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| Guardian - US muddle aided Bin Laden |
| 2004-03-26 |
| EFL Osama bin Laden may have escaped with his life in the last years of the Clinton administration because of a misunderstanding between the White House and the CIA over whether US spies had permission to kill him, it emerged yesterday. The breakdown in communication was described to the national commission examining the events leading up to September 11, and served to divert some of the scrutiny from the Bush administration on the politically explosive issue of whether the 2001 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York could have been prevented. A report compiled by the commission’s staff found that senior officials in the Clinton White House said they had made it clear the CIA had a licence to kill the Saudi fugitive and not just capture him. But "if the policy makers believed their intent was clear, every CIA official interviewed on this topic by the commission, from [the CIA director, George Tenet] to the official who actually briefed the agents in the field, told us they had heard a different message. What the United States would let the military do is quite different, Tenet said, from the rules that govern covert action in the field". The distinction may have made a crucial difference to the hunt for the al-Qaida leader, who later ordered the September 11 attacks. "CIA senior managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to capture Bin Laden, except in the defined contingency. They believed that the only acceptable context for killing Bin Laden was a credible capture operation," the report said. It quoted a former chief of the Osama bin Laden unit as saying: "We always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him." Sandy Berger, the national security adviser in the Clinton White House, told the commission yesterday the president had made it clear that he was willing to kill Bin Laden, pointing to an attack on an al-Qaida camp in August 1998 using more than 50 cruise missiles. "If there was any confusion down the ranks, it was never communicated to me, nor to the president and if any additional authority had been requested I am convinced it would have been given immediately," Mr Berger said. The commission’s report gave some support to Mr Berger’s assertion, pointing out that no one in the CIA "ever complained to the White House that the authorities were restrictive or unclear". Mr Tenet, testifying before Mr Berger, said: "I never went back and said, ’I don’t have all the authorities I need’." -snip- background Mr Tenet came to the president’s support, testifying that George Bush had asked for "face-to-face contact" with him on a daily basis. That, he said, "gets your adrenaline flowing early in the morning ... and obviously it’s important." Mr Berger argued, however, that there could be no substitute for regular principals meetings. Why is Berger being asked about the Bush years? One would think that his expertise would be the Clinton years. He said that under the Clinton administration, names of suspects would surface from the CIA, and the attorney-general, Janet Reno, who was present at the meetings, immediately gave orders for the FBI to follow up the leads. Mr Clarke has argued that such high-level intervention would probably have led to the capture of at least two of the 19 hijackers. Another bitter debate has revolved around the Predator unmanned surveillance aircraft. It was first deployed in 2000, and led to two possible sightings of Bin Laden. However the commission staff found that its use in Afghanistan was stopped in 2001, while work was underway fitting it with a missile. Administration critics say that decision blinded US intelligence at a critical moment. In his testimony Mr Berger said warships had been stationed in the Arabian sea in 2000, ready to launch cruise missiles that could strike within six hours of the sighting. However, Mr Tenet argued that the continued use of an unarmed Predator would have stripped it of its element of surprise, which would add to its potency once it was equipped with missiles by autumn 2001. In yesterday’s testimony, Mr Berger was also on the defensive over the Clinton administration’s failure to take action against the Taliban in Afghanistan after the October 2000 suicide attack on the American destroyer USS Cole off the Yemeni coast. The Clinton administration had earlier warned the Taliban that it would suffer the consequences of any future attack from al-Qaida. The former national security adviser said that when the administration left office in January 2001 there was no definitive proof of al-Qaida involvement. The commission, however, pointed to CIA findings in November 2000 that al-Qaida members were considered suspects, although Mr Berger said those findings were only "preliminary" and could not justify a major attack on Afghanistan. Fact, the CIA was hamstrung prior to 9-11. Note - I heard a radio caller ask Rush Limbaugh when Congessional failure to fund intelligence and defense projects would become the focus of the commision. What a card. The guy should be writing for Letterman - Congress holding itself accountable and trying to improved it’s own performance. Sheesh. |
| Posted by:Super Hose |
| #2 B, your statement assumes the Clintons want what's best for America. They are liberals and only want what's best for good socialists they approve of and F*CK everyone else. And if that means a lot of dead GIs along the way, well then, that's a cost they are willing to make others pay. Deprecating the defenses of the United States is part and parcel of a liberal agenda. Clinton went about as far as he could go to open the US for attack and with Kerry in the office they will break down our military and American culture even further. |
| Posted by: badanov 2004-03-26 9:25:40 AM |
| #1 You know, true or not, I suspect we are all here to learn a particular lesson before we are allowed out of purgatory and into Utopia, aka: Heaven. The Clintons just can't seem to learn their lesson - no matter how obvious the task, or how many chances they are given. The lesson they need to learn is to admit they made a mistake and move on - or, AT THE VERY LEAST - to just shut up and/or try to change the subject when their mistakes are exposed. Once you do, people will forgive and move on. But instead of standing tall, they always look for someone else they can have crucified in a mistaken belief it will rid them of their sins. Ironically, it is always the people who attempt to help the Clintons who end up in flames. |
| Posted by: B 2004-03-26 6:45:11 AM |