http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030922-090026-8355r.htm
As counterterrorism and foreign policy professionals
and veterans of
the NSC staff in the years proceeding September
11, we have heard our
share of misstatements and conspiracy theories
about terrorism. But
nothing quite compares to Richard Miniter's book
"Losing Bin Laden,"
which includes a number of erroneous allegations
about the Clinton
administration's counterterrorism record, many
of which were then
published in this newspaper. Let us address a
few:
First, Mr. Miniter recycles
old, false Sudanese claims that the
Clinton White House declined access to Sudan's
intelligence files on
al Qaeda and that an unnamed CIA official declined
an offer from Sudan
in 1996 to turn Osama bin Laden over to the United
States.
No one should believe these
allegations by Mr. Miniter's source,
Fateh Erwa — a Sudanese intelligence officer
known for his penchant to
deceive — that there was an offer to hand bin
Laden over to the United
States. Certainly, no offer was ever conveyed
to any senior official
in Washington. Had the Sudanese been serious
about offering bin Laden
to the United States, they could have communicated
such an offer to
any number of senior Clinton administration officials.
It did not happen.
Mr. Miniter also claims that
Sudan repeatedly tried to provide
voluminous intelligence files on bin Laden to
the CIA, the FBI, and
senior Clinton administration officials and would
be "repeatedly
rebuffed through both formal and informal channels."
Absurd. In fact,
it was precisely the other way around.
On multiple occasions, and
in venues ranging from Addis Ababa to
Virginia, Washington, New York and Khartoum,
the United States
aggressively pressed the Sudanese to prove their
alleged commitment to
cooperating on terrorism, by severing their close
ties with known terrorists,
arresting specific individuals and providing
specific intelligence information to us.
Yet, despite frequent promises of cooperation,
presumably in the hopes of
getting off the terrorism list and out from under
U.N. sanctions, the Sudanese
consistently failed to deliver.
This should come as no surprise,
because Sudan in the mid-'90s was
one of the most hard-core terrorist states in
the world. Its fiercely militant leader,
Hassan Turabi, turned Sudan into a sanctuary,
training base and active supporter
for a range of Islamic terrorist organizations,
including al Qaeda.
That Mr. Miniter so willingly
credits bogus claims from the Sudanese regime
— a regime the Bush administration has rightly
kept on the terrorism list, that has
done nothing to bring an end to their domestic
slave trade, and has only recently
begun to engage seriously in international efforts
to bring an end to a civil war
that has killed over two million Sudanese citizens
— is deeply troubling.
Another charge in the book
is that President Clinton failed to retaliate
immediately after the bombing of the USS Cole
in October 2000 despite the fact
that responsibility for the attack was clear.
Mr. Miniter cites this as part of his
overall and unsubstantiated theory that Mr. Clinton
"refused to wage a real war
on terrorism."
When the USS Cole was hit in
October 2000, al Qaeda was a prime suspect.
But other terrorist groups and states which had
attacked us before were also
potentially responsible.
It was appropriate that Mr.
Clinton wanted conclusions from his chief
intelligence and law enforcement agencies before
launching broad retaliatory
strikes on al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan.
Definitive conclusions
from the CIA and FBI on who was behind the Cole
were not provided to
Mr. Clinton for the remainder of his term.
Even without conclusions from
the FBI and CIA on the Cole, bin Laden
and his lieutenants were still hunted to the
last day of Mr. Clinton's presidency
for al Qaeda's 1998 attacks on our two embassies
in Africa. And if the Clinton
administration dropped the ball in responding
to the Cole bombing, why didn't
the incoming Bush administration pick it up in
January, 2001?
Mr. Miniter also alleges that
in the spring and summer of 1998 the Clinton
administration was deadlocked over the decision
to conduct a special forces
mission near a bin Laden camp. Mr. Miniter suggests
that the president did not
want to overrule Pentagon concerns over risks
because he could not "stomach
sending thousands of troops into harm's way."
Mr. Clinton was, in fact, ready
and willing to undertake a special forces or
other paramilitary assault on bin Laden,
particularly after our missile attacks on bin
Laden in the summer of 1998, and often
pressed his senior military advisers for options.
But Mr. Clinton's top military and
intelligence advisers concluded that a commando
raid was likely to be a failure,
given the potential for detection, in the absence
of reliable, predictive intelligence
on bin Laden's whereabouts.
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. As President Bush
well knows, bin Laden was and remains very good
at staying hidden.
For eight years the Clinton
administration fought hard to counter terrorism,
and while we didn't accomplish all that we hoped,
we had some important successes.
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.