Clinton Memos On Bin Laden: Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in History, The War On Terrorism, The WorldIt appears as if a batch of recent declassified documents shows that the Clinton administration knew about Bin Laden, was warned that he was a growing threat, and didn’t stop his move from Sudan to Afghanistan.
From the New York Times comes more about Clinton and Osama
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 – 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 as he sought to expand radical Islam “well beyond the Middle East,” but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show.In what would prove a prescient warning, the State Department intelligence analysts said in a top-secret assessment on Mr. bin Laden that summer that “his prolonged stay in Afghanistan – where hundreds of ‘Arab mujahedeen’ receive terrorist training and key extremist leaders often congregate – could prove more dangerous to U.S. interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum,” in Sudan.
A bunch of right-wing blogs are jumping on this one, and I can’t say that I blame them. The liberal blogs definitely trumpeted memos like the amazingly accurately titled, “Osama Bin Laden Deteremined To Strike In US”, so turnabout is fair play.
But let’s all remember, that while we can keep focusing on the past and pointing fingers at this person and that, it seems that everybody dropped the ball on this one, otherwise those planes never would have hit the towers.
(HT: memeorandum)
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 and is filed under History, The War On Terrorism, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 17th, 2005 at 3:41 pm
Hindsight is 20/20 but in 1996 our knowledge of bin Laden was limited. This was before he made his big pronouncement, a year later, where he stated that his goal was to kill as many Americans as possible. In 1996 bin Laden was a financer with troubling aspirations, not a determined leader of a global terrorist network as he clearly was by 2001. Putting these two documents on the same level is quite dishonest.
August 17th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
I agree kris, but that’s not what I’m doing. I think the memo that Rice got was much more damning, but the memos still serve the same purpose when you look at them from a certain partisan POV, which is the point I’m trying to make.
In other words, both sides use distractions like these to make you think somebody was asleep at the wheel. Let’s just get past this nonsense and deal with the simple fact that if either President really knew that this was going to happen, they would have moved mountains to stop it.
August 17th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Justin,
I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. . .
If you agree that ignoring the Rice memo was much worse (and that seems to be the implication of your previous comment), then how are the right and left equivalent? If the Rice memo is more damning, then ignoring it is clearly a less pardonable offense. It would seem, then, that criticism of Rice is more legitimate than criticism of Clinton.
That would make your effort at dividing the baby a bit pointless, wouldn’t it? I mean, two memos were written. One, by your admission, was far more damning than the other. Let’s even allow that both were ignored (this isn’t accurate, because Clinton took steps against Bin Laden in Afghanistan, while the Bush administration made no apparent effort in response to the Rice memo). It seems to me that this suggests that the left critics are a bit more sensible than the right critics, doesn’t it?
I’m just trying to puzzle out what you think “centrism” is.
August 18th, 2005 at 7:09 am
The Clinton Administration knew very well who Bin Laden was, the first attack on the WTC had already been done, not to mention several small attacks on US interests in the world. To pretend that he didn’t know about Bin Laden is to claim incompetence.
Since we are playing the blame game, since we know that this memo came in before the Sudan released him to Afghanistan, what does that say about Clinton not accepting their offer of turning him over to us at that time????? The administration knew that he was the figurehead of AQ, they knew that AQ claimed repsonsibility for the first WTC attack… personally the memo kind of puts that in a new light for me…
How about this Shaffer business, about how he wanted to give information to the FBI about three of the future hijackers but was refused the opportunity because of the ‘wall’ that didn’t allow intelligence to be passed from pentagon/intell to FBI. This wall was enforced because it might have hampered a ‘prosecution’ effort of ‘criminals’ with evidence laws on the books. Basically the policy was to wait until they did something and then prosecute them if they were alive….. When you look back on it, if the policy had been to treat them as ‘terrorist’ and go after them period, the information would have been shared…. this is one of the things that the Patriot Act corrects and it is one of the things that I hear the biggest complaints about from liberal bloggers….. think of how this could have been. Bush saw what happened and said it wasn’t going to happen again because of lack of information sharing, Congress saw this and agreed which is why they passed the law… then the Democrats, even though they voted for it and some continued to vote for it, wanted to use it against Bush so that the Republicans wouldn’t be able to win even more seats…. that is why we hear the ‘Patriot Act’ is over reaching. The Patriot Act isn’t any different than the law enforcement tools used in RICO cases, they have sneak and peep warrants, etc. I just don’t understand the paranoia about police taking the time to look into our private lives, like they have the time! There are what, about 280 million Americans, unless you are a HUGE A**HOLE they don’t even know you are alive…. Instead we want to continue the idiotic wall and go back to treating terrorism as a police action even though we actually WATCHED 3000 people die on 9/11/01. You know the hardest thing in the world to watch was to see people jumping from 100 floors up because they didn’t want to burn to death.
That all being said, nobody has a crystal ball, nobody knew that something this big would happen. Not Clinton, Berger, Albright, Bush, Ashcroft, or Rice….. Hindsight is always 20/20. But now that is has happened…. now it would be unforgivable for them to go back to the previous way of treating terrorism and allow this to happen again!
August 18th, 2005 at 10:29 am
I am a liberal democrat who strongly believes that Clinton’s passivism was shameful.
They knew the nature of the threat.
They had 6 years to take action, Bush had about 8 months. The ball was dropped by all.
August 18th, 2005 at 6:57 pm
Justin wrote, “it seems that everybody dropped the ball on this one, ” what an utter crock of bullshit. It really is, the mind of simpleton.
Bill Clinton did and no one else. It was he who appointed Janet Reno, who appointed Gorelick, and Clinton appointed Berger.
These three came with a philosophy that America is the biggest threat to world peace and always has been.
It is foreignors that must be protected from America, especially the FBI and CIA, who, along with the Pentagon, are the sources of all evil in this world. This is what they believed and still believe it.
That is why the put up the “walls” between the CIA and FBI, and that is why Reno thought racial profiling was the worst crime in the world.
The result was 9-11.
Granted they didn’t do it all by themselves. It took twentyfive plus years of gradual Federal government interference to do it, which required numerous elected officials of both parties and bureacrats breaking their oaths, expanding the Feds into places where it was unconstitutional for them to be, but it was Clinton whose big government, take no responsibility, never ever use the evil military, expect to divert attention from scandals, gave it the biggest pust.
It was Clinton, NOT Bush who was responsible.
To say that both are responsible is the same thing as saying neither is, which isn’t true and a dodge on your part.
This rational guarantees the same incompetent, inept assholes stay where they are and no one gets punished. In fact, its worse. This guarantees the incompetent, inept assholes get raises and more power, which means the taxpayer gets a bigger tax bill, and less freedom.
Your reasoning is pathetic.