Bill, Condi, Hillary, Where Will It Stop?
Hillary Clinton Lobs Another Bomb at Condoleezza Rice Over Whose to Blame for Not Getting bin Laden
"I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team." -- Hillary Clinton
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2493200&page=1
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: The following is the text of an item from the Presidential Daily Brief received by President William J. Clinton on December 4, 1998. Redacted material is indicated in brackets.
SUBJECT: Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks
1. Reporting [-] suggests Bin Ladin and his allies are preparing for attacks in the US, including an aircraft hijacking to obtain the release of Shaykh 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman, Ramzi Yousef, and Muhammad Sadiq 'Awda. One source quoted a senior member of the Gama'at al-Islamiyya (IG) saying that, as of late October, the IG had completed planning for an operation in the US on behalf of Bin Ladin, but that the operation was on hold.A senior Bin Ladin operative from Saudi Arabia was to visit IG counterparts in the US soon thereafter to discuss options-perhaps including an aircraft hijacking.
IG leader Islambuli in late September was planning to hijack a US airliner during the "next couple of weeks" to free 'Abd al-Rahman and the other prisoners, according to what may be a different source.
The same source late last month said that Bin Ladin might implement plans to hijack US aircraft before the beginning of Ramadan on 20 December and that two members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport. [-]
2. Some members of the Bin Ladin network have received hijack training, according to various sources, but no group directly tied to Bin Ladin's al-Qa'ida organization has ever carried out an aircraft hijacking.Bin Ladin could be weighing other types of operations against US aircraft.Accord-ing to [-] the IG in October obtained SA-7 missiles and intended to move them from Yemen into Saudi Arabia to shoot down an Egyptian plane or, if unsuccessful, a US military or civilian aircraft.
A [-] in October told us that unspecified "extremist elements" in Yemen had acquired SA-7s. [-]
3. [-] indicate the Bin Ladin organization or its allies are moving closer to implementing anti-US attacks at unspecified locations, but we do not know whether they are related to attacks on aircraft. A Bin Ladin associate in Sudan late last month told a colleague in Kandahar that he had shipped a group of containers to Afghanistan. Bin Ladin associates also talked about the movement of containers to Afghanistan before the East Africa bombings.
In other [-] Bin Ladin associates last month discussed picking up a package in Malaysia. One told his colleague in Malaysia that "they" were in the "ninth month [of pregnancy]."
An alleged Bin Ladin supporter in Yemen late last month remarked to his mother that he planned to work in "commerce" from abroad and said his impending "marriage," which would take place soon, would be a "surprise.""Commerce" and "marriage" often are codewords for terrorist attacks. [-]
"but fair is fair, Clinton had 10 Chances and Bush had none." said Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's bin Laden task force from 1995 to 1999 and retired from the agency as a senior Al Qaeda specialist in 2004.
``In May of 1998 and 1999, we had two opportunities to capture him and eight different opportunities to kill him," Scheuer told the Globe yesterday. ``On every one of those occasions, the president or Berger and Clarke turned down the opportunity" to strike.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/wa..._on_bin_laden/
"I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team." -- Hillary Clinton
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: The following is the text of an item from the Presidential Daily Brief received by President William J. Clinton on December 4, 1998. Redacted material is indicated in brackets.
SUBJECT: Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks
RightatNYU said:That right there is enough to make Hillary wish she'd never opened her mouth. Ouch.
Bill, Condi, Hillary, Where Will It Stop?
"I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team." -- Hillary Clinton
Quote:
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: The following is the text of an item from the Presidential Daily Brief received by President William J. Clinton on December 4, 1998. Redacted material is indicated in brackets.
RightatNYU said:That right there is enough to make Hillary wish she'd never opened her mouth. Ouch.
Iriemon said:I agree with your assessment about Hillary.
Though I'm not sure that the point is completely wrong. It is quite possible Clinton did take steps to prevent an attack and hijacking after this memo. For example the Admin was very worried about an attack on New Year's 2000 and I remember security being put on alert and lines at airports, etc.
Iriemon said:I agree with your assessment about Hillary.
Though I'm not sure that the point is completely wrong. It is quite possible Clinton did take steps to prevent an attack and hijacking after this memo. For example the Admin was very worried about an attack on New Year's 2000 and I remember security being put on alert and lines at airports, etc.
RightatNYU said:I saw an article that tried to use this info to make a compare/contrast with Bush and Bill.
It claimed that after he received that brief, Clinton jumped into action, held meetings with important people, and put some airports on high security for the weekend. The article then contrasted that with Bush, who it claimed did nothing of the sort when he received his August brief.
JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?
CLARKE: All of that's correct.
QUESTION: Were all of those issues part of alleged plan that was late December and the Clinton team decided not to pursue because it was too close to ...
CLARKE: There was never a plan, Andrea. What there was was these two things: One, a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat. And two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years, and which were still on the table.
QUESTION: So there was nothing that developed, no documents or no new plan of any sort?
CLARKE: There was no new plan.
QUESTION: No new strategy — I mean, I don't want to get into a semantics ...
CLARKE: Plan, strategy — there was no, nothing new.
QUESTION: 'Til late December, developing ...
CLARKE: What happened at the end of December was that the Clinton administration NSC principals committee met and once again looked at the strategy, and once again looked at the issues that they had brought, decided in the past to add to the strategy. But they did not at that point make any recommendations.
QUESTIONS: Had those issues evolved at all from October of '98 'til December of 2000?
CLARKE: Had they evolved? Um, not appreciably.
ANGLE: What was the problem? Why was it so difficult for the Clinton administration to make decisions on those issues?
CLARKE: Because they were tough issues. You know, take, for example, aiding the Northern Alliance. Um, people in the Northern Alliance had a, sort of bad track record. There were questions about the government, there were questions about drug-running, there was questions about whether or not in fact they would use the additional aid to go after Al Qaeda or not. Uh, and how would you stage a major new push in Uzbekistan or somebody else or Pakistan to cooperate?
One of the big problems was that Pakistan at the time was aiding the other side, was aiding the Taliban. And so, this would put, if we started aiding the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, this would have put us directly in opposition to the Pakistani government. These are not easy decisions.
ANGLE: And none of that really changed until we were attacked and then it was ...
CLARKE: No, that's not true. In the spring, the Bush administration changed — began to change Pakistani policy, um, by a dialogue that said we would be willing to lift sanctions. So we began to offer carrots, which made it possible for the Pakistanis, I think, to begin to realize that they could go down another path, which was to join us and to break away from the Taliban. So that's really how it started.
CLARKE: .... the other thing to bear in mind is the shift from the rollback strategy to the elimination strategy. When President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that changed the NSPD from one of rollback to one of elimination.
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/000525.html
"Clinton had 10 chances to capture or kill Bin Laden and Bush had none."
``In May of 1998 and 1999, we had two opportunities to capture him and eight different opportunities to kill him," Scheuer told the Globe yesterday. ``On every one of those occasions, the president or Berger and Clarke turned down the opportunity"
Trajan Octavian Titus said:Furthermore; according to Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's bin Laden task force from 1995 to 1999
Iriemon said:What were the 10 chances?
Funny that the 9-11 commission missed it.
Trajan Octavian Titus said:Couldn't tell you ask Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's bin Laden task force from 1995 to 1999.
Trajan Octavian Titus said:Well the bullshit stops here Hillary he did infact get that warning all the way back in 1998:
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