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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jay8088 who wrote (7749)	10/5/1998 12:45:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 13994

Wag the Dog Raids: ABCNews reports that the Chiefs weren't informed because the WH knew they would have opposed them! Article: Raids planned without key input NEW YORK - The White House planned bombing raids on suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and the Sudan without involving four members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and FBI Director Louis Freeh, The New Yorker magazine reported. The magazine also said in its Oct. 12 edition, due on newsstands Monday, that Attorney General Janet Reno was ignored when she questioned whether evidence linking Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden to the terrorist bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa was strong enough to justify the retaliatory attacks. The Aug. 20 Tomahawk missile strikes hit bin Laden's purported terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and a chemical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. President Clinton said the latter raid was based on evidence of a nerve gas component found at the Al Shifa plant. The New Yorker said the White House consulted Joint Chiefs Chairman Hugh Shelton on the raid plans but instructed him not to brief the three generals and one admiral who run the nation's armed forces, nor to consult with experts in the Defense Intelligence Agency. So ''the four men who know more about the use of force than anyone in the White House'' were kept out of the planning loop, learning of the attack only one day before it was carried out, the article said. The four service chiefs were able to force one significant change in strategy when informed of the planned attack, calling off a strike on a storage facility in Khartoum, the magazine said. The New Yorker also wrote that there is ''widespread belief that senior officials of the White House misrepresented and overdramatized evidence suggesting that the Tomahawk raids had prevented further terrorist attacks.'' The Pentagon declined to comment on the article. ''I have nothing for you on that,'' Marine Maj. Elizabeth Kerstens said Sunday. David Leavey, spokesman for the National Security Council, said, ''We feel confident in the evidence that shows bin Laden association with Al Shifa and fully justifies the action the president ordered on Aug. 20.'' Freeh was excluded, the magazine said, even though his agency had actively investigated the events that precipitated the raids - the Aug. 7 terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Saalam, Tanzania, that killed 12 Americans and more than 250 Africans. The article said Freeh and many of his top aides believe the agency was left out because President Clinton ''questions his political loyalty.'' Reno, it said, believed that the evidence tying bin Laden to the embassy attacks did not meet the ''Tripoli standard,'' a gauge used to justify the 1986 bombing of Libya in retaliation for actions by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Chris Watney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said she could not comment on ''internal security deliberations.'' The FBI did not immediately return a call seeking comment. usatoday.com