From the Dick Morris Book: Off with Their Heads : Traitors, Crooks & Obstructionists in American Politics, Media & Business
Clinton knew every statistic, argument, and nuance of the issues he had made his own-welfare reform, deficit reduction, student performance, Head Start availability, crime, export promotion, and so on. But on terrorism, during his first term-the period I witnessed firsthand-he knew little and cared less.
All our terrorist problems were born during the Clinton years.
It was during his eight years in office that al Qaeda began its campaign of bombing and destruction aimed at the United States. It was then that the terrorist group orchestrated its first attack on the World Trade Center; hatched a plan to destroy New York's bridges and tunnels and the U.N. building; conceived an effort to destroy eleven U.S. passenger jetliners; twice bombed U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, killing nine-teen Americans; bombed American embassies in Africa; and attacked the U.S.S. Cole. Bill Clinton and his advisers were alerted to the group's power and intentions by these attacks. But they did nothing to stop al Qaeda from building up its resources for the big blow on 9/11.
Iraq was a subjugated nation when Clinton took office. Recently defeated in the Gulf War, its military infrastructure was largely destroyed. But under Clinton's intermittent and easily distracted gaze, Saddam Hussein took the opportunity to rebuild his military, expel U.N. arms inspectors, and open a spigot to get the money he needed to rearm under the so-called "oil for food" program. Moreover, on Clinton's watch the Iraqi dictator was able to rekindle his efforts to build nuclear weapons and further develop other arms of mass destruction.
North Korea first signaled its interest in developing nuclear weapons in 1994, when the issue was whether or not it would permit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor the disposition of spent nuclear fuel rods from its electric plant at Yongbyon, North Korea. The international crisis that followed reportedly led even President Clinton to contemplate a preemptive strike to destroy the fuel rods before they could be turned into fission-able material for nuclear bombs.
To defuse the crisis, former President Jimmy Carter traveled to Pyongyang to meet with North Korean leaders and see if a compromise could be reached. The agreement Clinton ultimately negotiated required North Korea to refrain from using the spent fuel rods to produce bomb-grade material and obliged them to accept IAEA inspection of the site. In return, the United States, Japan, and South Korea agreed to join in financing nonnuclear power plants in North Korea and to ship fuel and food to that beleaguered nation.
But Clinton was so eager to declare victory that he failed to monitor the enforcement of the deal as he should have. Americans were shocked in October 2002 when North Korea admitted it hadn't kept its end of the bargain-and was manufacturing fissionable material at a secret underground location.
All three critical situations America faces today-al Qaeda, Iraq, and North Korea-were either incubated or exacerbated on Bill Clinton's watch.
...
He didn't go [to the site of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993] because he chose to treat the attack as an isolated criminal act, devoid of serious foreign policy or military implications. The fact that this was the first foreign terrorist attack on American soil seems to have set off no alarm bells at the young Clinton White House. The president treated it as a crime rather than as a foreign policy emergency. He defined terrorism as a law enforcement problem, not as a matter of national security. To Bill Clinton, it was not unlike any other homicide.
Commenting on the former president's approach to fighting terror, Bill Gertz, in his best-selling book Breakdown, underscores how the administration saw terrorism in the context of law enforcement: "The Administration's primary goal here [in response to terrorism], as always was to identify terrorists, capture them, and return them for prosecution in a court of law. It was a reactive strategy that did nothing to deter attacks."
Excerpted from the PBS Frontline Program: The Man Who Knew
-Feb. 26, 1993: First WTC bombing.
-April 1993 Al Queda returns to Somalia to train locals for attacks on US forces.
-July 1993 Bojinka Plot: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed meets with the Pakastani later convicted for trying to blow up 12 planes, expressing keen interest in airline hijacking.
-Oct. 3-4, 1993 BLACK HAWK DOWN. Clinton response is trumpeted around the Arab world to this day showing weakness of USA.
-Late 1993 Al Queda plans Nairobi attack.
-January 1994 bin Laden funds Sudan terror training camps.
-August 1994 Morocco hotel attack linked to Afghan jihadi group
-December 1994 Bojinka Plot -- A Test Run Ramzi Yousef plants a small bomb on a Philippine Airlines plane.
-January 1995 Bojinka Plot discovered Khalid Shaikh Mohammed heavily involved.
-Jan. 20, 1995 In the Bojinka investigation, Manila police interview Abdul Hakim Murad. Murad describes his discussions with Ramzi Yousef about hijacking a commercial aircraft and flying it into the headquarters of the CIA.
March 4, 1995, policy directive issued to the CIA and the FBI by Jamie Gorelick, who was then Janet Reno's Assistant Attorney General, That policy directive, which in Gorelick's words was intended to "go beyond what is legally required," ordered the the FBI and the CIA to adopt procedures that would make impossible the sharing of international terrorist intelligence with domestic law enforcement agencies. (added from The View from 1776)
-August 1995 Bin Laden sends an open letter to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia calling for a campaign against U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia.
-January 1996 WHERE IS BIN LADEN? The FBI and CIA create a joint station, code-named ?Alex,? with the mission of tracking down bin Laden. Richard Clarke would later say that with the establishment of Station Alex, ?We were able over the course of about 18 months to go from thinking there was a bin Laden network to seeing it in 56 countries.?
-May 1996 Sudan Expels Bin Laden Clinton passes up FIRST OPPORTUNITY to get bin Laden.
-June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers Bombing, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Nineteen American soldiers are killed and 500 people injured .
-May 22, 1997 The Associated Press reports that senior FBI officials have determined terrorist groups are operating in America.
-Aug. 21, 1997 Evidence of Nairobi Al Qaeda Cell. No action taken.
-Feb. 23, 1998 Al Qaeda Calls for Killing Americans .
-August 1998 FAA Warns of Hijackings .
-Aug. 6, 1998 Egyptian Jihad's Warning The group, led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, warns of a ?message? they will be sending to Americans, ?which we hope they read with care, because we will write it, with God's help, in a language they will understand.?
-Aug. 7, 1998 Bombing of U.S. Embassies American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania are bombed almost simultaneously. The Kenya bombing kills 213 and injures 4,500; the Dar es Salaam bombing kills 11 and injures 85.
-June 7, 1999 Bin Laden Added to FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" List .
-December 1999 Alert: A Malaysia Meeting The CIA intercepts a phone conversation The callers discuss an upcoming January 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur. Officials learn that Khalid Almidhar, a Yemeni citizen believed to be the son-in-law of Al-Hada, and Nawaf Alhazmi, thought to be a Saudi national, will be attending the meeting. Both Almidhar and Alhazmi will later be hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 on Sept. 11.
-Dec. 14, 1999 Algerian native Ahmed Ressam is caught entering the U.S. with 130 pounds of explosives at the Canadian border at Port Angeles, Washington.
-January 2000 The Malaysia Meeting Several individuals linked to Al Qaeda meet in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. At the CIA's request, Malaysian agents photograph the meeting.
-Jan. 3, 2000 A cell of Yemeni terrorists try bombing the USS The Sullivans in Yemen's Aden Harbor, but fail when their overloaded skiff sinks.
-April 17, 2000 The Phoenix office of the FBI begins to investigate Zakaria Mustapha Soubra, a Phoenix flight school student suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda.
-August 2000 Italian investigators begin to record the conversations of Abdulsalam Ali Ali Abdulrahman. In one of the conversations Abdulrahman tells Abdelkader Moahmoud Es Sayad, an Egyptian suspected terrorist, that planes could be used as weapons against the U.S. According to the article, the FBI was aware of the conversations.
-Oct. 12, 2000 Attack on the USS Cole Two men in a skiff pull alongside the American destroyer and detonate an explosive that rips through the hull and kills 17 U.S. sailors.
So, nearly two years BEFORE September 11, we knew that terrorists had been planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons. We knew that terror cells were operating in the United States. We knew that the eventual hijackers on September 11 had been at a big pow-wow in Malaysia. We knew suspected Al Queda members were taking flight training in the United States.
But we couldn't "connect the dots" because A. Bill Clinton was not interested and B. His Assistant Attorney General had made it impossible for the FBI and CIA to effectively share this information.
Who's to blame for September 11 and the missed opportunites to snuff out Al Queda?
No comments:
Post a Comment