Ashcroft: Clinton Admin. Missed Best Chance to Avoid 9/11

NewsMax.com ^ | 4/15/04 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[kattracks]

Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday that a secret plan formulated by ex-terrorism czar Richard Clarke in March 2000 could have foiled the 9/11 attacks - if it hadn't been ignored by the Clinton administration.

"After the Millenium Plot in the year 2000, the staff of national security operation under Dick Clarke had developed recommendations for what we should do to avoid terrorist attack," Ashcroft told national radio host Sean Hannity.

"And those [recommendations] were just basically ignored."

Noting that the Clarke plan was finished well before President Bush took over, Ashcroft said "there were ten months left of the Clinton administration. And then we came in and had seven months plus some days before we got to 9/11."

But Ashcroft charged that Clinton officials never told the incoming Bush administration about the Clarke plan.

"Never was this plan briefed, never was this plan made available by those who had written it, those who allege that during the time of the summer of 2001 we should be doing everything possible," he complained. "They never went and said, 'Well, here's what we had previously recommended.'"

The plan is still "highly classified," Ashcroft told Hannity. "But it has the kind of things in it which we have done since 9/11 . . . all the kinds of things we've taken a lot of heat for doing since 9/11."

"You wonder if that wouldn't have been the best chance at avoiding the 9/11 circumstance had that been, instead of filed in March of 2000, followed in March of 2000," the top lawman said.

But Ashcroft said there were other problems with the Clinton administration's approach to the war on terror, saying that the FBI's information technology "architecture" had been starved in the previous decade.

"That architecture had been starved through the 1990s. The last year of the Clinton administration spent $36 million less on information technology than the last year of the [first] Bush administration" in 1992.

Asked if he thought 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick should resign over conflicts of interest that he brought to light during Tuesday's commission hearing, Ashcroft said, "That's a decision that the Commission is going to have to make. . . Whether it's going to have standards that would reflect a disaffection for those kinds of conflicts or whether it's going to ignore that."

"My feeling was that they ought to know that this was the circumstance and it was a fact that simply hadn't been made known," he added.

Ashcroft also reacted to NewsMax.com's audiotape of ex-President Clinton admitting he turned down a 1996 offer from Sudan to have Osama bin Laden arrested - "because we had no basis on which to hold him."

"It sounds as if the [ex-] president is stating another reason for not having him or taking him, rather than the absence of his availability," Ashcroft told Hannity.

When pressed him on whether Clinton should have accepted the offer, Ashcroft demurred, explaining, "The circumstances in 1996 are not circumstances that I'm expert on."

In 1995, bin Laden was named by federal prosecutors in New York as an unindicted co-conspirator in the first World Trade Center bombing. He had also been implicated in a November 1995 attack in Riyadh that killed five Americans.

[ALOHA RONNIE]

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...3 Offers that were given to the CLINTON White House by MONSOOR IJAZ to bring OSAMA to America during the 1990's =

...3 Offers that were refused by the CLINTON White House =

September 11, 2001



'Freeper Alert: MONSOOR IJAZ gets PRIVATE 9/11 Testimony, demands IN PUBLIC'

http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1117043/posts

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[sarasota]

Ashcroft is showing his set.

[malia]

I'm impressed!!

[Just mythoughts]

""After the Millenium Plot in the year 2000, the staff of national security operation under Dick Clarke had developed recommendations for what we should do to avoid terrorist attack," Ashcroft told national radio host Sean Hannity."


Talk about "compartmentalize"! That was the buzz word about how bill clinton was doing such a good job as president and not be distracted by chasing women.


Why then if Clarke has such a good plan did he not write his book about his plan?

Could it be that the Bush Administration were blind sided by people left in government who were ticked that Gore was not elected?

Every time another witness testifies our government looks like a cement honeycomb.

[gcruse]

Ashcroft is showing his set.

On a friendly talk radio show?  Yeah, he's a regular General Patton.

Given that Ashcroft was denying increased counterterrorism funding as late as 9/10/01, I doubt he would have been one to remedy the 'starvation' of the intel community, much less fund a Clinton era plan.  He wouldn't even fund his own 'top priority' .

[sarasota]

I read the May 9 and 10 posts on the link but guess I'm missing the point. What does your 20:20 hindsight perspective tell you?

[gcruse]

May 9 = he tells a committee that terrorism is top priority.
May 10 = he directs that upcoming budgets put top priority to guns and drugs. THERE IS NO MENTION OF COUNTERTERRORISM.

Sept 10 = he answers cries for increased antiterrorism funding with, "No."

[AFPhys]

What most bothers me about this whole thing is the news media are not trumpeting the FACT that the Bush administration had embarked on a complete review and reframing of the way the terrorist threat was going to be handled. They were hamstrung by the delay due to the 2000 election debacle, plus maintaining so many Clinton appointees in responsible positions in an effort to have more continuity of operations until they were able to complete their reorganization plans, but they in fact did come up with that plan, I believe as of Sep.4,2001. A bit late, and probably rather revamped after 9/11... but they were certainly addressing the trouble. They also made an effort to compartmentalize such fools as Mr.Clarke who were wedded to the past methodologies hoping to minimize the impact when they finally understood the way they needed to go to get the job done.

When the media starts to get it right, I'll faint, though...

[sarasota]

OK. I didn't miss the point re: the past. May 9 and 10 were two seperate agendas. I don't personally have a problem with that. September 10 still held the same view. Ashcroft clarified things for me during the 9.11 hearings when he said that, had he been convinced that there would be an imminent attack he would have completely supported a strong counter attack. What else do you think he could/should have done? I fail to see how our Monday morning quarterbacking is doing anything but diminishing the current administration. Just my opinion.

[Just mythoughts]

"What most bothers me about this whole thing is the news media are not trumpeting the FACT that the Bush administration had embarked on a complete review and reframing of the way the terrorist threat was going to be handled. They were hamstrung by the delay due to the 2000 election debacle, plus maintaining so many Clinton appointees in responsible positions in an effort ...."


I do agree. The media is working overtime to paint the picture Bush administration allowed and or caused 9/11.

[gcruse]

What disturbs me is that he told Congress terrorism was a top priority, which was a lie, as evidenced by him not including it in budget considerations. But his anti-liberty drug war got top billing. Then, when the FBI pleaded for antiterrorism funding, he said no. That was the day before 9/11. Not even too little too late, but rather nothing, too late.

Ashcroft's moralizing agenda continued it force in the weeks after 9/11, as he kept FBI agents in New Orleans investigating whore houses while the nation was in the grip of fearing domestic terrorism. His priorities are those of a zealot.

The cloying praise of Ashcroft that permeates FR is misplaced and sad to behold.

[Stentor]

I read the May 9 and 10 posts on the link but guess I'm missing the point.

Because of the reductionist reasoning required to get the point. Ashcroft had the temerity to attack the concept of unlimited ganja for everyone.