Posted on 03/31/2004 12:28:20 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
to
The National Commission On Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
March 23, 2004
I appreciate the opportunity to appear before the Commission to discuss counterterrorism efforts of the Defense Department and the Interagency during my tenure as Secretary of Defense. You have posed several questions, which I will address to the best of my ability, although I should note that in preparing this statement I have not had access to any non-public records with regard to events that took place during this period three to eight years ago and not all public records are easily accessible despite the internet. I have also organized your questions and my responses in a manner that seems to be most responsive to your objective and that reduces redundancies. [snip] Military Options, Plans, and Operations With regard to offensive efforts, you asked a series of overlapping questions regarding military options, plans and operations to target Bin Laden and al Qaeda; factors affecting decisions on using force against Bin Laden and al Qaeda; planning for the use of special operations forces; and military actions considered or taken following the East Africa and USS Cole attacks and the Millennium plots. With regard to offensive efforts, you asked a series of overlapping questions regarding military options, plans and operations to target Bin Laden and al Qaeda; factors affecting decisions on using force against Bin Laden and al Qaeda; planning for the use of special operations forces; and military actions considered or taken following the East Africa and USS Cole attacks and the Millennium plots. [snip] Following the August 1998 East Africa bombings, the ongoing flurry of non-specific threat warnings was supplemented by more specific information, partly due to unilateral U.S. collection of an increased level of communications among al Qaeda-affiliated elements and partly due to increased cooperation from foreign intelligence services. During this time, U.S. intelligence community obtained actionable intelligence on a leadership conference that al Qaeda and other terrorist groups planned to hold on a specific date at a specific location near Khost, Afghanistan. We believed one purpose of the conference was to advance plans to conduct additional attacks against U.S. interests. While we did not have a roster of who would attend this conference, the intelligence reports indicated it would include senior leaders, quite possibly including Bin Laden. Concurrently, the U.S. intelligence community obtained physical evidence from outside the al-Shifa facility in Sudan that supported long-standing concerns regarding its potential role in Sudanese chemical weapon efforts that could be exploited by al Qaeda. The al-Shifa facility had been under surveillance for some time because of a variety of intelligence reports, including HUMINT reports identifying it as a WMD-related facility, indirect links between the facility and Bin Laden and the Iraqi chemical weapons program, and extraordinary security – including surface-to-air missiles – used to protect it during its construction. The direct physical evidence from the scene obtained at that time convinced the U.S. intelligence community that their suspicions were correct about the facility’s chemical weapons role and that there was a risk of chemical agents getting into the hands of al Qaeda, whose interest in obtaining such weapons was clear. With actionable intelligence in hand, President Clinton made the decision to attack the al Qaeda leadership conference with the intent to kill as many participants as possible. Simultaneously with the attack on the al Qaeda leadership conference, we would attack and destroy the al-Shifa facility. Because of the need for tactical surprise and because of the geographical realities of Afghanistan and Sudan being remote from U.S. operating bases, professional military advice was to use sea-launched cruise missiles to attack the al Qaeda leadership conference and the al-Shifa facility in Operation Infinite Reach. [snip] The intelligence community reported afterward that Bin Laden had been at the conference, but departed several hours before our weapons struck their target. This did not come as a complete surprise given Bin Laden’s strict operational security practices, including by some accounts, that he remained in any given location only for a few hours at a time. The fact that he slipped away before the missiles arrived did not diminish my belief that the mission was well worth having undertaken. [snip] The U.S. was already pursuing Bin Laden and al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and around the world. The President had authorized lethal force to be used if we ever had the opportunity to get Bin Laden or other al Qaeda leaders. This was equally before and after the Millennium, before and after the USS Cole. We already had far more than sufficient justification to eliminate Bin Laden and his leadership structure. We did not need the Millennium plots or the attack on the USS Cole to undertake military action – we needed actionable intelligence that would give us a reasonable chance of getting al Qaeda leaders. The President and the Principals determined that attacking al Qaeda’s primitive facilities rather than attacking al Qaeda leaders would have little value in setting back al Qaeda and would be counter-productive, both by enhancing Bin Laden’s position among anti-American Islamic elements and by undermining foreign intelligence and other international support for our counter-terrorism effort – all of which had proved to be so crucial in averting hundreds of American and other deaths from the Millennium and other terrorist plots. [snip] As I have mentioned, President Clinton and his entire national security team devoted an extraordinary amount of time and effort to coping with the threat. We were able to achieve significant, albeit unheralded, successes in preventing the loss of lives here and abroad. In addition, I would note that the Hart-Rudman Commission, on which Congressman Hamilton served, issued a clarion call to action. Congress also created a number of subcommittees with jurisdiction to focus upon the threat of domestic and international terrorism. Yet, it is my judgment that at no time was there any realistic prospect that Congress or the American people would have supported a decision to invade Afghanistan or that our allies or countries in the region would have supported such a decision. [snip] The Lack of Actionable Intelligence. The lack of actionable intelligence was the missing element in our comprehensive effort to capture or kill Bin Laden and al Qaeda leadership. The war against Iraq has highlighted the challenge of obtaining reliable intelligence against a so-called “hard target.” While some charge that the Bush Administration exaggerated or manipulated the available intelligence, the fact is that all responsible officials from the Clinton and Bush administrations and, I believe, most Members of Congress genuinely believed that Saddam Hussein had active WMD programs. While it is too early to declare that belief to be entirely wrong, I think we all have been surprised by the inability to find meaningful evidence of such active WMD programs. As difficult an intelligence target as Saddam’s Iraq was, Islamic terrorist groups present a much harder target. No U.N. inspectors were walking into terrorist offices, interrogating terrorist officials or collecting hundreds of thousands of pages of terrorist documents, as they did with in Iraq. In ways that we cannot discuss here, the fact that Iraq was far less isolated internationally than the Taliban allowed us to exploit opportunities in Iraq that did not exist in Afghanistan to collect information. [snip] Capture versus Kill; “Law Enforcement versus War” Some seek to portray counter-terrorism as a choice between law enforcement and the exercise of military power. Likewise, some argue that a preference to capture terrorists alive reflects a law enforcement preference rather than a military approach to counterterrorism. Both of these views are fallacious. Effective counter-terrorism requires effective use of all national capabilities – law enforcement, diplomatic, intelligence, military and other capabilities – which are not alternatives, one to be chosen to the exclusion of the others. This was the basis for President Clinton’s counter-terrorism campaign in both the first and second administrations. It is the basis of President Bush’s counter-terrorism campaign, as he articulated it on September 11. No counter-terrorism effort will be 100% effective, but an effort premised on a false dichotomy of law enforcement versus war will be far less effective than an integrated effort. Yet for reasons that are inexplicable, this false choice continues to be expressed by certain critics on both left and right. [snip] Conclusion I have attempted to set forth some of the major initiatives under taken by the Department of Defense to counter the threat of terrorism during the time I was privileged to serve at the Pentagon. As I noted, many of those initiatives proved successful in saving the lives of many of our citizens both here and abroad. [snip] I believe that we have been complacent as a society. We have failed to fully comprehend the gathering storm. Even now after September 11, it is far from clear that our society truly appreciates the gravity of the threat we face or is yet willing to do what is necessary to counter it. Even after September 11, and after anthrax and ricin attacks in the U.S., I remain concerned that the controversy over not finding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction will lead to the erroneous assumption that all the talk about the dangers of WMD is just another exercise in the cynical exploitation of fear. After all, it is commonly noted, there have been no attacks since 9/11. This is a dangerous delusion. The enemy is not only coming, he has been here. He is already amongst us. He will continue to try to examine our weaknesses, exploit the crevices in our security, and destroy our way of living as well as our lives. As you can deduce from my statement, I believe that the Clinton Administration far more than any Administration prior to September 11 understood the threat that terrorists pose to our country and took far greater and more comprehensive action to counter it than any previous administration. But notwithstanding all this, the U.S. was hit in a devastating way. Clearly neither the first Bush Administration, nor the two Clinton Administrations, nor the current Bush Administration did all that we and they needed to do to prevent the rise and spread of violent Islamic extremists and to prevent them from reaching our shores with instruments of mass death. Nor do I believe that even today, with a global war on terrorism being waged, are we doing all we need to do to prevent the further spread of violent Islamic extremists and to prevent them from reaching our shores with mass death. I don’t pretend to hold the keys to the kingdom of wisdom on what needs to be done in the future. All of us who have held high office must remain accountable for our actions while holding the public trust. It is my hope that the Commission through its work will focus as well on the fault lines that run through our democratic system as we struggle to cope with a challenge of unprecedented proportions. [snip] It’s a time for sober reflection and the charting of a responsible course of action. There’s very little time to lose.
[end of statement]
The above post is from Mr. Cohens written testimony. His oral testimony played on the radio today demonstrated a clear connection between Saddam/Iraq, WMD, and the al-Qaida terrorist organization.
However, even Mr. Cohen's written testimony is clearly at odds with the screaming rhetoric of democrats like Ted Kennedy regarding WMD's. It is also at odds with John Kerry's "law enforcement" approach to the War on Terror.
Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism official promoting a book critical of the Bush administration, insists Saddam Hussein had no connection to al-Qaida, but in 1999 he defended President Clinton's attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant by revealing the U.S. was "sure" it manufactured chemical warfare materials produced by Iraqi experts in cooperation with Osama bin Laden.
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