Clinton Signed Off on Berger bin Laden Blunders
Documents uncovered by the 9/11 Commission suggest that disgraced former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger vetoed several attacks planned in 1999 and 2000 on Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan hideouts.
But while Berger may have advised against attacking bin Laden, remarks by President Clinton two years ago indicate that he personally quashed the plans.
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As first detailed by the New York Sun on Friday, the 9/11 Commission report cites a document detailing a June 1999 plan to launch cruise missiles into a bin Laden encampment known as Tarnak Farms.
In notes handwritten in the margin, Berger cited "the presence of 7 to 11 families in the Tarnak Farms facility, which could mean 60-65 casualties," then warned, "if he responds, we’re blamed."
In February 2002 President Clinton discussed what sounded like the same plan to target Tarnak Farms, which is located near Khandahar. [In his version, Clinton inflated the potential casualties from 65 to 200.]
"The real issue is should we have attacked the al-Qaida network in 1999 or in 2000 in Afghanistan," he told a Long Island business group two years ago.
"The only place bin Laden ever went that we knew was occasionally he went to Khandahar, where he always spent the night in a compound that had 200 women and children. So I could have, on any given night, ordered an attack that I knew would kill 200 women and children that had less than a 50 percent chance of getting him."
Clinton continued:
"Now, after he murdered 3,100 of our people and others who came to our country seeking their livelihood you may say, 'Well, Mr. President, you should have killed those 200 women and children.' But at the time we didn't think he had the capacity to do that. And no one thought that I should do that. Although I take full responsibility for it."
According to the Commission, Berger advised against at least three other plans to capture or kill bin Laden during the same 1999-2000 time frame.
But in his 2002 speech, Clinton explained that he made the final call on at least one of those plans to snare the al-Qaida leader.
"We actually trained to do this. I actually trained people to do this. We trained people," the ex-president recalled.
"But in order to do it, we would have had to take them in on attack helicopters 900 miles from the nearest boat - maybe illegally violating the airspace of people if they wouldn't give us approval. And we would have had to do a refueling stop."
Without mentioning Berger, Clinton said that "the military recommended against it [because] there was a high probability that it wouldn't succeed."
In his April 8, 2004, testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Clinton took two aides with him: longtime damage controller Bruce Lindsey - and Sandy Berger.
Former CIA Director John Deutch was pardoned by Clinton just hours before Clinton left office in 2001 for taking home classified information and keeping it on unsecured computers at his home during his time at the CIA and Pentagon. Deutch was about to enter into a plea agreement for a misdemeanor charge of mishandling government secrets when the pardon was granted.