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Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts
From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/083006J.shtml
Wednesday 30 August 2006
The fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is less than two weeks away, but the avalanche has already begun.
Oliver Stone's film "World Trade Center" has been advertised in all corners and is being screened across the nation. CNN
has announced that it intends, on the 11th, to rebroadcast all of the coverage of the attacks from 8:30 a.m. until
midnight. If you don't have cable, they say, you can watch it for free on the CNN web site.
ABC intends to mark the occasion in far more grand a fashion. Starting September 10th and ending September 11th, the
network will show a miniseries titled "The Path to 9/11." According to reports from early screenings, the
writer/producer of the miniseries, Cyrus Nowrasteh, has crafted a television polemic intended to blame the entire event
on President Clinton.
Nowrasteh, an outspoken conservative of Persian descent whose family fled Iran after the fall of the Shah, spoke last
year at the Liberty Film Festival, described by its founders as Hollywood's first conservative film festival. Govindini
Murty, actress, writer, and co-director of the Liberty Film Festival, wrote a review of "The Path to 9/11" for the
right-wing online news page FrontPageMag.com.
In the review, Murty states, "'The Path to 9/11' is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries
I've ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible. This is the first
Hollywood production I've seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of
Osama bin Laden."
FrontPageMag, it should be noted, held a symposium back in May to argue that the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,
which were never found despite being the main reason for invasion, were actually spirited out of Iraq by Russia on the
eve of the 2003 attack. So it goes.
Leaving aside the wretched truth that the far right is once again using September 11 to score political points, the
facts regarding the still-lingering effort to blame the Clinton administration for the attacks must be brought to the
fore. Nowrasteh, at several points in his miniseries, rolls out a number of oft-debunked allegations that Clinton
allowed Osama bin Laden to remain alive and free before the attacks.
Roger Cressy, National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism in the period 1999-2001, responded to
these allegations in an article for the Washington Times in 2003. "Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the
CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda," wrote Cressy. "As President Bush well
knows, bin Laden was and remains very good at staying hidden. The current administration faces many of the same
challenges. Confusing the American people with misinformation and distortions will not generate the support we need to
come together as a nation and defeat our terrorist enemies."
Measures taken by the Clinton administration to thwart international terrorism and bin Laden's network were historic,
unprecedented and, sadly, not followed up on. Consider the steps offered by Clinton's 1996 omnibus anti-terror
legislation, the pricetag for which stood at $1.097 billion. The following is a partial list of the initiatives offered
by the Clinton anti-terrorism bill:
Screen Checked Baggage: $91.1 millionScreen Carry-On Baggage: $37.8 millionPassenger Profiling: $10 millionScreener Training: $5.3 millionScreen Passengers (portals) and Document Scanners: $1 millionDeploying Existing Technology to Inspect International Air Cargo: $31.4
millionProvide Additional Air/Counterterrorism Security: $26.6 millionExplosives Detection Training: $1.8 millionAugment FAA Security Research: $20 millionCustoms Service: Explosives and Radiation Detection Equipment at Ports: $2.2 millionAnti-Terrorism Assistance to Foreign Governments: $2 millionCapacity to Collect and Assemble Explosives Data: $2.1 millionImprove Domestic Intelligence: $38.9 millionCritical Incident Response Teams for Post-Blast Deployment: $7.2 millionAdditional Security for Federal Facilities: $6.7 millionFirefighter/Emergency Services Financial Assistance: $2.7 millionPublic Building and Museum Security: $7.3 millionImprove Technology to Prevent Nuclear Smuggling: $8 millionCritical Incident Response Facility: $2 millionCounter-Terrorism Fund: $35 millionExplosives Intelligence and Support Systems: $14.2 millionOffice of Emergency Preparedness: $5.8 million
The Clinton administration poured more than a billion dollars into counterterrorism activities across the entire
spectrum of the intelligence community, into the protection of critical infrastructure, into massive federal stockpiling
of antidotes and vaccines to prepare for a possible bioterror attack, into a reorganization of the intelligence
community itself. Within the National Security Council, "threat meetings" were held three times a week to assess looming
conspiracies. His National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, prepared a voluminous dossier on al-Qaeda and Osama bin
Laden, actively tracking them across the planet. Clinton raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important
speech he gave in the last three years of his tenure.
Clinton's dire public warnings about the threat posed by terrorism, and the actions taken to thwart it, went completely
unreported by the media, which was far more concerned with stained dresses and baseless Drudge Report rumors. When the
administration did act militarily against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the actions were dismissed by partisans
within the media and Congress as scandalous "wag the dog" tactics. The news networks actually broadcast clips of the
movie "Wag the Dog" while reporting on his warnings, to accentuate the idea that everything the administration said was
contrived fakery.
In Congress, Clinton was thwarted by the reactionary conservative majority in virtually every attempt he made to pass
legislation that would attack al-Qaeda and terrorism. His 1996 omnibus terror bill, which included many of the
anti-terror measures we now take for granted after September 11, was withered almost to the point of uselessness by
attacks from the right; Senators Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were openly dismissive of the threats Clinton spoke of.
Specifically, Clinton wanted to attack the financial underpinnings of the al-Qaeda network by banning American
companies and individuals from dealing with foreign banks and financial institutions that al-Qaeda was using for its
money-laundering operations. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, gutted the portions of
Clinton's bill dealing with this matter, calling them "totalitarian."
In fact, Gramm was compelled to kill the bill because his most devoted patrons, the Enron Corporation and its criminal
executives in Houston, were using those same terrorist financial networks to launder their own dirty money and rip off
the Enron stockholders. It should also be noted that Gramm's wife, Wendy, sat on the Enron Board of Directors.
Just before departing office, Clinton managed to make a deal with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development to have some twenty nations close tax havens used by al-Qaeda. His term ended before the deal was sealed,
and the incoming Bush administration acted immediately to destroy the agreement.
According to Time magazine, in an article entitled "Banking on Secrecy" published in October of 2001, Bush economic
advisors Larry Lindsey and R. Glenn Hubbard were urged by think tanks like the Center for Freedom and Prosperity to opt
out of the coalition Clinton had formed. The conservative Heritage Foundation lobbied Bush's Treasury Secretary, Paul
O'Neill, to do the same.
In the end, the lobbyists got what they wanted, and the Bush administration pulled out of the plan. The Time article
stated, "Without the world's financial superpower, the biggest effort in years to rid the world's financial system of
dirty money was short-circuited."
ABC's miniseries skates right over this, and likewise refuses to address the myriad ways in which the Bush
administration failed completely to defend this nation from attack. All the efforts put forth by the Clinton
administration were cast aside when Bush took office, simply because they wanted nothing to do with the outgoing
government. Condoleezza Rice, by her own admission, did not even bother to look at the massive compendium of al-Qaeda
data compiled by Sandy Berger until the morning of September 11.
After the attacks, virtually every member of the Bush administration put forth the talking point that, "No one could
have anticipated anyone using airplanes as bombs." The facts tell a different story.
In 1993, a $150,000 study was undertaken by the Pentagon to investigate the possibility of airplanes being used as
bombs. A draft document of this was circulated throughout the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and to the Federal
Emergency Management Agency. In 1994, a disgruntled Federal Express employee invaded the cockpit of a DC10 with the
intention of crashing it into a company building. Again in 1994, a pilot crashed a small airplane into a tree on the
White House grounds, narrowly missing the building itself. Also in 1994, an Air France flight was hijacked by members of
a terrorist organization called the Armed Islamic Group, who intended to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower.
The 1993 Pentagon report was followed up in September 1999 by a report titled "The Sociology and Psychology of
Terrorism." This report was prepared for the American intelligence community by the Federal Research Division, an
adjunct of the Library of Congress. The report stated, "Suicide bombers belonging to Al Qaida's martyrdom battalion
could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White
House."
Ramzi Yousef was one of the planners and participants in the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Yousef's
right-hand man, Abdul Hakim Murad, was captured and interrogated in 1995. During that interrogation, Murad described a
detailed plot to hijack airplanes and use them as weapons of terrorism. The primary plan was to commandeer eleven
commercial planes and blow them up over the Pacific Ocean. The secondary plan was to hijack several planes, which would
be flown into CIA headquarters, the World Trade Center, the Sears Tower, the White House and a variety of other targets.
Ramzi Yousef eluded capture until his final apprehension in Pakistan. During his 1997 trial, the plot described by
Murad resurfaced. FBI agents testified in the Yousef trial that, "The plan targeted not only the CIA, but other U.S.
government buildings in Washington, including the Pentagon."
Abdul Hakim Murad described plans to use hijacked commercial airplanes as weapons in 1995. Ramzi Yousef's trial further
exposed the existence of these plans in 1997. Two reports prepared by the American government, one from 1993 and another
from 1999, further detailed again the existence and danger of these plots. The Federal Express employee's hijacking
attempt in 1994, the attempted airplane attack on the White House in 1994, and the hijacking of the Air France flight in
1994 by terrorists intending to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower provided a glaring underscore to the data.
This data served to underscore the efforts made by the Clinton administration to combat international terrorism and
attacks against the United States. Unfortunately, the data and the work that inspired it was not followed up on.
A mission statement from the internal FBI Strategic Plan, dated 5/8/98, describes the FBI's Tier One priority as
'counterterrorism.' The FBI, under the Clinton administration, was making counterterrorism its highest priority. The
official annual budget goals memo from Attorney General Janet Reno to department heads, dated 4/6/2000, detailed how
counterterrorism was her top priority for the Department of Justice. In the second paragraph, she states, "In the near
term as well as the future, cybercrime and counterterrorism are going to be the most challenging threats in the criminal
justice area. Nowhere is the need for an up-to-date human and technical infrastructure more critical."
Contrast this with the official annual budget goals memo from Attorney General John Ashcroft, dated 5/10/2001. Out of
seven strategic goals described, not one mentions counterterrorism. An internal draft of the Department of Justice's
plans to revamp the official DoJ Strategic Plan, dated 8/9/2001, describes Ashcroft's new priorities. The areas Ashcroft
wished to focus on were highlighted in yellow. Specifically highlighted by Ashcroft were domestic violent crime and drug
trafficking prevention. Item 1.3, entitled "Combat terrorist activities by developing maximum intelligence and
investigative capability," was not highlighted.
There is the internal FBI budget request for 2003 to the Department of Justice, dated late August 2001. This was not
the FBI's total budget request, but was instead restricted only to the areas where the FBI specifically requested
increases over the previous year's budget. In this request, the FBI specifically asked for, among other things, 54
translators to transcribe the backlog of intelligence gathered, 248 counterterrorism agents and support staff, and 200
professional intelligence researchers. The FBI had repeatedly stated that it had a serious backlog of intelligence data
it has gathered, but could not process the data because it did not have the staff to analyze or translate it into usable
information. Again, this was August 2001.
The official Department of Justice budget request from Attorney General Ashcroft to OMB Director Mitch Daniels is dated
September 10, 2001. This document specifically highlights only the programs slated for above-baseline increases or
below-baseline cuts. Ashcroft outlined the programs he was trying to cut. Specifically, Ashcroft was planning to ignore
the FBI's specific requests for more translators, counterintelligence agents and researchers. It additionally shows
Ashcroft was trying to cut funding for counterterrorism efforts, grants and other homeland defense programs before the
9/11 attacks.
Along with these new priorities, which demoted terrorism significantly, there were the warnings delivered to the Bush
administration about potential attacks against the United States. Newspapers in Germany, France, Russia and London
reported in the months before September 11th a blizzard of warnings delivered to the Bush administration from a number
of allies.
The German intelligence service, BND, warned American and Israeli agencies that terrorists were planning to hijack
commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack important American targets. Egypt warned of a similar plot to use
airplanes to attack Bush during the G-8 summit in Genoa in June of 2001. This warning was taken so seriously that
anti-aircraft missiles were deployed around Columbus Airport in Italy.
In August of 2001, Russian intelligence services notified the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been trained for suicide
missions, and Putin himself confirmed that this warning was delivered "in the strongest possible terms," specifically
regarding threats to airports and government buildings.
In that same month, the Israeli security agency Mossad issued a warning to both the FBI and the CIA that up to 200 bin
Laden followers were planning a major assault on America, aimed at vulnerable targets. The Los Angeles Times later
confirmed via unnamed US officials that the Mossad warnings had been received.
On August 6, 2001, George W. Bush received his Presidential Daily Briefing. The briefing described active plots to
attack the United States by Osama bin Laden. The word "hijacking" appeared in that briefing. Bush reacted to this
warning by continuing with his month-long vacation in Texas.
Richard Clarke, former Director of Counter-Terrorism for the National Security Council, has worked on the terrorist
threat for the Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. administrations, amassing a peerless resume in the field. He
became a central figure in the commission investigating the September 11 attacks. Clarke has laid bare an ugly truth:
The administration of George W. Bush did not consider terrorism or the threat of al-Qaeda to be a priority prior to the
attacks.
Clarke, along with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who as a member of the National Security Council was privy
to military strategy meetings, indicated that the Bush administration was obsessed with an invasion of Iraq from the day
it arrived in Washington. This obsession continued even after the attacks, despite the fact that the entire intelligence
community flatly declared that Iraq was not involved.
Five years later, the questions surrounding what exactly happened on September 11, and why they were allowed to happen,
remain unsettled. A recent national poll conducted by Scripps Howard/Ohio University states that more than one third of
Americans believe that Bush's government either actively assisted in the 9/11 attacks, or allowed them to happen so as
to create a justification for war in the Middle East.
The New York Post, reporting on this poll, stated, "Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government
appears to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon. Seventy percent of people who give credence to these theories also say they've become angrier with the
federal government than they used to be."
"Thirty-six percent of respondents overall," continued the Post, "said it is 'very likely' or 'somewhat likely' that
federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to
stop them 'because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.' 'One out of three sounds high, but
that may very well be right,' said Lee Hamilton, former vice chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States (also called the 9/11 Commission). His Congressionally-appointed investigation concluded that
federal officials bungled their attempts to prevent, but did not participate in, the attacks by al-Qaeda five years ago.
'A lot of people I've encountered believe the U.S. government was involved," Hamilton said. 'Many say the government
planned the whole thing.'"
The passage of time will, in all likelihood, finally expose the truth behind exactly what happened on September 11, and
why. Until the moment of final revelation comes, however, we are all best served by a systematic analysis of the facts
surrounding that dark day. Efforts such as this ABC miniseries to use 9/11 as a partisan club should be shunned, and
hard data should be highlighted instead.
Back in 2003, CBS was forced to pull its miniseries "The Reagans," after conservative groups lambasted the network for
crossing the line into advocacy against the Reagan administration. A similar effort should perhaps be undertaken to
compel ABC to pull "The Path to 9/11." At no time should a conservative producer with an anti-Clinton axe to grind be
allowed to use public airwaves to broadcast a rank distortion of the truth, especially on the anniversary of the worst
day in our history.
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William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.
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