To a certain extent, Clinton (or any pres) was limited by the mood of the country. Had he tried to invade Afganistan, for instance, he would have been impeached. That mood was altered on 9/11, so that military intervention was acceptable.
Clinton did make some attempts, and was criticized at the time. The cruise missile attack was seen as a wag the dog don't pay any attention to Monica response.
It appears that Clinton was on to something; I've even seen some posts carrying warnings he gave the public at XMas '99 about possible troubles. Whatever attention he could give terrorism, and whatever attention Congress could give it, was squandered in those impeachement hearings.
Some people were at least close to connecting dots. Apparently Tenet really started pushing the possibility of terrorism in July, and managed to keep everybody alarmed for 6 weeks. I posted an article, which, towards the end, was talking about Feinstein. She was told in Sept. by Cheney's COS that it might be 6 months B4 they could look at her draft legislation on terrorism. She said "Scooter, I don't think we have 6 months".
Did we have enuf to know, had all the pieces of the puzzle been collected? I don't know. What all this really shows is that we need to change the way we deal with intelligence. Maybe we need to look at Britian in WW11 or the Mossad. All these different agencies need to brainstorm together every day. Shoot, even if it means something as arcane as sticking flash cards on bulletin boards. They had better upgrade their computers, too. I hear the FBI may be using the 350 or 450 microprocessors...
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