Decision ‘08

Clinton and Terror: Examining the Record

Richard Miniter looks at that record against Osama that Clinton seems so proud of now:

In his Fox interview, Mr. Clinton said “no one knew that al Qaeda existed” in October 1993, during the tragic events in Somalia. But his national security adviser, Tony Lake, told me that he first learned of bin Laden “sometime in 1993,” when he was thought of as a terror financier. U.S. Army Capt. James Francis Yacone, a black hawk squadron commander in Somalia, later testified that radio intercepts of enemy mortar crews firing at Americans were in Arabic, not Somali, suggesting the work of bin Laden’s agents (who spoke Arabic), not warlord Farah Aideed’s men (who did not). CIA and DIA reports also placed al Qaeda operatives in Somalia at the time.

By the end of Mr. Clinton’s first year, al Qaeda had apparently attacked twice. The attacks would continue for every one of the Clinton years.

• In 1994, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who would later plan the 9/11 attacks) launched “Operation Bojinka” to down 11 U.S. planes simultaneously over the Pacific. A sharp-eyed Filipina police officer foiled the plot. The sole American response: increased law-enforcement cooperation with the Philippines.

• In 1995, al Qaeda detonated a 220-pound car bomb outside the Office of Program Manager in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five Americans and wounding 60 more. The FBI was sent in.

• In 1996, al Qaeda bombed the barracks of American pilots patrolling the “no-fly zones” over Iraq, killing 19. Again, the FBI responded.

• In 1997, al Qaeda consolidated its position in Afghanistan and bin Laden repeatedly declared war on the U.S. In February, bin Laden told an Arab TV network: “If someone can kill an American soldier, it is better than wasting time on other matters.” No response from the Clinton administration.

• In 1998, al Qaeda simultaneously bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224, including 12 U.S. diplomats. Mr. Clinton ordered cruise-missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan in response. Here Mr. Clinton’s critics are wrong: The president was right to retaliate when America was attacked, irrespective of the Monica Lewinsky case.

Still, “Operation Infinite Reach” was weakened by Clintonian compromise. The State Department feared that Pakistan might spot the American missiles in its air space and misinterpret it as an Indian attack. So Mr. Clinton told Gen. Joe Ralston, vice chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, to notify Pakistan’s army minutes before the Tomahawks passed over Pakistan. Given Pakistan’s links to jihadis at the time, it is not surprising that bin Laden was tipped off, fleeing some 45 minutes before the missiles arrived.

• In 1999, the Clinton administration disrupted al Qaeda’s Millennium plots, a series of bombings stretching from Amman to Los Angeles. This shining success was mostly the work of Richard Clarke, a NSC senior director who forced agencies to work together. But the Millennium approach was shortlived. Over Mr. Clarke’s objections, policy reverted to the status quo.

• In January 2000, al Qaeda tried and failed to attack the U.S.S. The Sullivans off Yemen. (Their boat sank before they could reach their target.) But in October 2000, an al Qaeda bomb ripped a hole in the hull of the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 sailors and wounding another 39.

When Mr. Clarke presented a plan to launch a massive cruise missile strike on al Qaeda and Taliban facilities in Afghanistan, the Clinton cabinet voted against it. After the meeting, a State Department counterterrorism official, Michael Sheehan, sought out Mr. Clarke. Both told me that they were stunned. Mr. Sheehan asked Mr. Clarke: “What’s it going to take to get them to hit al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?”

For the record, I think criticism of Clinton on this score is somewhat dirty pool; a good dose of hindsight is playing a part. However, since Clinton is back in finger-wagging mode…

16 Responses to “Clinton and Terror: Examining the Record”

1 mikebdot Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 8:11 am
I think perhaps the lessons of him being caught with his hand in the cookie jar ought to show it to be pointless to even ask him such questions. The event wasn’t billed as a discussion about his failings. According to the Fox website it was going to be (via The Rude Pundit):

“On FOX News Sunday this week: Former President Bill Clinton brought together hundreds of influential heads of state, international policymakers, corporate heavyweights, and religious leaders this week to address major global challenges. We will sit down with the nation’s 42nd president to discuss his second annual Clinton Global Initiative, as well as the Democrats chances of winning back Congress, and his wife’s presidential aspirations.

“President Clinton recently said that he will have to live to be a ‘very old man’ if he is to accomplish as much out of office as he did during his eight years in the White House. But the former president has found a calling in confronting global challenges and raised billions of dollars toward solving issues like religious conflict, climate change, and global public health and poverty. We will discuss his success thus far in bringing together a wide range of partners, raising funds, and empowering individuals to cure many of the world’s ills. In addition, we will gain his insights into the state of the war on terrorism, the upcoming midterm elections, and 2008 presidential politics.”

So, it’s possible he became defensive after being asked what he thought to be a blind-sided question. I would have been pissed off too. Of course, as a former president you ought to have a bit more composure, but it’s not as though Bush never gets in a “pissy” mood when being asked questions. To be fair, those questions are usually from partisan hacks while in this case it was from a hack (in general). So, did Clinton handle himself like an ex-president should? Not really. Was it an understandable response for a mortal to make when basically being attacked? Perhaps. Either way, like you say, hindsight’s 20/20. Actually it should be even better than that. It should be about 20/1.

The article you linked to talks about how Clinton said “no one knew al Qaeda existed” and the evidence he uses to refute that is that Osama was known to be a financier of terror and that people spoke Arabic during Somalia. How does this in any way point to a terrorist organization known as “Al Qaeda”? It points to one individual and a group of people who speak Arabic. In retrospect we can say “wow, those were Al Qaeda operatives at those locations”, but at the time is it not possible that they were still trying to figure out if they were isolated incidents and who was responsible?

Furthermore, if Al Qaeda struck twice in Clinton’s first year, it sounds to me like George H.W. Bush wasn’t doing such a good job either. Has anyone heard Clinton bitching that that threat was not identified by the previous administration and that he was not given “comprehensive plans” to stop them? It’s possible that’s what he was trying to say by “no one knew…” Don’t know. Anyone know of any quotes about Clinton (or folks in his administration) passing the buck to George H.W.?
2 peter Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 9:06 am
1) I’m somewhat surprise that the whole Clinton thing is getting so much play on Fox News and elsewhere because it brings up a simple comparison: between what Clinton did vs. what Bush did not do from 1/20/01 to 9/10/01. Clinton took a number of actions, some of which worked and some of which didn’t. As far as we (or the 9/11 Commission) can tell, Bush did nothing for the first eight months of his Presidency, despite an explicit warning of an imminent attack. Moreover, why Clinton is being attacked for not getting bin Laden when he was an obscure figure when he has been a free man for five years as Public Enemy Number One is beyond me. Is this the comparison you want to make?

2) The statement that “Given Pakistan’s links to jihadis at the time, it is not surprising that bin Laden was tipped off, fleeing some 45 minutes before the missiles arrived” is misleading. Do we know that the Pakistanis alerted him, or is this circumstantial? And if we did not warn Pakistan and instead it launched a nuclear war, it would have been a colossal mistake. Is this a risk we should have taken?
3 Dmac Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 11:08 am
The former President was well - briefed on the fact that the interview was to be a no holds - barred one. Fox News made it clear to him in advance that any interview would have no preconditions regarding the subject matter - Clinton’s either a fool (he’s not) or a liar if he acts like he was suddenly blindsided by a question that’s being asked quite frequently these days. I don’t particularly care for this subject to keep being rehashed - but once he lost his mind during the interview, any attempts at sympathy over his alleged plight went out the window.
4 mtl Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 11:09 am
“As far as we (or the 9/11 Commission) can tell, Bush did nothing for the first eight months of his Presidency, despite an explicit warning of an imminent attack.”

What is this ‘we’ pronoun?

Seems they were convening a meeting on what to do with UBL, prior to 9/11. Fitting a predator with a 12 million dollar upgrade to include an explosive payload seems they were already willing to do something the Clinton WH had failed to do. The pdb?

Ubl had made numerous statements aginst american interests, immediately preceding the embassy bombings. In hindsight, it was clear that his goal was to attack us.

The time to stop ubl and his plan did not begin on the day of reciving the pdb, it began when he was declaring jihad on the US.

From the pdb what actions would you have taken?

Too late for suveillance and too late to stop a plan which had been in the works for over a year. Too late to keep AQ out of the country. too late to gather intel.
5 peter Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Oh, they were convening a meeting? Upgrading a predator? Geez.

I don’t know if anything could have been done between the Bush inauguration, the August report, and the warning from the FBI guy and 9/11. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t blame Bush for not getting bin Laden (at least before 9/11 – since the team to find him was disbanded, and he now lives with impunity, I think that Bush should be accountable for the fact that he is still a free man).

However, the indisputable fact is that Bush was President on 9/11, and the effort by surrogates and apologists to deflect the blame to Clinton is preposterous.
6 mtl Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 11:41 am
I do wonder,

What was the actual source of ithe intel of the ‘bin laden determined to strike in the US’?

This may help or hurt my beliefs, but I wish they explored the complete inception of the briefing. The question eventually leads to who was running the CIA, bush or tenet?

And given the porous leaks, based on politcal motives, how effective was the CIA?
7 mtl Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 11:49 am
FDR was president when they bombed pearl harbor, so your point of culpability does not fall on deaf ears.

As to who was responsible for Pearl Harbor, I would blame our military more than than fdr.

As for 9/11, I blame our intelligence services. Had Collen Rowley pursued Moussai’s computer, she was the legal rep of the MN division, would we have been able to stop it?

In her own words she has pretty much said that she failed to even seek to obtain a FISA warrant, and the computer was never loooked at. Interesting becuase there seems to have been a lack of communication between the CIA and the FBI, like there was a ‘wall’ or something…

The 9/11 report? Who do you think told Sandy Berger that there was incriminating stuff? Not like Clinton had his personal lawyer on the commission. The same personal lawyer who received between 24-30 million in a the Freddie Mac bonus scandal. The finacial damage was in excess of what Enron was, but I have yet to see dems clamoring for gorelick to return her ill gotten gains.
8 mtl Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
for what it is worth…

I give Bush a ton of credit for the way he handled himself after 9/11.

If WJC/dems were still in office, their efforts would have been to find a scapegoat. Tenet would have been fired. Mueller just took the job a few weeks before it all came down. Interesting that the progressives are trying to make Bush the scapegoat.

Very different rxns to a ’surpirse attack’ between now, and ‘our greatest generation’.

I personally had some initial rage about our intel services, but later saw it as a systemic failure rather than the failure of individuals.
9 megapotamus Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
And Clinton was President for the 1993 WTC bombing, and Khobar Towers, and the Cole, and Somalia… and what were the responses there? Somewhere between Jack and Sh**. As usual, Clinton could have walked away here and kept his mouth shut if he were constitutionally capable of such restraint, but no. It is he that is blaming Bush, not the other way around and it is no new thing. Well, he has called for scrutiny to his inactions and incompetence so here it comes. We yet have no real answer as to what Sandy Berger was treasonously concealing in his counter-intel pants stuffing op. We still have Clinton declaring publicly that he refused to take a shot at Osama that would not present itself again. We still have the utter refusal to take the first WTC bombing seriously or to investigate Iraqi/Islamist involvement in OKC. Democrats with any sense (a scarce commodity, granted) would realize that the best they could have hoped for on these and a host of other matters is the inevitable failing of the public memory but the infinite ego of the Big He could not abide a tactical silence. Bill couldn’t take a question demanded of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice at their every public appearance (and “blindsided”? Only if he is accustomed, as he justly is, to T-ball pitches from the press). As Morris says, this is the true Clinton revealed; petulant, arrogant and perpetually deceptive. He was a lousy President and continues to demonstrate that he is a lousy human being. That he was the best the Dems could come up with in decades is a digrace, but also hilarious!
10 doug Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Talk is cheap–what would you have done after each of those events. WTC bombing, the perpetrators were caught tried and put in jail. Khobar Towers–bomb …….. if I recall correctly, the Saudi’s arrested a number of individuals and at least one was beheaded. The USS Cole was within 3 months of the end of Clinton’s presidency. If it was such a big issue, ripe for a muscle flexing response, surely the macho dudes running the Executive branch after January should have whacked somebody–anybody–to show their resolve against terrorism. Hell, since they knew it was UBL they should have attacked Afganistan. Just think they could have intimidated all those terrorists, prevented 9/11 and not have to worry about that pesky PDB suggesting UBL was going to hijack airplanes.

While it would be nice to strike out whenever we feel the need, doing so has consequences. And sometimes the consequences are worse than the event which makes us want to strike out in the first place. As a prime example of the consequences being worse than the original insult I give you IRAQ.
11 Dmac Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
“As a prime example of the consequences being worse than the original insult I give you IRAQ.”

I like people who make claims like this yet give no discernable cites for evidence of such - but please, don’t let us stop your voluminous bloviations here.

Talk is indeed cheap, as your post so clearly indicates.
12 Sean P Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
It was clearly apparent during Clinton’s first term in office that Osama wanted to attack the US. What was not so clear, however, was Osama’s ability to do so. In hindsight, of course, that question is self evident, but most of the people who are blasting Bush and/or (usually “or”) Clinton for inaction gave the issue even less attention than Bush or Clinton did.

Based on this fact, I am inclined to cut Clinton some leeway for his handling of Al Queda during his administration. But I am getting very tired of his flatly false claims that he did everything in his power to get him.
13 mtl Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
I would have taken the money from our intelligence services that were going out of business at the end of the cold war, and invest it in foreign intel, particularly the ME, but also to include China and Latin america.

Clinton took the lump cash we had going in the cold war, and just inserted it into his budget. That surplus we had?

Would have been nice to expand our Arabic language division in the CIA. Might have even placed an agent in Iraq, one who was capable of verifying wmds. Wouldn’t it be ‘neat’ if we had more translators?

This isn’t just about Clinton, this is about what ‘we all did’ post-cold war. We cut our military by 2/3, I have little doubt we did it with our intel services as well. Republicans and dems voted for it alike. Be nice to have 3 times as many troops as we do now.

Nobody said “hey” the world is dangerous. (well jfk did say “yakuza”, but he guessed wrong.) I can’t be hard on clinton in blame, the news wasn’t classified. I’m sure some conservative was warning about this, but I just don’t draw any names.

The Posner Book-’While America Slept’ is the fairest title. As much as impeachment was a distraction for WJC, it was a distraction from news and our growing threat. Bin Laden was out there trying to compete in the media, but the long slow walk of WJC drowned it out. It had the feeling of govt just being on holiday, and it trickled down to everybody.
14 mtl Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
I guess what should be said is that allowing the action(impeachement) to proceed by both the Scotus thru law and the WH in hubris, was a terrible mistake.
15 mtl Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
“The article you linked to talks about how Clinton said “no one knew al Qaeda existed” and the evidence he uses to refute that is that Osama was known to be a financier of terror and that people spoke Arabic during Somalia. How does this in any way point to a terrorist organization known as “Al Qaeda”?”

You are gonna love this…

Patrick Fitzgerald was trying to bring the charge against some of the embassy bombers who were Al-Queda, with the charge that they assisted in Somalia. He was eventually forced to drop it, but the premise was being put foward by our own govt, Clinton’s own govt.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/LAW/04/26/embassy.bombings/

“But Fitzgerald said the government still held that al Qaeda was responsible for training Somalis, especially teaching them to fire the rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, that shot down U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in Mogadishu, causing most of the American casualties.”

date of the link was April 2001. Seeing as how UBL has now been claiming credit for Somalia, I would now be inclined to take him at his word.
16 Andy Says:
September 28th, 2006 at 12:30 am
Sean P, et al. I agree that Clinton is hardly to blame vis a vis the foresight lacking in most any leadership that the Islamofacist terrorist would be such a global problem. It would have been enough to say “I never imagined..” and leave it at that.

But then again, Clinton is true to form and panicked at thot of a tarnished legacy–not to mention the shot at a 3-peat the Clintonian Dynasty slipping away. So much for JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you…”

Up until the embassy bombings in Africa, I have bought into the notion that the Muslim was a viable partner in ‘global peace’, to include supporting him in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation. Likewise, in supporting him in Bosnia/Kosovo against the Serbs and so on.

At the same time, I had to account for the unsavory elements of the Muslim, ie the bloodbath in Algeria and to a lesser degree in Egypt, Somolia etc. This was resolved by comparing dicothomies present in the various christian denomnations that ran the gamut from mainstream groups like the Baptist to Catholics and on thru to the Penecostals.

Then there were the fringe groups from Aryans, Branch Davidians, the Jones group to the Moonies etc. The Muslim Brotherhood, early Taliban (until they really showed their evil side) were simply the the Islamic counterpart to our kooks.

I recall back in ‘89 or ‘90, my mom and I visiting the Saudi expo in Dallas. The Saudi PR campaign was impressive, even tho we knew that women weren’t allowed to do much of anything and that non-Muslims were persecuted in Saudi. We attributed that to the quirk in that Kingdom’s founding and the devil’s pact made with the Wahhabis. Otherwise, while arachic on modern freedoms that we take for granted, Islam was a relative religion of peace and the Saudis looked like they were ready to move into the 21st Century.

Little would most any of us realize the radical zealotry of the Wahhabis, ie taking over the majority of US mosques, destroying the Buddhist statues etc. Going back to Nixon, we’ve always viewed the Islamc terrorist as some sort of Marxist radical. No wonder, given the Soviet support over the years.

When talking about the end of the Cold War and the lack of imagination as to the new ‘bogeyman’, does anyone recall that Tom Clancy was pegged as desparate for material by focusing on terrorism and China?

I remember the euphoria over the peace dividend. Even Papa Bush got into the act by standing down the Strategic Air Command’s 24/7/365 patrol of our skies.

I had issues with that, and no, it didn’t have much to do with the RIFs(Reduction In Force) or base realignments. It had to do with our readiness posture for the unimagineable. Too bad we didn’t have the blogosphere around to discuss the pros and cons of the rapid downsizing of our miltary & intelligence services back then.

Yet the world always looks to us to police the ‘global village’, thereby affording them the luxury of nitpicking us when it suits them. More importantly sparing themselves the burden of maintaining their own militaries to help clean up places like Senegal, Sierra Leone, Rawanda and all of the other hotspots. UN? Forget it.

Remember when Clinton promised we’d only be in Bosnia for a year? Remember when we put our troops under the UN flag? Remember Sgt New? We got involved in the Balkins while the Euros dithered and people died. We certainly had no interests over there, yet Clinton managed to persuade the Americans for support nation building.

The danger of the Balkans leading to a new world war was tangible and to his credit, Clinton did something about it, with partisan support I might add. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that by “rescuing” the Muslims, we were training and equipping them for when they turn on us.

With the exception of Carter and perhaps, Papa Bush (his realpolitics and stopping when he had Sodamn Insane by the throat comes to mind), I have no doubt that had Nixon, Ford, Reagan and even Clinton (his animous with the military notwithstanding), had they any inkling of what was to come, they would have been more forceful in taking the fight to the Islamofacists. Reagan would have never left Lebanon if he could have seen what was coming.

Bottomlne, we were all complicit in not recognising the gathering clash of civilizations. The question then becomes what do we do about it? For that, the dems have no credible solution only infantile rhetoric.

In spite of mistakes, at least W is doing something about it. At the same time, watching the unfolding Iranian nuclear brinkmanship is qute like watching a train wreck in slow motion, except that we also in the stalled school bus on the tracks. Not a matter of IF, but WHEN?

Yet Rangel is vowing to kill the GWOT? Murtha babbling about ‘over the horizon”? Leftists ranting about the ‘memo’, Patriot Act, wiretapping, SWIFT, NIE etc? Bush’s affinity for lax borders and amnesty? Get real! The Islamist have repeatedly told us what is in store for us when they win, if we let them.

Mark, sorry for the long rant