Y2K WSJ: Millenium terrorist plan thwarted by plain luck

1. Clinton officials refused to act on intelligence memo which warned of possible terrorist attacks "specifically targeting American citizens" citing lack of specifics.

2. Clarke et.al. were blindsided by the customs agent apprehending Ressam, by their own admission.

4. Despite his obsession with overseas threats, Clarke could not predict or stop USS Cole 9 months later.

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On High Alert: Casting a Global Net, U.S. Security Forces Survive Terrorist Test

WASHINGTON -- Richard Clarke, President Clinton's antiterrorism chief, took the call on Dec. 2. On the line was Cofer Black, the CIA's hulking chief of counterterrorism. His message was simple and chilling: "We're in deep trouble."

That set off one of the most grueling months of counterterrorist activity in U.S. history. Within days, the U.S. had indications that operatives linked to Osama bin Laden could carry out as many as 15 violent attacks on American citizens around the world. Federal law-enforcement agencies scrambled to head off a disaster -- or multiple disasters -- that they feared would strike on the eve of the millennium.

As it turned out, the New Year came and went without incident. But as authorities congratulated themselves on a job well done, a question lingered: Were they really that good -- or just lucky? A look at what happened in the weeks following Mr. Black's warning suggests that the answer is: probably both.

George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, credits an intense, multifaceted effort for thwarting attacks and saving countless lives. Tapping extensive U.S. antiterrorism forces built in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Mr. Tenet says, the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. allies threw hundreds of potential terrorists off balance, chasing them underground or tossing them in jail.

But the authorities often worked blind, and along the way they stumbled on problems in the U.S. counterterrorism machinery. Surprises cropped up almost daily, deepening their apprehension and making it increasingly difficult to distinguish genuine threats. Officials concede that the danger could re-emerge at any moment. But when?

Before December, some officials had fretted about possible terrorist attacks near the New Year. At millennium celebrations around the world, American and other Western tourists would be inviting targets for Islamic extremists. But hard evidence of foreign-based terrorism plots was scant. The FBI, for one, saw its chief year-end threat coming from home-grown extremists in the U.S.

Then came Mr. Black's Dec. 2 call to Mr. Clarke. The day before, Jordanian security agents had broken up a terrorist cell in Jordan that they believed had been planning attacks for around Dec. 31. Evidence suggested that the 13 men in custody had hatched a detailed plot -- "a real bellringer," as one U.S. intelligence official described it -- that called for attacks on multiple targets.

The worst news was that many of the suspects had ties to Mr. bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile whom the U.S. has indicted for allegedly ordering the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Those two attacks had occurred within minutes of each other, killing 256 people, so the fear of millennial attacks occurring simultaneously around the world would haunt U.S. officials throughout December.

FBI agents and U.S. prosecutors were on their way almost immediately to the Jordanian capital, Amman, where they began to sift evidence and question suspects. From Jordan came a jet carrying to the U.S. boxes of floppy disks copied from the suspects' computers. Dozens of Arabic linguists from the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency set about translating them.

The disks held files with instructions on building bombs and on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. There was also a crude drawing of a building with a flag on top; authorities feared that it represented a U.S. embassy. The sketch was faxed to U.S. posts in Europe and elsewhere in search of a match. No one ever figured out what it meant, but embassies in sensitive regions were put on high alert.

On Dec. 8, President Clinton's national security team gathered in the wood-paneled Situation Room in the White House basement for a briefing by Messrs. Tenet and Clarke.

Mr. Tenet began with a grim assessment, according to a person at the meeting. The suspects in Jordan, he said, had planned to use AK-47 rifles to gun down tourists at holy sites on Mount Nebo, which is 25 miles from Amman, and along the Jordan River.

"But this isn't the extent of it," Mr. Tenet said. "We have to assume there's more. And possibly a lot more." In addition to what had been uncovered in Jordan, the CIA now had evidence that Americans could face from five to 15 attacks by terrorists linked to Mr. bin Laden. The news rattled Mr. Tenet's audience. "We basically looked at each other and said, `Holy s---, this is serious,'" another participant says.

Then came Mr. Clarke, a dour veteran diplomat who keeps a gas mask and a mock anthrax vaccine in his office. Placed before each of the officials was a thick document titled, "Millennium Threats Plan." Mr. Clarke and his staff had spent the weekend drafting the secret plan, which would become the government's blueprint for action once it was approved by President Clinton.

The core strategy couldn't have been more basic: Overseas, the U.S. would ask the intelligence services of friendly countries from South America to Southeast Asia to do the dirty work of questioning people, arresting some on petty charges, denying them visas, deporting them.

Coming out of the White House meeting, the Clinton administration faced a delicate decision: how and when to publicly disclose its concern without provoking panic, and without alerting any operatives who may have eluded capture in the Jordan sweep.

State Department officials argued about it for two days. At one heated session, the department's chief of diplomatic security, David Carpenter, said he wasn't convinced a global warning was warranted. "What specifics do we have? We need to know more," he said, according to one person present. The warning issued Dec. 11 cautioned travelers that the government had "credible information" about possible terrorist attacks "specifically targeting American citizens." But it was only for travelers abroad and it specified no country.

Three days later, the U.S. antiterrorism effort bagged its first prize. At the behest of a top U.S. Marine general acquainted with Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani plainclothes agents swarmed into a two-story house on the edge of Peshawar and collared Khalil Deek, a pudgy computer engineer with a taste for wild honey and radical Islam.

U.S. intelligence officials had tracked the onetime California resident for years before they had tied him, just days before, to the alleged Jordan plot. From behind the high wall surrounding his rented, whitewashed villa, Mr. Deek ran a small computer school and exported drums of local honey to the Middle East, according to neighbors.

U.S. authorities say his house near the Afghan border also served as a way station for recruits heading in and out of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Calendars with photographs of machine guns hung on the wall, and an Arabic paperback, "Thoughts on Judgment Day," sat on a windowsill. Computers hauled out of the house contained more bomb-making plans and a terrorist training video apparently shot in Afghanistan.

Mr. Deek is now in custody in Amman, where he was flown two days after his arrest. Documents found on the men arrested in Amman linked Mr. Deek to their plot, U.S. officials say. He faces a possible death penalty on Jordanian charges that he plotted a terrorist attack. He has pleaded not guilty.

The arrest was good news because, by now, authorities in Jordan had found a cache of ammonium nitrate, a chemical sometimes used in homemade bombs, and determined that the suspects may have planned to use a truck bomb to destroy the SAS Radisson, an Amman hotel popular with Westerners.

But the news wasn't all good. The U.S. also had wanted the Pakistanis to grab Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian who the U.S. thinks worked as an organizer at terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and helped plan the Jordan plot. U.S. intelligence thought Mr. Zubaydah was in Pakistan, but efforts to track him down then -- and since -- have come to naught.

Later on the day of Mr. Deek's arrest, U.S. officials were blindsided by news from their own country. A U.S. customs agent, acting purely on a hunch, opened the trunk of a rented Chrysler at a sleepy border post north of Seattle. Inside he found a cache of circuit boards and highpowered explosives.

The car's driver, Ahmed Ressam, was a 28-year-old in baggy clothes who spoke little English and tried to flee when questioned. In his car's wheel well, authorities found other suspicious items, including powders and a syrupy liquid. Samples were hustled to a nearby crime lab, where analysts determined that Mr. Ressam had brought from Canada the makings of several bombs. He had ties to at least one militant Algerian group in Montreal, and investigators found evidence that he had spent time in an Afghan terrorist camp known for training Algerians.

Authorities were glad to have Mr. Ressam behind bars, but dismayed to realize that sheer luck had put him there. As far-reaching as the U.S. effort had been, no one had focused on the possibility of foreign militants infiltrating from Canadaexcept, it seemed, Mr. bin Laden.

So the U.S. moved to ratchet up the pressure on Afghanistan. Late that night, Michael Sheehan, the State Department's counterterrorism chief, picked up a secure phone in the kitchen of his house in Washington and called Afghanistan's foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil.

The country's ruling Taliban militia had sheltered Mr. bin Laden since 1995, refusing to turn him over to the West while disavowing any responsibility for his actions.

Mr. Sheehan told Mr. Muttawakil that the U.S. would no longer tolerate the Taliban's stance. Mr. bin Laden, Mr. Sheehan recalls saying, "is like a criminal who lives in your basement. It is no longer possible for you to act as if he's not your responsibility. He is your responsibility."

The implied threat was that, if terrorists linked to Mr. bin Laden struck, the U.S. might punish the Taliban -- possibly with military force. The minister said he understood, and urged that the U.S. use restraint. The U.S., fearing the repercussions of an attack on Afghanistan, quietly pulled its staff from the consulate across the border in Pakistan. The U.S. closed its embassy in Afghanistan in 1989.

At the same time, leads were pouring in to U.S. intelligence from around the world. Even sketchy reports, such as a tip about package bombs coming from Frankfurt, rocketed straight to the Clinton cabinet's attention.

With so much happening, FBI Director Louis Freeh drove to CIA headquarters in suburban Virginia for an impromptu meeting with his CIA counterpart. As Mr. Tenet chomped on an unlit cigar, the two men discussed the latest intelligence reports and sketched scenarios for possible yearend attacks. They agreed to send additional CIA and FBI agents to Europe, including a "clean team" trained in handling evidence to launch any formal investigations, and a "dirty team" with access to top-secret intelligence crucial to tracking down suspects in a hurry.

To maintain a calm public face, the administration set up twice-daily conference calls among press secretaries at the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and the FBI. After the government announced on Dec. 21 that it was tightening airport security and putting all U.S. military bases on "high alert," President Clinton tried to reassure citizens, telling them to "go about their holidays and enjoy themselves." The State Department's Mr. Sheehan vowed to spend New Year's Eve mingling in the crowd on the Washington Mall.

On Dec. 30, while other nations continued to roust suspected troublemakers around the world, FBI agents made a sweep of Arab-Americans in the U.S. whom they suspected of being linked to the millennium plots and tried to squeeze information out of them. Eight FBI agents backed up by two police cruisers paid a visit to Tawfiq Deek, brother of Khalil Deek, at his garden apartment in Anaheim, Calif. Agents fanned out in the complex to interview neighbors while two agents asked Tawfiq Deek if he knew of Muslim groups planning something in the next few days. "No way," Mr. Deek says he told them.

On New Year's Eve, two dozen members of the U.S. terrorist-response team waited at an air base in southern Europe, ready to leave immediately for any site where an attack might occur. A fleet of response aircraft, poised for a domestic attack, waited to move in the U.S. The CIA, worried it might have missed something, ran the electronic files from Jordan through its computers again, using fresh search criteria. What they feared most was what they didn't know, an anxiety that plagues them even now.

Officials concede that they were blindsided by the threat of terrorism from Canada, and they have moved to tighten border controls and cooperation with Ottawa. The events of December have focused more attention on the threat of bin Laden-planned attacks within the U.S. But the larger lesson for some officials was that, by its sheer scale, the $7 billion-a-year U.S. counterterrorism effort seemed to be working -- at least for the moment.

As midnight and the new millennium neared, Mr. Freeh worked the FBI's strategic operations center. Mr. Sheehan ventured down to the celebration on the mall, keeping the promise he had made. Mr. Clarke and his White House team watched the festivities from a rooftop, lingering until midnight tolled in California.

But the only explosions were the fireworks bursting over the Washington Monument. After the show, President Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, called Mr. Clarke on his mobile phone. "How's everything been?" Mr. Berger asked.

"We've won this battle," Mr. Clarke told him, "but the war definitely isn't over."

"As midnight and the new millennium neared, Mr. Freeh worked the FBI's strategic operations center. Mr. Sheehan ventured down to the celebration on the mall, keeping the promise he had made. Mr. Clarke and his White House team watched the festivities from a rooftop, lingering until midnight tolled in California."

Hhhhmmmmm......

So that was the core Clinton strategy, deny these people visas and deport them? Maybe send them into exile in Afghanistan. This is called the "dirty work"? I guess just going ahead and killing the terrorists who want to destroy America would have caused a wrinkle in the golden Clinton legacy. These idiots should have stuck to interns.

U.S. officials were blindsided by news from their own country. A U.S. customs agent, acting purely on a hunch, opened the trunk of a rented Chrysler at a sleepy border post north of Seattle. Inside he found a cache of circuit boards and highpowered explosives.

But Richard Clarke and the Clinton people say that they stopped the Millenium attacks by having meetings and "shaking the trees."!!!

"A U.S. customs agent, acting purely on a hunch, opened the trunk of a rented Chrysler at a sleepy border post north of Seattle. Inside he found a cache of circuit boards and highpowered explosives."

Thank God for him!

Another excellent post, nwrep. Thanks for the ping.

thank God for HER - Condi mentioned her name during the hearings, but I forget it - she is quite the national hero, but we must let fools like Clarke take the credit.

"thank God for HER - Condi mentioned her name during the hearings, but I forget it - she is quite the national hero, but we must let fools like Clarke take the credit."

I did think that it was actually a "her" who foiled this plot, but the article stated it was a "him". I don't believe the article was giving credit for her heroism and quick thinking to Clarke, though.

"Later on the day of Mr. Deek's arrest, U.S. officials were blindsided by news from their own country.A U.S. customs agent, acting purely on a hunch, opened the trunk of a rented Chrysler at a sleepy border post north of Seattle. Inside he found a cache of circuit boards and highpowered explosives."

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