] Washington Post, "Berger Quits as Advisor to Kerry", Susan Schmidt, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64379-2004Jul20.html

[3] Tom Laughlin, http://www.billyjack.com/jung/08_politics/articles/990515_spy.html

[4] Freeh quoted in The New Yorker, per http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200311030753.asp

[5] Wall Street Journal, "While Clinton Fiddled", Dick Morris, http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=95001824

[6] National Review, "Clinton & Khobar", Rich Lowry, http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200311030753.asp

[7] Washington Times, "Miniter Responds", Richard Miniter, http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030922-090028-4916r.htm

[8] NewsMax, "Aide: Clinton Unleashed bin Laden", Chuck Noe, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/5/153637.shtml

[9] US News & World Report, Paul Bedard, 15 Mar 2003

[10] "Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem - Once and for All" by Scott Ritter, reviewed by Daniel Pipes, http://www.danielpipes.org/article/896

[11] National Review, "Warning B.S.", Rich Lowry, http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200310290829.asp

[12] The Hill, "Fundraiser resurfaces from 1996", Sam Dealey, http://www.hillnews.com/news/073003/fundraiser.aspx

[13] Sen. James Inhofe, http://www.matthewgoss.org/chinagate.html

[14] National Review, "The Clinton Intel Record", Mansoor Ijaz, http://nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment042903.asp

http://www.webcommentary.com/asp/ShowArticle.asp?id=jordans&date=040420

The Gorelick Rosetta Stone

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Has 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick's famous memo provided the missing link between Chinagate and 9/11?
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Recall, too, that during the time of Ms. Gorelick's 1995 memo, the issue causing the most tension between the Reno-Gorelick Justice Department and Director Freeh's FBI was not counterterrorism but widely reported allegations of contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign from foreign sources, involving the likes of John Huang and Charlie Trie. -- The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 15, 2004
Hats off to the Wall Street Journal for a spectacular observation, perhaps the Rosetta Stone of postmillennial national security.

Let its boiled-down essence not escape your attention: the ongoing dividends of Chinagate may well have included 9/11.

And history may be repeating itself. Let me explain.

To set the stage, recall that Bill Clinton ensured his loyal minions populated the US Attorneys' offices nationwide when he fired every last US Attorney at the dawn of his Administration, then appointed his own. Next, as we have seen through Jamie Gorelick's startling memo[1], he saw to it that domestic law enforcement was blinded to foreign intelligence information. He then methodically offered up White House access and key strategic technologies to the highest bidder: China, and Indonesian/Chinese billionaire donors with close ties to China's dictatorial regime. Intriguingly, Clinton's Department of Justice's signature assault on Microsoft also appears to have been to the benefit of Indonesian/Chinese billionaires, who just happened to be the originating funders of the private venture fund which was the largest shareholder in lead plaintiff Netscape at the time[2]

With the declassification of former Deputy Attorney General Gorelick's memo, the picture comes into sharp focus: the Clinton Administration was not just:

o Inattentive towards terrorism;

o Impotent in its response to bin Laden's challenges;

o Burdened by petty bureaucratic squabbles and a thong-distracted Chief Executive, blocking urgently-needed intel initiatives[3];

...but also:

o Purposefully malfeasant in hamstringing the intelligence community even beyond Carter-era Church Commission strictures. "Gorelick's Wall" was not just a monument to political correctness and lawyer-think run amok, it was a strategic keystone of the Clinton Administration's wholesale auction of America's security, sovereignty and economy.

Yes, the economy, Clinton's vaunted economy, with its skyrocketing stock-market and spectacular 5.6% 1996 unemployment rate (which of course puts George W. Bush’s dismal 2004 5.6% unemployment rate to shame). This unstoppable economy screeched to an ignominious halt in the second half of 2000 as the tech sector imploded[4] - a multi-trillion-dollar evaporation of shareholder wealth driven in significant part by the DOJ's pursuit of tech bellwether Microsoft, which put a measurable damper on enthusiasm for big-cap technology stocks and funding for new tech ventures alike.

Follow the money. The legacy of that Administration is not just one of incompetence and inattention culminating in an innocence-crushing September morning once it was safely out of office. It is one of malevolent, calculated wholesaling of loyalty for political gain, with Gorelick's Wall providing cover by blinding law enforcement efforts that might have made a difference.

Still, Chinagate was exposed, and in a sane world it would have hit the political world like one of the Chinese ICBMs it facilitated. But Clinton was untouchable - immunized! - after the Lewinsky obstruction-of-justice mess fizzled like the captivating but comparatively feeble bottle-rocket it was. Today the damage extends far beyond the smoldering pits of lower Manhattan and the Pentagon. The world now stands on the cusp of decades of global turmoil in the face of emboldened and metastasized radical Islamism, most recently including al Qaeda’s successful gambit towards reestablishing Moorish dispensation in Andalusia[5].

Is Chinagate old news? Water under the bridge? Something for the 9/11 Commission's Democrat partisans to pooh-pooh and ignore as they recklessly paint their anti-Bush pastiche?

Not if you continue to mourn the thousands dead on that grim September morning. And not if you consider what other reflexively anti-Defense politician currently angling for the Presidency has financial ties to some of the same scandalous campaign donors as Bill Clinton: John Kerry is today's victorious campaign-donation choice of Chinagate's Huang-linked George Chao-Chi Chu, described as having "unusual access to high-ranking Communist officials in China" [6]. And that is old news, in a way: for in 1996 John Kerry received cash from Johnny Chung and Liu Chaoying, daughter of a powerful Chinese military official, for providing high-level access to Federal securities regulators. Kerry's cash came from transfers sent to Chung on orders from the chief of Chinese military intelligence[7].

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana

Scott Jordan

Notes:

1 A web-accessible transcription of the Gorelick "Wall" memo is at http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=659679

2 At the time of the DOJ's action against Microsoft was initiated, lead plaintiff Netscape's largest shareholder was the private venture fund of Amerindo Investment Advisors. "The name Amerindo came from the fund's first investors, a group of Indonesian Chinese who wanted [the founder, Cuban expatriate Alberto] Vilar to call the firm American Indonesian Singaporean Investment Co. but settled for an abbreviation." -- Fortune, October 25, 1999

3 Caspar Weinberger, Washington Times, Sept. 2, 2003, reviewing Miniter: "The president never supported Mr. Woolsey's urgent request for Arabic-language translators for the CIA in 1994. A separate feud between Mr. Woolsey and Sen. Dennis DeConcini, Arizona Democrat, was allowed to run its course without direction by the Clinton White House, which further set back the CIA director's appeal for Arabic translators." So, as the author concludes, "a bureaucratic feud and President Clinton's indifference kept America blind and deaf as bin Laden plotted."

4 For a graphical econometric analysis of the recession's onset, see http://www.speakeasy.org/~dervish/recession.pdf

5 London Telegraph, "Bin Laden makes an offer that he cannot deliver",http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fopinion%2F2004%2F04%2F18%2Fdo1806.xml

6 The Hill, "Fundraiser resurfaces from 1996", Sam Dealey, http://www.hillnews.com/news/073003/fundraiser.aspx

7 NewsMax, "Kerry Took Cash From Chinese Military Intelligence", http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/2/124555.shtml

I received this in email this morning; I am including the emailer's comments (bracketed)

[In response to the claims that Clinton didn't have an opportunity to get bin Laden and the Berger scene from "The Path to 9/11", scroll down (about halfway) and it's under the heading "No Actionable Intelligence" but the content tells a different story. Note especially the May 1999 episode which itself notes 3 opportunities squashed and the "hang alone" notation, I'm guessing the miniseries scene relied heavily on that (I decided to separate that part out of the paragraph it's in to highlight it, down a ways):]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4595501/

...
National Security Adviser Berger said that there was never a circumstance where the policymakers thought they had good intelligence but declined to launch a missile at UBL-linked targets for fear of possible collateral damage. He told us the deciding factor was whether there was actionable intelligence. If the shot missed Bin Ladin, the United States would look weak, and Bin Ladin would look strong.

There were frequent reports about Bin Ladin’s whereabouts and activities. The daily reports regularly described where he was, what he was doing, and where he might be going. But usually, by the time these descriptions were landing on the desks of DCI Tenet or National Security Adviser Berger, Bin Ladin had already moved. Nevertheless, on occasion, intelligence was deemed credible enough to warrant planning for possible strikes to kill Usama Bin Ladin.

Kandahar, December 1998
The first instance was in December 1998, in Kandahar. There was intelligence that Bin Ladin was staying at a particular location. Strikes were readied against this and plausible alternative locations. The principal advisers to the President agreed not to recommend a strike. Returning from one of their meetings, DCI Tenet told staff that the military, supported by everyone else in the room, had not wanted to launch a strike because no one had seen Bin Ladin in a couple of hours. DCI Tenet told us that there were concerns about the veracity of the source and about the risk of collateral damage to a nearby mosque. A few weeks later, Clarke described the calculus as one that had weighed 50 percent confidence in the intelligence against collateral damage estimated at, perhaps, 300 casualties.

After this episode Pentagon planners intensified efforts to find a more precise alternative to cruise missiles, such as using precision strike aircraft. This option would greatly reduce the collateral damage. Not only would it have to operate at long ranges from
home bases and overcome significant logistical obstacles, but the aircraft might be shot down by the Taliban. At the time, Clarke complained that General Zinni was opposed to the forward deployment of these aircraft. General Zinni does not recall blocking such an option. The aircraft apparently were not deployed for this purpose.

The Desert Camp, February 1999
During the winter of 1998-99, intelligence reported that Bin Ladin frequently visited a camp in the desert adjacent to a larger hunting camp in Helmand province of Afghanistan, used by visitors from a Gulf state. Public sources have stated that these visitors were from the United Arab Emirates. At the beginning of February, Bin Ladin was reportedly located there, and apparently remained for more than a week. This was not in an urban area, so the risk of collateral damage was minimal. Intelligence provided a detailed description of the camps. National technical intelligence confirmed the description of the larger camp and showed the nearby presence of an official aircraft of the UAE. The CIA received reports that Bin Ladin regularly went from his adjacent camp to the larger camp where he visited with Emiratis. The location of this larger camp was confirmed by February 9, but the location of Bin Ladin’s quarters could not be pinned down so precisely. Preparations were made for a possible strike at least against the larger camp, perhaps to target Bin Ladin during one of his visits. No strike was launched.

According to CIA officials, policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike might kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with Bin Ladin or close by. The lead CIA official in the field felt the intelligence reporting in this case was very reliable; the UBL unit chief at the time agrees. The field official believes today that this was a lost opportunity to kill Bin Ladin before 9/11.

Clarke told us the strike was called off because the intelligence was dubious, and it seemed to him as if the CIA was presenting an option to attack America’s best counterterrorism ally in the Gulf. Documentary evidence at the time shows that on February 10 Clarke detailed to Deputy National Security Adviser Donald Kerrick the intelligence placing UBL in the camp, informed him that DOD might be in position to fire the next morning, and added that General Shelton was looking at other options that might be ready the following week.

Clarke had just returned from a visit to the UAE, working on counterterrorism cooperation and following up on a May 1998 UAE agreement to buy F-16 aircraft from the United States. On February 10, Clarke reported that a top UAE official had vehemently denied that high-level UAE officials were in Afghanistan. Evidence subsequently confirmed that high-level UAE officials had been hunting there.

By February 12 Bin Ladin had apparently moved on and the immediate strike plans became moot. In March the entire camp complex was hurriedly disassembled. We are still examining several aspects of this episode.

Kandahar, May 1999
In this case sources reported on the whereabouts of Bin Ladin over the course of five nights. The reporting was very detailed. At the time CIA working-level officials were told that strikes were not ordered because the military was concerned about the precision of the source’s reporting and the risk of collateral damage.

Replying to a frustrated colleague in the field, the UBL unit chief wrote that “having a chance to get UBL three times in 36 hours and foregoing the chance each time has made me a bit angry. …the DCI finds himself alone at the table, with the other princip[als] basically saying ‘we’ll go along with your decision Mr. Director,’ and implicitly saying that the Agency will hang alone if the attack doesn’t get Bin Ladin.” These are working-level perspectives.

According to DCI Tenet the same circumstances prevented a strike in each of the cases described above: the intelligence was based on a single uncorroborated source, and there was a risk of collateral damage. In the first and third cases, the cruise missile option was rejected outright, and in the case of the second, never came to a clear decision point.

According to National Security Adviser Berger, the cases were “really DCI Tenet’s call.” In his view, in none of the cases did policymakers have the reliable intelligence that was needed. In Berger’s opinion, this did not reflect risk aversion or a lack of desire to act on DCI Tenet’s part. The DCI was just as stoked up as he was, said Berger. Each of these times, Berger told us, “George would call and say, ‘We just don’t have it.’” There was a fourth episode involving a location in Ghazni, Afghanistan, in July 1999. We are still investigating the circumstances.

There were no occasions after July 1999 when cruise missiles were actively readied for a possible strike against Bin Ladin. The challenge of providing actionable intelligence could not be overcome before 9/11.

Again, from an email:

From the 9/11 Report itself, scroll down:

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch4.htm

Kandahar, May 1999
It was in Kandahar that perhaps the last, and most likely the best, opportunity arose for targeting Bin Ladin with cruise missiles before 9/11. In May 1999, CIA assets in Afghanistan reported on Bin Ladin's location in and around Kandahar over the course of five days and nights. The reporting was very detailed and came from several sources. If this intelligence was not "actionable," working-level officials said at the time and today, it was hard for them to imagine how any intelligence on Bin Ladin in Afghanistan would meet the standard. Communications were good, and the cruise missiles were ready. "This was in our strike zone," a senior military officer said. "It was a fat pitch, a home run." He expected the missiles to fly. When the decision came back that they should stand down, not shoot, the officer said, "we all just slumped." He told us he knew of no one at the Pentagon or the CIA who thought it was a bad gamble. Bin Ladin "should have been a dead man" that night, he said.173

Working-level CIA officials agreed. While there was a conflicting intelligence report about Bin Ladin's whereabouts, the experts discounted it. At the time, CIA working-level officials were told by their managers that the strikes were not ordered because the military doubted the intelligence and worried about collateral damage. Replying to a frustrated colleague in the field, the Bin Ladin unit chief wrote: "having a chance to get [Bin Ladin] three times in 36 hours and foregoing the chance each time has made me a bit angry.... [T]he DCI finds himself alone at the table, with the other princip[als] basically saying 'we'll go along with your decision Mr. Director,' and implicitly saying that the Agency will hang alone if the attack doesn't get Bin Ladin."174

Oh, thank you!!!

Thanks!

BTW..I just called Santorum and Frist and made them aware that if you type www.pathto911.com in your browser it takes you to the DNC. Frists office was PISSED! Santorums had me call my local Philly office so they are now aware of it too.

Who published that? Color me disgusted with the whole lot of them. And the media which cowers in fear.

And now a report is coming out that Senate Intelligence Committee is saying there never was a relationship between Iraq/AQ.

If the Bush administration doesn't counter all this and realize what it will do to them, Republicans and support for our military, then I'm so disgusted I almost don't have words for it.

It's going to be a bad week next week. Very bad.

I'm going back in the pool and forgetting I ever read any of this whitewash.

Former Head of CIA's Bin Laden Unit: Clinton Admin Played Role in Nixing Osama Op

Posted by Noel Sheppard on September 7, 2006 - 00:22.

In response to an article published at NewsBusters and The American Thinker, I have received two e-mail messages from Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA that used to head up “Alec Station,” the Counterterrorist Center’s Osama bin Laden unit. (Update: Scheuer is the individual regularly referred to in the 9/11 Commission report as "Mike".) His name might ring a bell as the previously anonymous author of the books Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. In his writing as well as his interviews, Scheuer is an outspoken critic of the current Administration’s prosecution of the war on terror, as well as an opponent of the war in Iraq. As such, he is not considered to be a friend of the president’s.

That said, after reading my piece about the smear campaign against ABC’s “The Path to 9/11,” Scheuer apprised me of an op-ed he had written for the Washington Times on July 5 of this year. Given its context to this issue, I wanted to share it with our readers, and will do so in its entirety in a moment.

However, before I do, let me first share a more recent opinion offered by Scheuer as answers to some questions I asked of him in response to his first e-mail message: “Is the scene in question as depicted by Rush an accurate account of the plan to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan. If so, who do you believe gave the order to halt it?” Scheuer responded:

Regarding the scene, it was never clear to my officers or myself who canceled the operation. It is true that Clarke was bad-mouthing it. What I don't think people know, however, is that the Agency had thoroughly reviewed the plan and had approved its execution at the highest level -- that is, at the level of DCI Tenet and his immediate subordinates. (NB: At Tenet's direction, JSOC commanders at Fort Bragg also reviewed the plan. They approved it, said they could not do better, and built two sand-table mock-ups of the bin Laden's compound for us to use in preparing the operation.) My officers and I were told that the plan had been sent to Clarke and the NSC for approval. The next thing we knew, the Chief of CT at CIA told us that the plan had been canceled because civilians might get killed, there was not a hundred percent chance that we would get bin Laden, and that if bin Laden was killed in the capture effort the CIA might get accused of assassination. The implication to us at the time was that the NSC canceled the operation, but Tenet later claimed he did it himself. I don't know what the full truth is on this issue. Interestingly, after our east Africa embassies were bombed on 7 August 98, Clarke ordered us to immediately revive the capture plan, but of course by then the chance had been well and truly lost.

Hat tip, Newsbusters:

http://newsbusters.org/node/7438

How about a video with Tom Brokaw and how Clinton missed Bin Laden. Link thanks to Grampa Dave

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JuH1xwLUnbg

It was on MSNBC.

We need a national debate about what Clinton did or didnt do

Dick Morris, noted Berger “seemed to work overtime at opposing tough measures against terror” ...

It was Berger who repeatedly rebuffed Sudanese offers to hand Osama bin Laden to the United States
It was Berger who allowed bin Laden and his top lieutenants to escape to Afghanistan.
It was Berger whose calls Bill Clinton ducked in 1998 when bin Laden was briefly vulnerable to missile attack.
It was Berger who was singled-out by former UN Inspector Scott Ritter for the collapse of UN inspections efforts in Iraq.
It was Berger who helped broker the farcical antinuclear treaty with North Korea.
It was Berger who ultimately admitted that the Clinton Administration had failed to develop a war plan to fight al Qaeda.

All that, plus he does his "Sandy Burglar" thing and he's still walking free?????

A searchable database -9/11 Commission.

There's a better one I used during the hearings, but I can't locate it right now

Excerpt:

"As evidence of al Qaeda’s responsibility for the Cole attack came in during November 2000, National Security Advisor Samuel Berger asked the Pentagon to develop a plan for a sustained air campaign against the Taliban.

Clarke developed a paper laying out a formal, specific ultimatum. But Clarke’s plan apparently did not advance to formal consideration by the Small Group of principals.

We have found no indication that the idea was briefed to the new administration or that Clarke passed his paper to them, although the same team of career officials spanned both administrations."

I'm still amazed how everyone's forgotten how he sold state secrets to the Chinese for campaign money.