America Asleep: Pre-9/11 Intel

19 August 2005 |permalink | email article

This is a developing story about U.S. intelligence failures, and why persistent warnings about terrorist attacks on the nation were not more effectively blunted by two commanders-in-chief.

Explosive revelations, both old and new, suggest that the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented if the Clinton and Bush administrations, at different times, had acted more vigorously on intelligence warnings about Osama bin Laden’ s 1996 move from Sudan to Afghanistan to establish a terrorist haven.

The New York Times’ April 18, 2004 chronology is a must-read.

Al Qaeda and bin Laden did not blindside the United States, but were a threat recognized and discussed regularly at the highest levels of government for nearly five years before the attacks, in thousands of reports, often accompanied by urgent warnings from lower level anti-terrorist experts, notably Richard A. Clarke, who served both presidents.

Clinton and Bush received regular information about the threat of Al Qaeda and the intention of the bin Laden network to strike inside the United States. Both made terrorism a stated priority, but failed to find a diplomatic solution and viewed military action as a last resort. Both also failed to grapple with the paralyzing disfunction of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., each charged with protecting the nation from terrorists.

As Clinton left office, he and F.B.I. chief Louis Freeh were barely speaking. In late August 2001, a month before 9/11, C.I.A. director George Tenet was given a memorandum titled “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.” But he took no action and never informed Bush who later awarded him the Medal of Honor.

Bush, told of the Qaeda threat during the transition, started work in March 2001 on an anti-i terrorist strategy which over the first eight months produced much information, dire in tone and detailed in content. It produced alerts but resulted in breaks in the chain of command.

Bush got a briefing paper he requested on Aug. 6, 2001 at his Texas vacation ranch which contained ominous information: that Qaeda operatives had been in the U.S. for years and might be focusing on a building in lower Manhattan as a target. But his tight inner circle regarded it as not specific enough.

Not until Sept, 10, the day before the attacks, did Bush’s national security aides finally approve an inept, three-phase effort to eliminate Al Quaeda - a plan that was to unfold over three years. It envisioned a mission to the Taliban in Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was based, diplomatic pressure and covert action. Military strikes were a last resort. Iraq? Not in focus.

This Wednesday, a reserve Army intelligence officer said he told staff members of the 9/11 independent commission that “Able Danger,” a secret military unit, had identified two of the three terrorist cells involved in the 2001 terrorist strikes more than a year before the attacks.

During the 2003 meeting in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a unit member mentioned that his group had identified 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta along with three other hijackers as terrorist suspected. Three months later, back in the U.S., Shaffer, an Army reservist, offered to testify before the commission but his offer was refused.

Shaffer’s relationship with now defunct Able Danger was first revealed Tuesday by Curt Weldon, R- Pa., vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, who has been critical of the commission’s failure to investigate his well-publicized assertions.

Only last Friday, the former 9/11 commission chairman and vice chairman said the commission did not obtain enough information on the operation to make it historically significant. Now, some members of the commission want Congress to determine whether the Pentagon withheld intelligence information showing that Able Danger had identified Atta and three other hijackers as potential threats long before the attacks.

Newly declassified documents obtained by The New York Times from the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch show that prescient State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden’s move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven to train mujahedeen terrorists and expand Islam beyond the Middle East.

The government chose not to deter the move. Americans should be furious about the vincible ignorance of its elected leaders in failing to thwart 9/11, and the resulting quagmire unfolding today in Iraq. And, yes, Osma bin Laden is still alive.

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