Posted on 07/25/2004 11:41:36 AM PDT by christie
I haven't seen this posted yet. I found an absolutely fantastic search engine for the 9/11 Commission's Final Report. It is speedy and detailed.
For example, I typed in Berger and under subheading NSC Memo
Paragraph #2565 (on page 482) 46. NSC email, Clarke to Kerrick,“Timeline,”Aug. 19, 1998; Samuel Berger interview (Jan. 14, 2004).We did not find documentation on the after-action review mentioned by Berger . On Vice Chairman Joseph Ralston’s mission in Pakistan, see William Cohen interview (Feb. 5, 2004). For speculation on tipping off the Taliban, see, e.g., Richard Clarke interview (Dec. 18, 2003).
Go to my anti-hillary web site and click on the banner at the top of the page to get to the search engine.
Please post page 117 to put this in context...
Thanks
ping
Useful resource Ping.
By the early hours of the morning of August 20, President Clinton and all his principal advisers had agreed to strike Bin Ladin camps in Afghanistan near Khowst, as well as hitting al Shifa. The President took the Sudanese tannery off the target list because he saw little point in killing uninvolved people without doing significant harm to Bin Ladin.
The principal with the most qualms regarding al Shifa was Attorney General Reno. She expressed concern about attacking two Muslim countries at the same time. Looking back, she said that she felt the “premise kept shifting.” 45 Later on August 20, Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea fired their cruise mis siles. Though most of them hit their intended targets, neither Bin Ladin nor any other terrorist leader was killed.
Berger told us that an after-action review by Director Tenet concluded that the strikes had killed 20–30 people in the camps but probably missed Bin Ladin by a few hours. Since the missiles headed for Afghanistan had had to cross Pakistan, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was sent to meet with Pakistan’s army chief of staff to assure him the missiles were not coming from India.
Officials in Washington speculated that one or another Pakistani official might have sent a warning to the Taliban or Bin Ladin.
The air strikes marked the climax of an intense 48-hour period in which Berger notified congressional leaders, the principals called their foreign counterparts, and President Clinton flew back from his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard to address the nation from the Oval Office. The President spoke to the congressional leadership from Air Force One, and he called British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from the White House.47
House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott initially supported the President. The next month, Gingrich’s office dismissed the cruise missile attacks as “pinpricks.”48 At the time, President Clinton was embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal, which continued to consume public attention for the rest of that year and the first months of 1999.
As it happened, a popular 1997 movie, Wag the Dog, features a president who fakes a war to distract public attention from a domestic scandal. Some Republicans in Congress raised questions about the timing of the strikes. Berger was particularly rankled by an editorial in the Economist that said that only the future would tell whether the U.S. missile strikes had “created 10,000 new fanatics where there would have been none.”49
Much public commentary turned immediately to scalding criticism that the action was too aggressive. The Sudanese denied that al Shifa produced nerve gas, and they allowed journalists to visit what was left of a seemingly harmless facility. President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Berger, Tenet, and Clarke insisted to us that their judgment was right, pointing to the soil sample evidence.
No independent evidence has emerged to corroborate the CIA’s assessment.
Thanks for the info....we need to make sure we have our ducks in a row when we report stuff on here.
Thanks. I was just trying to show an example of what the search engine output looked like.
"And check out my Anti-Hillary site."
Great work, christie!
I don't know if you have this link, but if you're working with Hillary info, you can probably use it. It alleviates a lot of 'HRC' frustration.
First time I've ever laughed looking at Evita.
bump
I don't know if you have this link, but if you're working with Hillary info, you can probably use it. It alleviates a lot of 'HRC' frustration.
Thought you'd like it.
Please pardon the double post. I met the Domino's guy at the door...had pizza and when I came back to my desk the page looked like I hadn't hit post.
Could we consider it a bump? :)
Ding ding! It sure rings a bell, doesn't it?
Thank you for the ping! There hasn't been a request for a search engine on the DSL since 2000, so I didn't pursue it any further. But I'll do some checking now.
Thanks for sharing that site with us it really is good. Love your Anti-Hillary site.
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