"Obviously Clinton's Fault":
Pre-9.11 And The BushAdmin. It's All Clinton's Fault, Right?
by Kent Southard
The following are all uncontroversial facts reported in the mainstream media:
On or about Jan. 20th, 2001, as the Clinton administration transitioned to the Bush, NSC chief Sandy Berger briefed Condi Rice extensively on the terrorism threat posed by bin Laden, telling her she would be spending more time on this threat than she ever imagined. At the Dept. of Defense, William Cohen was performing the same courtesy for Don Rumsfeld, again with a sharp reminder of the terrorist threat in the form of a hand-written letter to Rumsfeld containing the phone numbers of people in the Pentagon Rumsfeld needed to speak to directly on the subject. On Jan. 26th, the CIA confirmed to the new Bush administration that bin Laden and Al Qaeda were responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole which killed 17 American sailors.
The response of the Bush administration was to cease Predator drone surveillance flights to track bin Laden, reassign the cruise-missile equipped submarine stationed in the Indian Ocean with the specific mission of targeting bin Laden, reassign the AC-130 gunships on scramble alert that could be on top of bin Laden after a six hour flight, suspend the special forces operations targeting bin Laden already based in Uzbekistan for the purpose thanks to a treaty signed by Bill Clinton.
In May, June and July, the sole remaining Clinton appointee, CIA Director Tenet, was frantic with concern over incoming intelligence indicating a huge terrorist attack on American soil. Vice-President Dick Cheney was head of a new counter-terrorism task force, yet held no meetings. Attorney General John Ashcroft refused FBI requests for hundreds of new agents to be assigned to counter-terrorism; his concerns were drugs and pornography, yet in late July he stopped flying commercial airliners due to a "threat assessment." The general threat assessment was considered to be the most severe in decades according to CIA's Tenet; members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were briefed on the situation on July 5th.
Also in July, an Arizona FBI agent wrote the 'Phoenix Memo,' expressing concern about possible Al Qaeda members taking flying lessons in this country towards the end of terrorist attacks. One of the two FBI officials to see it before the attacks was New York counter-terrorism chief John O'Neill; contemporaneous with the timing of this memo was O'Neill's remarks to the authors of 'Bin Laden: The Hidden Truth,' wherein O'Neill expressed his outrage with the Bush administration's thwarting of counter-terrorist efforts in the interests of protecting its Saudi sponsors. John O'Neill would soon quit the FBI in disgust, only to die at his new job as chief of security at the WTC.
Also in July, the FAA rescinded the rule allowing airline pilots to be armed, a rule that had been in force since 1961.
August found George W. Bush 'vacationing' for the entire month in rural Texas, while Dick Cheney similarly spent the month in rural Wyoming. On August 1st actor James Woods as flying from Logan to Los Angeles, sharing 1st class with four Middle Eastern men, who ate nothing, drank nothing, read nothing, nor slept the entire flight, only making occasional low comments to one another. Woods remarked to the flight attendant that 'These guys act like they're going to hijack the plane,' and once the plane landed he repeated his concerns to the FAA. All four men were hijackers on Sept. 11th. On Aug. 6th, Bush himself was apparently finally briefed about the specific threat of attacks on American soil. His vacation continued. On Aug. 17th, the Minneapolis FBI office arrested Zacarias Moussaoui, on the basis of an expired student visa and very curious pilot training requests. FBI field agents at this office were convinced of Moussaoui's intentions as a terrorist, and repeatedly tried to obtain a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrant to search his computer. In early Sept., French Intelligence informed both the CIA and the FBI that Moussaoui had Al Qaeda connections. A FISA warrant remained ungranted against Moussaoui, even though under Clinton and Janet Reno no FISA request had been refused.
As an interesting aside, before 9/11 Ashcroft was known to put in 3 1/2 day work weeks at the Dept. of Justice. In the early months of the administration, FBI agents flew to Ashcroft's home in rural Missouri to obtain his signature on a wire-tap for a terrorism investigation. Ashcroft was so displeased to see the agents, he had them stand out in the cold while he sat in his pickup to read and sign the documents.
On Sept. 4th, Cheney's counter-terrorism task force met for the first time. According to the Pentagon's liaison for terrorism, Gen. Kerrik, Clinton's had met almost weekly, but with Bush he "didn't see that same kind of focus." On Sept. 10, Diane Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee briefed on July 5th, asked Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby when the administration would start focusing on these terror threats which had so pre-occupied CIA's Tenet, the most severe in decades - she was told it would have to wait another six months.
So, obviously, it's all Clinton's fault. |
