Could USS Cole tragedy have been avoided?

World Tribune.com ^ | October 18, 2000 | John Metler

[sport]

Halsey, Nimitz, Spruance[sp?], Patton, Mc Arthur, Chesty Puller and the likes would have never made it past 2nd Lt. or Ens. in the military of bill clinton.

[WhiteyAppleseed]

My station when we would get underway was on the bridge. Going in and out of port exposes a vessel to all sorts of boats, some fast, some slow, big, small, low-flying aircraft, etc. Seems like it would be difficult, in reality, to protect against a determined effort.

[Nita Nupress]

Please read the last paragraph of this article.  Can anyone verify this little tidbit about Clarke screwing up an offer by the United Arab Emirates to give us Bin Laden? And who is Mariani, the author of this piece?

 

http://www.opinioneditorials.com/freedomwriters/mariani_20040325.html

March 25, 2004

The Man Who Dropped the Ball: Richard Clarke

Joe Mariani

(snip)

The failed strategy of dealing with terrorism through courts and lawyers rather than military means was pursued all through the nineties. Clarke was the White House terrorism advisor for both Presidents, ever since he was appointed to the National Security Council staff in 1992 by Bill Clinton. Iraq was clearly involved in the 1993 WTC bombing by al-Qaeda operatives, yet was never confronted by the Clinton administration... which only emboldened Saddam to defy the US even more openly as the years passed. Mohammed Salameh, one of the bombers, made 46 phone calls to Iraq. Most of them were to his uncle, a convicted terrorist working in the PLO office in Baghdad.

Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ramzi Yousef came to the US from Iraq, and Yousef traveled back to Iraq afterwards using a Kuwaiti passport in the name of Abdul Basit Karim. Karim's file had clearly been tampered with during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait -- Yousef's fingerprints had replaced those of the real Karim.

All the evidence of State sponsorship of terrorism was ignored, and a policy of prosecuting individual terrorists as common criminals was followed. Who was the White House's counter-terrorism advisor during this time? Who bears some of the responsibility, at least, for this policy? Right answer: Richard Clarke.

(snip)

Prior to President Bush, there WAS no war against terrorism. After the 1993 WTC attack, nothing was done to stop al-Qaeda. Nothing was done when al-Qaeda terrorists killed 18 US servicemen in Somalia, also in 1993. Nothing was done after al-Qaeda terrorists blew up the Khobar Towers in 1996 or the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998.

Nothing was done after al-Qaeda blew a hole in the USS Cole in 2000. Clarke claims that he warned President Bush about the terrible danger posed to the US by al-Qaeda and the need for a military response. The entirety of the "military response" to al-Qaeda during the Clinton administration -- under Clarke's leadership as "terrorism czar" -- was limited to missile strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan, both of which proved fruitless. Why was nothing done about al-Qaeda during all the years of Clarke's tenure as head of counter-terrorism, if the danger was so obvious?

Clinton's administration passed up an opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden in 1996 According to a statement by Mansoor Ijaz (one of Clinton's 1996 campaign contributors), "President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center. The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening." After 9/11, Clinton was heard to call his decision not to take bin Laden "the biggest mistake of my Presidency."

A second back-channel offer was made to turn over bin Laden by the United Arab Emirates in the summer of 2000, before the attack on the Cole. Richard Clarke soured the deal by openly referring to it during a meeting with the UAE rulers, who immediately denied any such offer had been made. [I've never heard this.  Anyone have any facts on this claim?]  That fall, a Predator drone spotted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The Clinton administration again declined to act.

[Long Cut]

I can say this...the unloaded M-14s are now loaded, and accompanied by simlarly loaded M-60s, M-2 .50s, grenade launchers, and other toys.

They are also in the hands of people trained in their use, and FULLY briefed on all threats expected. And the ROE's have been properly adjusted to allow for an "active" (LOL!) defense.

[Cboldt]

Are you aware of which firm the fuel was purchased from, another likely reason the Cole was ordered to top up her tanks in a hostile port.

According to the DOD report, the firm was "Arab Investment, Manufacturing and Trading Company." The contract was awarded on 29 Dec 1998, and was for a period of 9 Jun 1999 to 8 Jun 2004. 27 of 30 stops at this port were stops for fule (this was before the Cole incident)

From Command Investigation into the Actions of the USS Cole, page 16. This report used to be available online, but was removed from online access after 9/11/01.

[Light Speed]

During WW-2..a Destroyer which bears our Family name was in Mare Island for refit after a Kamikaze hit in summer 45.
Trials finished..she was ready to join the war ....until a yard tug pushed in her hull..bent frames....back to drydock.
New crew learned Frisco some more...
old crew got to meet their favorite girls down on Market Street.
Headache for officers...all manner of contraband now building up in crew lockers.
Some crew had exstensive panty/bra collections.
Thank you Jesus...Thank you Yard Tug : )

[Cboldt]

Cboldt: I heard, but haven't followed up to confirm, that she was half full, and the port call was NOT necessary.

The order for fuel was 220,000 gallons of F-76. Yemen was ranked as "HIGH" in threat level before the Cole made port (CRITICAL is the only greater threat level).

[Jim_Curtis]

What I've read is that Clarke personally(?) flew to the UAE to investigate the Ijaz claim that an arrangement had been made to turn OBL over to US custody but in doing so canceled the deal that had been arranged.

This seems possible because any cooperative Arab wouldn't want to be seen as cooperative since there would be reprisals. It would've been one of those grab and run operations where the UAE could shrug their shoulders and say the helicopters swooped in and just took him.

[findingtruth]

It could have been avoided by a non-interventionist foreign policy, but nobody wants that except Pat Buchanan and those (sneer!) isolationists.

A single ship not going into a high threat port against the advice of the Ambassador has NOTHING TO DO with non-interventionism. Gheez...

Did you really not understand my post, or are you justing pretending to be obtuse?

[Nita Nupress]

What I've read is that Clarke personally(?) flew to the UAE to investigate the Ijaz claim that an arrangement had been made to turn OBL over to US custody

After watching Clarke's egocentric behavior for the past few weeks, that sounds more like his M.O. I wouldn't doubt it a bit. If this is true, he was probably trying to steal the credit away from Ijaz.

Thanks for the response.

[chainsaw]

It sounds like a Fletcher class DD crew.

[Calvin Locke]

I vaguely recall reading something about Gore, or friends of Gore, would personally benefit from the refueling in Yemen.

[btcusn]

That's another good point. I heard, but haven't followed up to confirm, that she was half full, and the port call was NOT necessary.
The Navy gets REAL intrested if your fuel gets below 50%.
Jack

[kcvl]

Joe Mariani says that he is a computer consultant born and raised in New Jersey. He lives in Pennsylvania, where the gun laws are less restrictive and taxes are lower. Joe always thought of himself as politically neutral until he saw how far left the left had really gone after 9/11.

[kcvl]

March 23, 2004, 8:55 a.m.
A Dick Clarke Top Seven
Questions for commissioners.



Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism czar in four successive administrations, testifies in front of the 9/11 Commission on Wednesday. But what should have been a serious inquiry into how a loosely knit gang of Islamic fanatics could rise to become one of history's most lethal and effective global terrorist organizations now promises to become a political spectacle.



At the height of the presidential campaign season, Clarke has made irresponsible and untrue allegations that the Bush White House was indifferent to the threat posed by al Qaeda in the months leading up to the 9/11 attacks. Whether his charges are the result of a momentary lapse in judgment in an otherwise distinguished civil-service career, or the hallmark of personal ego and greed in trying to sell a book while settling scores with a Bush White House that demoted him, the 9/11 commissioners cannot be deterred in their task to find out the truth about what happened on his watch to America's counterterrorism efforts.

The 9/11 commissioners have a thankless job of asking tough questions that nobody wants to ask. There will be a broad set of questions asked Tuesday and Wednesday of the various witnesses who appear. But when Clarke goes under oath, there will be a need to get down to specifics because the devil of understanding how 9/11 became possible is in the details of what Clarke did or did not do.

If I were a 9/11 commissioner, there are seven very pointed areas of inquiry I would enter into with Clarke to understand exactly how the intelligence failures and policy missteps evolved:

1. Sudan's offer to hand over Osama bin Laden. Mr. Clarke, we know from news reports and the testimony of a former U.S. ambassador that a meeting took place at an Alexandria, Virginia, hotel in February 1996 between Sudan's minister of defense, El Fatih Erwa, Ambassador Timothy Carney, a career State Department officer, and a CIA official with oversight responsibility for African affairs. During that meeting, Erwa offered to have Osama bin Laden extradited to Saudi Arabia (an offer which President Clinton has admitted to and also said that the Saudi government declined when asked), and barring that, to have Sudan essentially baby-sit him with U.S. guidance (which we also turned down). Is it true that a second meeting took place a few weeks later in which Erwa and the CIA officer met alone? What can you tell us about that meeting? Did Erwa make an offer, however vague or oblique, to permit the United States to have access to bin Laden in a manner similar to the capture of Carlos the Jackal that Sudan orchestrated with France? If the CIA case officer received this offer, did he pass it up the chain of command and did you at the NSC see or review any notes of that meeting? If he did not, was this a result of the poor state of relations between CIA and the White House or just a bureaucratic snafu? How do you assess President Clinton's own view that the administration chose not to bring bin Laden to the United States because there were insufficient legal grounds for doing so? Why would he make such a claim if there were never any offer in the first place?

2. Sudan's counterterrorism offer. Mr. Clarke, in April 1997, a private U.S. citizen brought an unconditional offer from Sudan's president to cooperate on the intelligence data about various terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, to the vice chairman of this commission, the Honorable Lee Hamilton. On September 28, 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced after a five-month interagency review that the U.S. was sending a high-level team of diplomats back to Sudan to pressure the Islamist government there to stop harboring terrorists, and to have a look at Sudan's intelligence files on those terrorists it had harbored in previous years, including several of the 9/11 hijackers and several of the planners for the 1998 U.S.-embassy bombings. That decision was overturned on October 1, 1997. What role did you play in the reversal of that decision? Were you ever approached by Susan E. Rice, the former director of African affairs at the National Security Council and assistant secretary of state for East Africa, to assist her in making a case to Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger in overturning the Albright decision? If so, what were her reasons, and why did you agree with her assessment, if you did? Please tell us whether any officials other than you, Mr. Berger, and Ms. Rice were involved in that decision.

3. Iraq and al Qaeda — the Sudan connection. Mr. Clarke, are you aware of a February 1998 correspondence from Sudan's intelligence chief to FBI Regional Director for East Africa David Williams in which again an offer to share terrorism data was made by Sudan without conditions? Are you aware that bin Laden's chief deputy in Sudan made a trip to Baghdad to visit with Iraqi intelligence officials at about the same time in February 1998? If not, why not? How do you reconcile your categorical statement in a recent 60 Minutes interview that there was no relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq — ever, I believe is how you put it — with the fact that bin Laden's chief deputy was visiting Baghdad at the same time you were receiving repeated offers to explore Sudan's intelligence files?

4. The U.S. embassy bombings. Mr. Clarke, once the U.S. embassies had been attacked in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, Sudan's intelligence chief again contacted the FBI in a handwritten note that has been published, and offered to turn over to U.S. custody two of the key suspects who had taken up residence in an apartment overlooking the U.S. embassy in Khartoum. Why did the United States not pursue their extradition immediately? Were you aware of the offer? If not, why not? If so, why did you not, in your role as counterterrorism coordinator, make sure the FBI was given all support necessary from the White House to gain their extradition?

5. Retaliation: bombing the al-Shifa plant in Khartoum. Mr. Clarke, you then recommended bombing Sudan's al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant as the best response to the embassy attacks. Can you recount the evidence that led you to believe al-Shifa was producing nerve agents, and the evidence you had of its ownership and financing by bin Laden? Can you again help us to rectify your categorical statement now that there was no relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime, ever, when you previously argued that Iraq and Sudan were cooperating on the development of chemical and biological weapons at a pharmaceutical plant you claimed was owned and financed by bin Laden?

6. The United Arab Emirates offers help on capturing bin Laden. Mr. Clarke, press reports indicate that the government of the United Arab Emirates, for its own reasons, was interested in helping the United States get bin Laden out of Afghanistan during the summer of 2000. It is our understanding that you were involved in a similar effort already in late 1999 and that the effort failed for a number of different reasons before a second attempt was made to revive it. First, can you tell us precisely what is the nature of your relationship with the UAE ruling family? Are you aware of any threats that were made against the family by al Qaeda leaders during that period of time? Did you relay any U.S. intelligence on the nature of those threats to UAE officials at that time? Did any UAE official, including members of the ruling family responsible for defense and national-security affairs, make an assessment or an offer to find a way to get bin Laden out of Afghanistan? If so, did it involve the construction of an Afghan Development Fund for the Taliban regime in return for bin Laden's transfer to the UAE? Was onward extradition of bin Laden from the UAE to the United States ever discussed with you? Did you ever make the president aware that such a possibility to get bin Laden out of Afghanistan existed? Was it your view at that time that armed CIA predator drones, which would presumably identify and kill senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, were the most efficient tools available to the United States for dealing with the threat posed by al Qaeda?

7. Did al Qaeda get nuclear assistance from Pakistan? A Pakistani national, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, has now admitted to selling nuclear hardware and other materials for the construction of nuclear devices to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The White House in which you worked was warned about Pakistan's nuclear black-market enterprise in August of 2000, and again in September 2000. You clearly had suspicions about the North Korean relationship very early on. Other troubling aspects of Pakistan's nuclear program were brought to Mr. Berger's attention as early as February 1996. Can you tell us today whether al Qaeda was able to get its hands on sufficient nuclear materials to be able to build a radiological device? Do you believe al Qaeda possesses a functional nuclear device? Did the Clinton administration have sufficient evidence to confront Pakistan's military regime about the illicit nuclear activities of its scientists? Why did you not act on the intelligence you had to stop Dr. Khan's network earlier?

Factual answers to these questions, minus the political bluster and ad-hominem attacks aimed at scoring points with a potential future employer, would go a long way in restoring Richard Clarke's severely damaged credibility as an observer and participant in some of history's most important events. Our future generations deserve better than to watch catfights between grown adults charged with nothing less than providing for their safety and security.

Just tell us the truth, Mr. Clarke.

— Mansoor Ijaz is chairman of Crescent Investment Management in New York. He negotiated Sudan's offer of counterterrorism assistance on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to the Clinton administration in 1997 and coauthored the blueprint for the ceasefire in Kashmir in the summer of 2000.

[kcvl]

Ijaz: Clarke Blocked bin Laden Extradition

Ijaz: Clarke Blocked bin Laden Extradition NewsMax Monday, March 22, 2004 Carl Limbacher

Clinton administration diplomatic troubleshooter Mansoor Ijaz charged Monday that one-time White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke blocked his efforts to have Osama bin Laden extradited from the Sudan to the United States five years before the 9/11 attacks.

"I was personally asked to brief Condoleezza Rice's deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, on exactly what had gone wrong in the previous efforts to get bin Laden out of the Sudan, to get the terrorism data out of the Sudan," Ijaz told Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends."

"In each case of things that were involved in the Clinton administration, Richard Clarke himself stepped in and blocked the efforts that were being made over and over and over again."

Ijaz said that if Clarke hadn't put up roadblocks to obtaining Sudanese intelligence, the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 might have been prevented.

He called Clarke's account of the Sudanese episode "absolutely disingenuous; it comes very close to flat-out lying."

After months of denials from his former aides, ex-President Clinton finally admitted that he personally turned down the offer by Sudan to arrest bin Laden.

"We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again," Clinton told a New York business group in February 2002.

"They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.

"So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan."

In his book, "Against All Enemies," Clarke called reports that Clinton had turned down the Sudanese offer "a fable."

[Light Speed]

Yes..a Fletcher.

Speaking of Tin can crews...
Up in the Aluetians..USS Luce DD522 was sitting in Dutch harbor...she was attached to DD520..Flag of Des Div 98.

An electrician on the fleet tender USS Markab was impatient to get off his ride and get in the war..his request granted..so it was off to the Luce.
He arrives to find no bunks..is hammocked in a corridor.
A ruckus breaks out....shots are fired..and soon a huge swaby is being jumped by the officers and some crew.
Turns out the cook went off his rocker..stupid drunk on **Raisin Jack..[Torpedo Alcohol].
Named..*The Beaver..the 6'+ 250 lb'r started shooting at imagined Japanese in the galley..he shot at an officer..but missed.

Beaver really smashed up the kitchen..and a few men..before he landed in the brig.
The electrician was now wondering if he had made a severe mistake wanting off USS Markab
Beavers misfortune became the electricans good fortune..as Beaver went to Trial...the electrician got Beavers bunk : )

USS Luce was not finished....On New Years Eve 44/Dutch Harbor.
Luces senior staff are ashore for festivities...just junior officers left aboard.
The crew gets totally ripped on Raisin Jack and begins to Conga line thru the ship.
At midnight..some Bluejacket thought it best to make noise..and chose the ships emergency horn.
sounds like he broke it..cuz the horn ripped for minutes.
Dutch Harbor went to general quarters..guns actually fired into the night sky as the search lights moved.
Senior staff rushed from parties to their ships thinking the Japanese were attacking.

The crew of the Luce were in some real $... now!

Dutch Harbors Co was pissed after he learned what initiated the chaos.
USS Luce was kicked out of the Harbor and made to do circuits endlessly while its division remained.
This punishment lasted for the rest of Luce's time in the Aluetians.

If this was not trouble enough for the Flag commander aboard USS Isherwood DD 520..he had USS William D Porter..famous for firing a live torpedo at President Roosevelt aboard USS Iowa in 44 recently arrived.

Porter had a legacy of mayhem too : )

In June 44 after 9mnths duty in the hellish Aluetian waters,Des Div 98&97 plus some heavy Crusiers put into Frisco.

Market Street was busy.....so were the police stations : )

[WhiteyAppleseed]

That explains the cheering by some, and the lack thereof by others, after the tug bumping. The Cook's sailors, another FF in the yards at the time, took the opportunity to moon any Hepburn sailors looking their way--actually, maybe it was the Cook that had been moved as the Fanning already left--memory, what can you say. When the Cook left a month or two later, she bumped into the Mars during maneuvers in the fog and dented her nose. All 3 FFs mentioned are gone now either to scrap or to foreign navies.

people trained in their use

Some people have all the fun. I'm sure they can distinguish between the good, the bad, and the ugly--we had a sailor who fired a .45 round over the head of CINCPAC Fleet who insisted on coming aboard during a Security Alert Drill. Everyone was jealous.

[Cboldt]

The Navy gets REAL intrested if your fuel gets below 50%.

Thanks Jack. I found open testimony by General Franks that the call was programmed for 53%, so "it was time" for a fill-up. She had made about 1500 miles from last fueling.

Page 42 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC

General FRANKS. Sir, the U.S.S. Cole refueled just prior to entering the Suez Canal.
Her transit to move into the northern Arabian Gulf to join her battle group in the maritime interdiction mission is 3300 miles. She was programmed to refuel in Yemen because it is halfway. It was, in fact, an operational decision. Our standing procedure is to not permit our warships in terms of fuel level to go below 50 percent. She was programmed to be at 53 percent fuel at the time she got to Yemen. She was scheduled for that purpose. And the duration of her scheduled stop was to be 4 to 6 hours with no one getting off the ship. Sir, it was an operational decision.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. Thank you.

[H.A.S.C. No. 106-65] <-- Link