Remember

Bill Clinton's failure on terrorism
By Richard Miniter
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030...2358-9367r.htm


Clinton administration counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke
attended a meeting with Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Director of
Central Intelligence George Tenet, Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, Attorney General Janet Reno, and others. Several others were
in the room, including Leon Fuerth, Gore's national security advisor;
Jim Steinberg, the deputy National Security Advisor; and Michael
Sheehan, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism. An
American warship had been attacked without warning in a "friendly"
harbor — and, at the time, no one knew if the ship's pumps could keep
it afloat for the night. Now they had to decide what to do about it.

Mr. Clarke had no doubts about whom to punish. The Joint Chiefs of
Staff had compiled thick binders of bin Laden and Taliban targets in
Afghanistan, complete with satellite photographs and GPS bomb
coordinates — the Pentagon's "target decks." The detailed plan was "to
level" every bin Laden training camp and compound in Afghanistan as
well as key Taliban buildings in Kabul and Kandahar. "Let's blow them
up," Clarke said. . . . Around the table, Clarke heard only objections —
not a mandate for action.

This is how Clarke remembers the meeting, which has never before
been described in the press. . . . Attorney General Janet Reno insisted
that they had no clear idea who had actually carried out the attack.
The "Justice [Department] also noted, as always, that any use of force
had to be consistent with international law, i.e. not retaliation but
self protection from future attack," Clarke told the author. Reno could
not be reached for comment.

Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet joined Reno in
insisting on an investigation before launching a retaliatory strike.
Tenet "did not want a months-long investigation," CIA spokesman Bill
Harlow said. "He simply believed that before the United States
attacked, it ought to know for sure who was behind the Cole bombing."
While Tenet noted that the CIA had not reached a conclusion about what
terror group was behind the surprise attack on the USS Cole, "he said
personally he thought that it would turn out to be al Qaeda," Clarke
recalls.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was also against a
counterstrike — but for diplomatic reasons. "We're desperately trying
to halt the fighting that has broken out between Israel and the
Palestinians," Albright said. Clarke recalls her saying, "Bombing
Muslims wouldn't be helpful at this time." Some two weeks earlier,
Ariel Sharon had visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which touched
off a wave of violence known as the "second Intifada" and threatened to
completely destroy the Clinton Administration's hopes for Middle East
peace settlement.

Mr. Clarke remembers other objections from the State
Department. "State noted that we had been bombing Iraq and Serbia and
were getting the reputation internationally as a mad bomber nation that
could only address its problems that way." "It would be irresponsible,"
a spokeswoman for Albright told the author, for the Secretary of State,
as America's chief diplomat, not to consider the diplomatic impact of a
missile strike that might try but would quite likely fail to kill bin
Laden.

Albright urged continued diplomatic efforts to persuade the Taliban
to turn over bin Laden. Those efforts had been going on for more than
two years and had gone nowhere. It was unlikely that the Taliban would
ever voluntarily turn over its strongest internal ally. . . .

Secretary of Defense Cohen also did not favor a retaliatory strike,
according to Mr. Clarke. The attack "was not sufficient provocation,"
Clarke remembers Cohen saying, or words to that effect. Cohen thought
that any military strike needed a "clear and compelling justification,"
Clarke recalls. (Cohen, despite repeated phone calls over more than one
week, failed to respond to interview requests.) Cohen also noted that
General Anthony Zinni, then head of CENTCOM, was concerned that a major
bombing campaign would cause domestic unrest in Pakistan (where bin
Laden enjoyed strong support among extremists) and hurt the U.S.
military's relationship with that nation.

Mr. Cohen's views were perfectly in accord with those of the top
uniformed officers and Clinton's political appointees at the Pentagon,
Sheehan told the author. "It was the entire Pentagon," he added. The
chief lesson that the Defense Department seemed to draw from the
assault on the USS Cole was the need for better security for its ships,
what was invariably called "force protection." Listening to Cohen and
later talking to top military officers, Sheehan, a former member of
Special Forces before joining the State Department, told the author
that he was "stunned" and "taken aback" by their views. "This
phenomenon I cannot explain," he said. Why didn't they want to go hit
back at those who had just murdered American servicemen without warning
or provocation?

The issue was hotly debated. Some of the principals were concerned
that bin Laden might somehow survive the cruise-missile attack and
appear in another triumphant press conference. Clarke countered by
saying that they could say that they were only targeting terrorist
infrastructure. If they got bin Laden, they could take that as a bonus.
Others worried about target information. At the time, Clarke said that
he had very reliable and specific information about bin Laden's
location. And so on. Each objection was countered and answered with a
yet another objection.

In the end, for a variety of reasons, the principals were against
Mr. Clarke's retaliation plan by a margin of seven to one against. Mr.
Clarke was the sole one in favor. Bin Laden would get away — again.


Bill Clinton's indifference

CIA Director James Woolsey was fighting other bureaucratic battles —
instead of [Osama] bin Laden. The CIA was critically short of
translators who spoke or read Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and the other
languages of the great "terrorist belt." That belt begins on the dirty
beaches of Somalia, arcs up the river valleys of Sudan and Egypt,
across the desert flats of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states,
over the dry plateaus of Syria and Iraq, past the wastes of Iran,
through the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and ends in the cold
steppes of Central Asia. In the world's most terror-prone region, the
CIA was essentially blind, deaf, and dumb.

Partly as a result, the intelligence community was able to decipher
and translate less than ten percent of the volume of telephone and
other intercepts gained from its extensive networks of spy satellites
and listening stations. Indeed, throughout the Islamic world, even many
radio and television news reports went untranslated. While state-run
broadcasts from the Communist bloc were a prime source of intelligence
during the Cold War, in the Clinton years the CIA did not have the same
capability against militant Islamists. And that deficiency was largely
Clinton's fault.

Mr. Woolsey hoped to fix these dangerous deficiencies, but he ran
into congressional roadblocks. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, Arizona Democrat,
repeatedly blocked any attempts to boost the CIA's budget for Arabic
translators.

Mr. Woolsey and Mr. DeConcini came to viscerally dislike each
other. The senator told the author that he lost faith in Woolsey when
he defended the secret construction of a $300 million National
Reconnaissance Office headquarters in Northern Virginia. When Woolsey
privately warned the senator against speaking publicly about sensitive
intelligence information, Mr. DeConcini was outraged. He said he phoned
both Clinton and [National Security Advisor Tony] Lake, threatening to
demand Woolsey's resignation on the floor of the U.S. Senate unless
Woolsey apologized. Mr. Woolsey never apologized, and Mr. DeConcini
never forgave him. As a result, Mr. Woolsey estimates that two-thirds
of all his meetings on Capitol Hill were about undoing spending cuts
proposed by DeConcini, then a key Senate Appropriations Subcommittee
chairman. Woolsey had made a powerful enemy and America's security
would pay the price.

When Mr. Woolsey suggested spending a few million dollars to hire
Arabic-language translators in 1994, the feud with Mr. DeConcini
intensified. Mr. DeConcini said he would only approve the request if it
was a presidential priority. "I wanted to be sure," Mr. DeConcini told
the author, "that Woolsey was not out on his own, like a cowboy." If
Mr. Woolsey did have Clinton's ear, it is unlikely DeConcini would have
blocked the CIA's efforts to hire more translators.

Would the senator have given the CIA the money if Mr. Clinton
wanted it? Mr. DeConcini did not hesitate. "Absolutely."

Some might be tempted to blame Mr. DeConcini alone. To be sure,
without congressional approval, it would be illegal for the CIA to
shift even one dollar from one part of its estimated $30 billion budget
to hire translators. But DeConcini called the president at least once
and National Security Advisor Tony Lake many times, and never received
a definitive response on whether hiring Arabic translators for the CIA
was a presidential priority. With no such assurance, DeConcini felt
confident in rejecting it. A Democratic senator does not lightly defy a
Democratic president over a relatively small spending measure needed
for national security, DeConcini insisted. But if Clinton wasn't
interested, DeConcini would not be defying the president. The senator
would have a free hand to thwart Woolsey.Withoutabsolving DeConcini,
Woolsey seems to acknowledge this point: "This was DeConcini's way of
using the fact that I had no particular access to the president to turn
down my request."

So, Mr. Clinton's ostracism of Mr. Woolsey had weakened his hand in
Congress and weakened the CIA at a critical time. Then the fecklessness
of Mr. Clinton and his White House would only make matters worse. Over
the next few months, the senator said that he called the president at
least once and could not get a clear answer on the translator
appropriation. He also phoned Lake many times, but never received a
definitive response. Apparently the White House did not think hiring
CIA translators to monitor terrorist states was very important.

On the day that the appropriations subcommittee was voting on the
CIA budget, Lake finally called DeConcini back about the
translators. "It wasn't the eleventh hour," Mr. DeConcini said, "it was
the twelfth hour." Did the White House want the funds? As Mr. DeConcini
recalls, Lake responded tentatively, "Well, we want some of that."

"Well, it's too late," DeConcini said. Lake, he recalls, did not
object or argue. There would be no funding for the translators. "I
don't bear him [Woolsey] any ill feeling," DeConcini said. "He just
wasn't in a position to get what he wanted. I guess the term would
be 'screwed by the White House.' "

So, a bureaucratic feud and President Clinton's indifference kept
America blind and deaf as bin Laden plotted.


Unprepared for battle

ClintonAdministration counter-terrorismczar Richard Clarke helped
develop a daring covert-operation plan. Helicopters launched from an
aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean would deposit Special Forces near
a bin Laden camp. Hours before dawn, using night-vision scopes, the
commandos would surprise bin Laden's guards and kill or capture the
arch-terrorist. But the plan had to run a bureaucratic obstacle course.

The first hurdle was cleared in the spring of 1998. In the middle
of "Monica-gate," Clinton signed a secret memorandum of notification —
informally called a "finding" — that explicitly allowed the CIA and
other U.S. armed forces to take actions that might lead to bin Laden's
death. Before the finding was signed, the military and the CIA were
supposed to avoid any action that might, conceivably, result in the
death of bin Laden or other targeted persons. Unfortunately, the
finding was not a death warrant. Clinton's order did not overturn a
long-standing ban on political assassinations. The legal distinction
was Clintonesque: Bin Laden could be killed accidentally, but not on
purpose. So, a covert team could accidentally shoot bin Laden in the
crossfire, but not aim at him. At least inside America's increasingly
rule-laden intelligence services, this was seen as a major bureaucratic
step forward. Operatives no longer had to avoid actions that might set
off a chain of events that might possibly result in bin Laden's death.
If bin Laden was killed, the covert team would have little to fear from
military or Justice Department lawyers. Ordinarily, if a covert
operation turned lethal, a federal criminal investigation could be
launched.

The next bureaucratic hurdle was bigger: What if bin Laden was
taken alive? CIA analysts considered that possibility remote — they
believed that bin Laden would "martyr" himself rather than be taken a
prisoner. But if bin Laden was captured, the policy was that he would
be put on trial. Moving along a parallel track, the FBI and a New York
U.S. Attorney had been preparing charges against bin Laden since
January 1998. Bin Laden was accused of murdering Americans in Somalia
in 1993 and in Riyadh in 1995, among other offenses. The secret charges
were formally handed up by a grand jury sometime in the spring of 1998.
The indictment was sealed and remained secret for months. But it was in
force. Now, by summer 1998, the second hurdle was cleared. The Justice
Department had a plan for putting bin Laden on trial.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Special Forces Command and CIA planners
continued to draft a detailed operations plan. All of the elements were
in place for a bold covert operation to take bin Laden, dead or alive.
But it was the plan, not bin Laden, that was soon killed.

The problem was the CIA, Clarke told the author. Director of
Central Intelligence George Tenet asked that the plan be extensively
revised, touching off another months-long cycle of meetings, drafts,
and consultations. Tenet's stated reasons sounded as if he was either
repeating or anticipating White House objections. Bin Laden and his
band often traveled with their wives and children, raising the risk of
unintended civilian deaths. That would be unacceptable to the
president. (Of course, bin Laden had no qualms about civilian deaths.)
Tenet wanted better safeguards for non-combatants.

Yet another concern came from the Pentagon: U.S. military
casualties. Once a firefight began, it would be very difficult to
extract wounded or trapped soldiers. If the mission went sour, dozens
of Americans would be dead and bin Laden might escape. The military
wanted a war without casualties or risks. The planners went back to the
drawing board.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry H.
Shelton, opposed a small Special Forces operation. Rather than oppose
the operation directly, the general fell back on a favorite Pentagon
tactic: counteroffer with a proposed operation so large that the
president and his senior staff would back down. This is a time-honored
technique for killing ideas that the Pentagon opposes. Without giving
away his motivation, Shelton explained his reasoning to Barton Gellman
of the Washington Post. "The greatest risk is that you would have a
helicopter or a [special-operations] aircraft that would encounter
mechanical problems over those great distances, or you have an
accident. You want to have the capability if that happens to go in and
get them, which means a combat search-and-rescue capability, and if you
want to send those people in, you have to have an air-refueling
operation." At that point, thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen
would be involved, as well as several ships and dozens of aircraft.
That was far from the small, surgical operation Clarke and others had
in mind.

So, in the spring and summer of 1998, the Clinton Administration
was deadlocked. Tenet had essentially vetoed covert operations to seize
bin Laden. Clinton might have wanted to get bin Laden, but he didn't
want to overrule the Pentagon to do it. Neither could the president
stomach sending thousands of troops into harm's way, as General Shelton
proposed.

America was at war with bin Laden. But on America's side it was a
phony war, while America's adversaries were waging a real one.


Much known, little done

President Clinton's first opportunity to defeat Osama bin Laden
came late in the afternoon of March 3, 1996, in an Arlington, Virginia,
hotel suite. It was the first attempt by the Clinton Administration to
deal decisively with the arch-terrorist. It lasted less than 30
minutes.

Sudan's then?Minister of State for Defense Elfatih Erwa flew in for
a secret meeting with Timothy M. Carney, the U.S. ambassador to Sudan,
and David Shinn, Director of East African Affairs at the State
Department. Both Carney and Shinn were State Department veterans. Also
present was a middle-aged man who was a member of the CIA's Directorate
of Operations (Africa division) at the time and is still active with
the agency today. . . . The CIA believed, and its representative told
Erwa at the time, that some 200 al Qaeda terrorists were holed up in
Sudan. (The actual number, the author learned in Khartoum in 2002, was
as high as 583. . . .)

Five days later, Erwa again met with the CIA operative. This time,
the two State Department officials were not present. Erwa and the CIA
officer were alone as they decided the fate of Osama bin Laden.

Sudan offered to arrest and turn over bin Laden at this meeting,
according to Erwa. He brought up bin Laden directly. "Where should we
send him?" he asked. This was the key question. When Sudan turned over
the infamous Carlos the Jackal to French intelligence in 1994, the CIA
covertly provided satellite intelligence that allowed Sudanese
intelligence to capture him on a pretext and escort him to the VIP
lounge at the Khartoum airport. There, he was met by armed members of
French intelligence and flown to Paris in a special plane. Would the
CIA pick up bin Laden in Khartoum and fly him back to Washington,D.C.?
Or would bin Laden go to a third country?

The CIA officer was silent. It was obvious to Erwa that a decision
had not yet been made. Or perhaps his offer was not quite believed.
Yet, the Sudanese official was still hoping for a repeat of the French
scenario. Finally, the CIA official spoke. "We have nothing we can hold
him on," he carefully said. Erwa was surprised by this, but he didn't
let on. He was still hoping for a repeat of the French scenario, a
silent and quick operation to seize bin Laden and bring him to
justice. . . .

Sudan's files on bin Laden and his network were extensive. Sudan
had dossiers on all of bin Laden's financial transactions, every fax he
sent (the Mukhabarat had even bugged his fax machines), and every one
of bin Laden's terrorist associates and his dubious visitors. If
Sudan's surveillance was as good as Erwa claimed, bin Laden's entire
global terrorist network would be laid bare. And the CIA would be able
to track the movements of his foot soldiers and lieutenants across the
Middle East.

There were good reasons to believe that Sudan was serious about
taking action against bin Laden. . . . His terrorist activities had
isolated Sudan from the United States and much of the developed world.
Sudan's internal politics were moving against the terror master too.
President Bashir was in the midst of a power struggle against Hassan al-
Turabi, the Islamist leader. Bin Laden supported Turabi with cash and a
potential armed cadre of Muslim militants. If Bashir could rid himself
of bin Laden, he could simultaneously restart Sudan's relationship with
the United States and vanquish his chief internal political rival.

Over the next few months and years, Sudan would repeatedly try to
provide its voluminous intelligence files on bin Laden to the CIA, the
FBI, and senior Clinton Administration officials — and would be
repeatedly rebuffed through both formal and informal channels. This was
one of the greatest intelligence failures of the Clinton years — the
result of orders that came from the Clinton White House.

As the Clinton Administration was weighing whether to seize bin
Laden or take the opportunity to obtain valuable intelligence on his
global network, the CIA's own intelligence on bin Laden was shockingly
poor.

Human intelligence on al Qaeda was virtually nonexistent.
Washington Times investigative reporter Bill Gertz uncovered a memo
written only a few months after Sudan offered its intelligence on bin
Laden. The July 1, 1996, CIA memo was marked "TOP SECRET UMBRA,"
meaning only the case officers, analysts, and officials specifically
cleared to read the documents marked "UMBRA" could have access to this
sensitive document. The July 1996 memo reveals how ignorant America was
about its emerging nemesis. "We have no unilateral sources close to bin
Laden, nor any reliable way of intercepting his communications," the
report said. "We must rely on foreign intelligence services to confirm
his movements and activities."

This frank report reveals that as early as 1996 — five years before
the September 11 attacks — the CIA and other senior policymakers knew
about bin Laden-related intelligence failures. When it came to
rectifying the cause of these failures, however, little was done.


Richard Miniter is the author of "Losing bin Laden: How Bill
Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror." The excerpts are from that
book.

Just what I go to for "Fair and Balanced" reporting. An ultra-right newspaper owned by
the Moonies.



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Bill Clinton's failure on terrorism
By Richard Miniter
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030...2358-9367r.htm

Your failure as a human.
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bs deleted