Posted on 03/23/2004 10:33:12 AM PST by dogbyte12
WASHINGTON (AP) - One day before the Sept. 11 attacks, senior Bush administration officials agreed that the United States would try to overthrow Afghanistan's Taliban rulers if a final diplomatic push to expel Osama bin Laden from the country failed, a federal panel reported Tuesday.
The independent commission reviewing the attacks said in a preliminary report that in the years before the attacks the Clinton and Bush administrations chose to use diplomatic rather than military options, which allowed bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders to elude capture.
The commission said that three years before the attacks, Saudi Arabia won a commitment from the Taliban to expel bin Laden, but Afghan leaders later reneged.
"From the spring of 1997 to September 2001, the U.S. government tried to persuade the Taliban to expel bin Laden to a country where he could face justice," the report said. "The efforts employed inducements, warnings and sanctions. All these efforts failed."
The panel, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, presented its findings as it began hearings with top-level Bush and Clinton administration officials. The aim was to question officials on their efforts to stop bin Laden in the years leading up to the attacks.
Secretary of State Colin Powell stressed administration efforts to fight terrorism, an implicit rebuttal to criticism in a recent book by President Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, who is expected to testify Wednesday.
"President Bush and his entire national security team understood that terrorism had to be among our highest priorities and it was," Powell said.
Shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration was debating how to force bin Laden out of Afghanistan. At a Sept. 10, 2001, meeting of second-tier Cabinet officials, officials settled on a three-phase strategy. The first step called for dispatching an envoy to talk to the Taliban. If this failed, diplomatic pressure would be applied and covert funding and support for anti-Taliban fighters would be increased.
If both failed, "the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action," the report said. Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley said the strategy had a three-year timeframe.
The report described Saudi Arabia as "a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism," noting its lax oversight of charitable donations that may have funded terrorists.
Clinton designated CIA Director George Tenet as his representative to work with the Saudis, who agreed to make an "all-out secret effort" to persuade the Taliban to expel bin Laden.
Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal, using "a mixture of possible bribes and threats," received a commitment from Taliban leader Mullah Omar that bin Laden would be handed over. But Omar reneged on the agreement during a September 1998 meeting with Turki and Pakistan's intelligence chief.
"When Turki angrily confronted him Omar lost his temper and denounced the Saudi government. The Saudis and Pakistanis walked out," the report said.
The Clinton administration had early indications of terrorist links to bin Laden and future Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as early as 1995, but let years pass as it pursued criminal indictments and diplomatic solutions to subduing them abroad, the commission's report said.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the commission that President Clinton and his team "did everything we could, everything we could think of, based on the knowledge we had, to protect our people and disrupt and defeat al-Qaida."
The preliminary report said the U.S. government had determined bin Laden was a key terrorist financier as early as 1995, but that efforts to expel him from Sudan stalled after Clinton officials determined he couldn't be brought to the United States without an indictment. A year later, bin Laden left Sudan and set up his base in Afghanistan without resistance.
The hearing follows explosive allegations in Clarke's book. Clarke was Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator and a holdover from the Clinton administration.
He said that he warned Bush officials in a January 2001 memo about the growing al-Qaida threat after the Cole attack but was put off by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who "gave me the impression she had never heard the term (al-Qaida) before."
The commission's report Tuesday said Clarke pushed for immediate and secret military aid to the Taliban's foe, the Northern Alliance. But Rice and Hadley proposed a broader review of the al Qaida response that would take more time. The proposal wasn't approved for Bush's review until just weeks before Sept. 11.
The 10-member commission had invited Rice to testify, but she has declined, with the White House citing separation of power concerns involving its staff appearing before a legislative body.
Other potential diplomatic failures cited by the commission:
- The United States in 1995 located Mohammed in Qatar. He was then a suspect in a 1995 plot to plant bombs on American airliners in Asia. FBI and CIA officials worked on his capture, but first sought a legal indictment and then help from the Qatari government, who they feared might tip Mohammed off. In 1996, Qatari officials reported Mohammed had suddenly disappeared.
- The U.S. government pressed two successive Pakistani governments from the mid 1990s to pressure the Taliban by threatening to cut off support. But "before 9-11, the United States could not find a mix of incentives or pressure that would persuade Pakistan to reconsider its fundamental relationship."
- From 1999 through early 2001, the United States pressed the United Arab Emirates, the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off ties, with little success.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.