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Thank you so much for the ping to the fascinating post about the wall, Richard Scruggs, Mary Lawton and all!

The Downside Legacy notes only two incidents concerning Scruggs - both of which indicate that he was politically minded and the latter, that he was not adept at intelligence work.

Concerning Waco - on October 8, 1993 Richard Scruggs, a friend of Reno and head of Justice Department intelligence division wrote the 350 page after action report; Justice Department said in the report that the FBI and ATF acted responsibly and Koresh was to blame; the report was “The gas delivery systems the FBI used were completely nonincendiary”; to the contrary, the FBI told Justice w/I months of the raid it had used incendiary devices but the information was not made available to Congress or the public; the official reports do not mention the hole in the bunker roof or the involvement of ATF dealings with Special Forces senior officers

2. Mishandling of classified information. Politically motivated lack of prosecution:

THE WASHINGTON TIMES 2/14/00 Bill Gertz “….. The Justice Department did not prosecute the former head of its intelligence division despite his admission to investigators that he disclosed classified information, The Washington Times has learned. Richard Scruggs, a friend of Attorney General Janet Reno's, who brought him to Washington, provided secret information to two reporters about an electronic eavesdropping FBI operation against the Japanese group Aum Shin Rikyo in 1995, according to Justice Department officials familiar with the case. Justice Department officials disclosed some aspects of the investigation into unauthorized disclosure on condition of anonymity. It is the first time information has been disclosed from the secret court set up under the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Justice Department's downplaying of the Scruggs findings is similar to the CIA's limited response to former director John Deutch, who was caught mishandling classified documents but not prosecuted. In both cases, government officials have charged that security infractions were covered up to protect senior personnel……”

THE WASHINGTON TIMES 2/14/00 Bill Gertz “…..Mr. Scruggs also was singled out for criticism in a recent internal Justice Department report on the department's mishandling of the case of fired Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, who is suspected of passing nuclear weapons secrets to China. The report by Justice official Randy Bellows criticized Mr. Scruggs for his role in setting the department's intelligence policy, including the decision not to seek a court order allowing the FBI to place Mr. Lee under surveillance early in the espionage investigation. One former U.S. government official said Mr. Scruggs' treatment showed the department covered up security infractions by senior officials, but aggressively pursued similar misconduct for lower-ranking officials. Numerous FBI investigations have been ordered by the Justice Department into other leaks of classified information…….. .CIA Director George Tenet, who is in charge of protecting all secrets, was never notified of the leak investigation, the officials said. The committees of Congress with oversight responsibility for the intelligence community also were not informed…..”

See my #733 for more info on Scruggs. Also found this:

In his public testimony before the 9/11 Commission the other day, Attorney General John Ashcroft exposed Commissioner Jamie Gorelick's role in undermining the nation's security capabilities by issuing a directive insisting that the FBI and federal prosecutors ignore information gathered through intelligence investigations. But Ashcroft pointed to another document that also has potentially explosive revelations about the Clinton administration's security failures. Ashcroft stated, in part:

... [T]he Commission should study carefully the National Security Council plan to disrupt the al Qaeda network in the U.S. that our government failed to implement fully seventeen months before September 11.
The NSC's Millennium After Action Review declares that the United States barely missed major terrorist attacks in 1999 — with luck playing a major role. Among the many vulnerabilities in homeland defenses identified, the Justice Department's surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized for their glaring weaknesses. It is clear from the review that actions taken in the Millennium Period should not be the operating model for the U.S. government.
In March 2000, the review warns the prior Administration of a substantial al Qaeda network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here. [AD info?]
Furthermore, fully seventeen months before the September 11 attacks, the review recommends disrupting the al Qaeda network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls.
These are the same aggressive, often criticized law enforcement tactics we have unleashed for 31 months to stop another al Qaeda attack. These are the same tough tactics we deployed to catch Ali al-Marri, who was sent here by al Qaeda on September 10, 2001, to facilitate a second wave of terrorist attacks on Americans.
Despite the warnings and the clear vulnerabilities identified by the NSC in 2000, no new disruption strategy to attack the al Qaeda network within the United States was deployed. It was ignored in the Department's five-year counterterrorism strategy.
I did not see the highly-classified review before September 11. It was not among the 30 items upon which my predecessor briefed me during the transition. It was not advocated as a disruption strategy to me during the summer threat period by the NSC staff which wrote the review more than a year earlier.
I certainly cannot say why the blueprint for security was not followed in 2000. I do know from my personal experience that those who take the kind of tough measures called for in the plan will feel the heat. I've been there; I've done that. So the sense of urgency simply may not have overcome concern about the outcry and criticism which follows such tough tactics."
National Review

It goes on to explain what Ashcroft meant, in detail.

But this gets better...

I certainly have no conclusions or particular insight into the Sandy Berger Affair, but neither does my hometown paper...The Washington Post has by far the most informative coverage. A name immediately jumped out at me from its report--Richard A. Clarke. He's the author of the missing documents? Who'd a thunk it? The President's very nemesis (at least until he admitted no one could have prevented 9/11). Could the missing "notes" stuffed into Berger's pockets have something to do with Clarke as well? Beats me.

The missing copies, according to Breuer and their author, Richard A. Clarke, the counterterrorism chief in the Clinton administration and early in President Bush's administration, were versions of after-action reports recommending changes following threats of terrorism as 1999 turned to 2000. Clarke said he prepared about two dozen ideas for countering terrorist threats. The recommendations were circulated among Cabinet agencies, and various versions of the memo contained additions and refinements, Clarke said last night.

Source

Now we know why Sandy Burglar's sentencing was delayed at the onset of the Able Danger story.

Found this:

Here is another reference that is a lot less cryptic, and might easily prompt many follow-up questions about documents, after-action reports, and Sandy Berger. From the footnotes on p. 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).

And to what does footnote (46) refer? On p. 117, Chapter 4, we find this:

Later on August 20, Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea fired their cruise missiles. 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. (46)

How about that? How many times have we heard Clinton say that he missed Bin Ladin by just a few hours? Yet the after-action report is missing, so the Commission relied on Sandy Berger's testimony.

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