Preface

I began writing this last Friday, but life interfered, so much has occurred and much attention has been given this issue while I was researching and writing (but not publishing). About 80% of this post was completed by last Monday. I’ve just gone back through it to make minor edits to be sure it’s up to date with all the events that have unfolded this week.

[The latest at this time appears to be the response to ABC from Senate Democratic Leaders and the first thorough report of the whole dispute that I’ve found in the mainstream media. Kudos to Scott Collins of the Los Angeles Times for accomplishing that. It’s unfortunate that a front page representation of Collin’s report was not provided when I looked, but I did find something else that deserves everyone’s notice.

Ex-US Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, has weighed in with an Op-Ed response to the ABC story. She’s the remaining key part to the story I expect ABC will tell, because she interfered with their fiction’s protagonist, John O’Neill. She represents herself well in the Op-Ed, which doesn’t surprise me. Her actions may appear questionable in hindsight, but it was at the top of intel agencies back in Washington where the truly pertinent missteps were made. Which I’ll cover in Part Two.]

Unlike many peers writing to correct untruths known to exist in the portrayal ABC will air, I sought not just to point out errors, but to additionally present a full picture of how our government has countered terrorists and terrorist groups over the past two decades. Unlike corporate media, my goal isn’t to sell ads or to entertain with dramatic stories, but to present an historic account.

I anticipate that people with partisan biases will criticize my effort, as they seek to slant the record to provide a favorable light on a Republican and an unfavorable one on Democrats - or vice-versa. So yes, I’m a political progressive. Try as I might, my effort to present an objective account will likely see some bias creep in.

However, since I firmly believe there are thousands of people in violent terror organizations with a keen desire to see the US damaged or destroyed, I consider it a mandatory goal to prevent that. And my overriding bias is toward that end, above any party or ideological allegiance.

I’m pragmatic enough to expect that elected and appointed government officials, intelligence agents and bureaucrats, and military personnel will make mistakes on occasion. But it’s also true that some mistakes are honest errors and some are just plain dumb…. or dishonest. And the worst errors are those that are repeated, or those that cause immediate damage like loss of life.

I also grant that political leaders cannot always give precedence to the danger of ‘a tree’ (in this case, of Al Qaida) within a vacuum. There is a larger forest of issues and interests that has to be taken into account by such leaders. But there also are key moments when the imminent danger of the tree demands their full attention to the neglect of the forest.

We’d be unreasonable to demand perfection from government officials. We have a right to demand competence, accountability for serious mistakes and especially, that our representatives learn from their mistakes and achieve better outcomes as a result.

With that, I present what I wrote last weekend.

As one of the first bloggers to advocate an active campaign to boycott the advertisers on the biased ABC show - The Path to 9/11 - which airs next Sunday night and Monday, I continue to urge all readers to follow-through on that principled course. I read Glenn Reynolds last week claiming that a call to an ABC insider gained the response that the airing of the show was a “fait accompli”. Highlighting the script’s inconsistencies with the actual evidence, via a very public stink, remains the best way to handle this.

In addition to the original testimony of Dr. Rice, as Digby has replayed here, both Hullaballoo and Firedoglake have been hot on the issue of its pre-release screening that has been sent ONLY to rightist blogs, which by itself is indicative of a deliberate political maneuver.

Add to that what commenter Kurt added about the director of the propaganda film.

Having spent some time researching this, I think there’s more worth adding to fully understand what they’ll likely be peddling, and what the facts are. First, let’s understand the audience they’re likely to reach.

The Likely Audience and Major Criticisms

Opposite this on competing network channels, CBS will be airing “9-11″, a repeat narrated by Robert DeNiro, on Sunday night, while NBC will be airing the NFL contest between the NY Giants and Indianapolis Colts. So for the many people nationwide who use antennas instead of cable, Sunday’s half of the show is likely to be a low-impact night.

Monday night will likely draw more attention, despite Monday Night Football, because that will air on ESPN and two of the four major antenna-friendly networks will be debuting new shows. I anticipated the football and this show to be the top two in audience share that night, so I initially expected the most slanted info to be presented at that time.

However, as noted by ThinkProgress, there’s a major claim made on Sunday night, that Clinton had a shot at Bin Laden which he refused to take and the anti-terror chief from that time, Richard Clarke, has already responded loudly that ABC’s portrayal is completely falsified. Clinton approved every request by the CIA and military whenever they believed they could take out Bin Laden.

Because of ABC’s refusal to permit President Clinton or anyone but rightists from prescreening the video, our only choice is to guess at what else they’re presenting. But from the research I’ve done, I’m pretty confident that another major incident in the fight against terrorists will also be presented with an anti-Clinton slant. That will air Monday night: the so-called lack of response to the USS Cole bombing.

(Bear with me. Unlike the NY Times story about the bias of this, which underreports the key criticisms - like the way ABC provided videos for prescreening ONLY to rightist bloggers and that Commission chair Kean just coincidentally is a Republican, too - I’ve overreported the detail from my research. I assure you, however, there’s several important facts within critical to an accurate representation of anything deserving of the title “the Path to 9-11″. )

The Attack on the USS Cole

All the key facts below came from the 9-11 Commission Report unless otherwise noted:

1) The attack occurred on October 12, 2000. That late date permitted Clinton only a window of 99 days to gain the necessary intel to determine responsibility and conduct a response. The US Navy’s own investigative report was completed on 1/19/2001, one day before Clinton left office.

Yet Clinton testified to the 9-11 Commission that sufficient time existed for him to conduct a military response which he was eager to do. What was lacking was a level of proof required from the FBI and CIA that Al Qaida’s involvement was certain. Without that, an air attack on Afghanistan could inflame the Middle East and Pakistan, hand Osama a PR victory and gain condemnation from critical allies around the world.

Subsequent evidence from an Al Qaida insider supports that, as Bin Laden was regularly complaining about the lack of a response to that bombing. More importantly, he was immediately on the move, he dispersed other Al Qaida leaders to different locations and he continued those evasive tactics for months afterward, making it highly improbable that any military response would have succeeded in taking out its principal targets, the leaders of the gang.

2) Clinton’s public responses?

“We will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to find those who killed our sailors and hold them accountable.” –President Clinton, October 14, 2000

Also:

“If, as it now appears, this was an act of terrorism, it was a despicable and cowardly act. We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable. If their intention was to deter us from our mission of promoting peace and security in the Middle East, they will fail utterly. The alternative to the peace process is now no longer merely hypothetical. It is unfolding today before our very eyes,” Clinton said.

President Clinton directed the Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the State Department to send officials to Yemen to investigate the attack. Clinton ordered U.S. ships in the region to pull out of the port, and ordered U.S. land forces to increase their security.

The USS Cole was lifted aboard the Norwegian heavy transport ship M/V Blue Marlin and towed back to the United States.

The Navy held a memorial service on October 18, 2000, at the ship’s home port of Norfolk, Virginia. President Clinton and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen were in attendence.

[US State Dept. link]

As Clinton was attempting to restore the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians at the time, he felt the terror attack might be an outside attempt to thwart that. His orders to the intel agencies and military demonstrated a swift and entirely appropriate response was already underway.

3) Yemen had two co-conspirators arrested within two weeks and FBI terror specialist John O’Neill (who the movie will portray in a heroic light) and his team of investigators were in Yemen seeking answers aggressively. But his capacity to pursue answers was thwarted by the Yemenis - who wouldn’t even permit them near the suspects. The movie will then likely highlight how the US Ambassador to Yemen also frustrated O’Neill, as his aggressive methods and weapons carried by agents were drawing consternation from his Yemeni hosts. He departed Yemen within two months and when he sought a return later, that ambassador blocked it, which led O’Neill -and others - to the conclusion that the ambassador had a personality conflict with him.

The ambassador denied that, but did explain how O’Neill’s methods were creating a contentious atmosphere that aggravated the Yemeni government instead of inducing their cooperation. As well, the evidence the Yemenis were amassing continued to prove accurate.

I expect ABC will highlight this dispute as the key impediment to a military response by Clinton, caused by one of his ambassadors. But as fellow blogger, Clif, noted, that’s why it’s important to read the entire report that the movie’s writer claims as the principal source of the story. I concur: read it, especially Chapter Six.

4) Published articles, and the 9-11 Commission Report indicated O’Neill’s staff in Yemen was reduced to about 50 investigators by the end of October. O’Neill’s boss visited and reported back that Ambassador Barbara Bodine was O’Neill’s “only detractor.” O’Neill’s investigation was effectively stalled when he left in late November. He’d established good relations with the head of Yemen’s intelligence agency, while failing to establish direct relations with other top Yemeni government officials by that time.

Even if it was not O’Neill’s methods responsible for the impasse, and Bodine was the actual impediment, it’s important to consider how Bodine’s superiors responded, as well as her own background, and the background of other principals.

From the Commission’s report:

Within the first weeks after the attack, the Yemenis found and arrested both Badawi and Quso, but did not let the FBI team participate in the interrogatations. The CIA described initial Yemeni support after the Cole as “slow and inadequate.” President Clinton, Secretary Albright and DCI Tenet all intervened to help. Because the information was secondhand, the US team could not make its own assessment of its reliability.

The intervention of Clinton included a direct call to the Yemeni president.

5) Was Barbara Bodine the key impediment? If so, does Clinton bear the ultimate blame for appointing her? The answer to those questions remains pure speculation. O’Neill had a job to do and used an approach that worked well for him. Bodine had her job to do and a method that worked successfully for her, too.

In fact, O’Neill also lacked the steady support of FBI superiors like Louis Freeh. And Freeh was a key part of the antiterror effort as was CIA Director George Tenet. So let’s start with some background on Freeh and the other movers and shakers.

Freeh: from an inconsistent record to a record of blaming others

A prosecutor appointed as a judge by the first President Bush in 1991, Clinton appointed him FBI Director after forcing out William Sessions for personal use of FBI facilities and an overall record that had notably diminished the morale and effectiveness of the agency.

Freeh’s tenure was marked by some successes (the capture of the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh, the Montana Freemen standoff, and breaking up the Millenium bomb plot, most notably) and several gaffes. He was insubordinate at times, to his supervisor, Janet Reno, and to Clinton, as well. He mistreated the suspect Richard Jewell in the Olympics bombing case, though Jewell’s actions likely saved lives and he was fully cleared. He mishandled the Ruby Ridge case by disciplining a personal friend - Larry Potts - then promoting him Deputy Director, till criticism forced him to demote the guy. For years, he covered up details of the FBI’s use of potential incendiary devices in the Waco Branch Davidian fiasco, though the final judgment cleared the FBI of wrongdoing in that matter. Even in the successful prosecution of Oklahoma City bomber McVeigh - who fell into FBI hands via an arrest by local police for unrelated matters - it later came to light that Freeh nearly botched the case by illegally withholding over 3,000 pages of material from McVeigh’s lawyers.

Early in 1997, media allegations arose that Freeh had blocked intelligence about China’s alleged plot to influence U.S. elections from being shared with administration officials at the White House.

Only after that criticism, did he try to deflect the heat off himself and onto President Clinton.

With Clinton already the subject of a long string of investigations by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, Freeh called for the appointment of a second independent counsel in the fundraising investigation of Clinton and Vice President Gore. Attorney General Reno refused his request as unecessary and much publicity was given this by Clinton’s Republican critics right up to the eve of his impeachment, when Henry Hyde stated no evidence existed of impeachable offenses in the fundraising matter and it was dropped. Simply put, there was no ‘there’ there or the House Impeachment committee would have used it to strengthen its case for impeachment.

Though Freeh warred repeatedly with Reno and Clinton, especially in Clinton’s second term, Clinton kept him on throughout his presidency, as Freeh was supportive of Clinton’s anti-terror initiatives, while the Republican Congress was not. And Freeh’s term was not set to expire till 2003.

The major terror plots that were known to be disrupted during Clinton’s presidency include Operation Bojinka and the Millenium bombings (targeting L.A. airport and locations in other countries). More details on these will come later.

After the way the case against US nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee was botched, and subsequent Senate hearings, calls for stronger FBI leadership began in 2000 that led to Freeh’s resignation in May-June 2001. The new Attorney General John Ashcroft praised him as a ‘model law enforcement officer.’

June 21, 2001 — On his last official day in office, Freeh and Attorney General John Ashcroft announced 14 indictments in connection with the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers military barracks that killed 19 U.S. servicemen. The 46-count indictment alleges that all 14 men were members of the Islamic militant group Hezbollah, which federal officials said received support and inspiration from individuals within the Iranian government. No Iranian officials were named as defendants.

[link]

Freeh’s Successors, from late June till 9-11

After Freeh departed on June 21, Tom Pickard was made the Acting Director of the FBI on 6/25 by John Ashcroft, where he served till one week before the 9-11 attacks, when Robert Mueller took over as Director.

In 1993, Pickard was transferred to the New York City Office once again, to serve as the Special Agent in Charge of the National Security Division, supervising such matters as the trials of the World Trade Center bombing defendants, the trail of Omar Abdel-Rahman and his co-conspirators, the Manila Air conviction of Ramzi Youssef and his associates, and the July 1996, TWA Flight 800 explosion.

Pickard worked his way up and Freeh appointed him Deputy Director on 11/1/1999.

Pickard is implicated in the destruction of FBI agent John P. O’Neill’s career during the summer before the September 11, 2001 attacks. In the PBS Frontline documentary “The Man Who Knew.” O’Neill’s widow accuses Pickard of leaking information to the New York Times that effectively ended O’Neill’s efforts against Al-Qaeda.

[link]

George Tenet: Intel Guy, or Useful Sycophant?

Schooled for a diplomatic career, Tenet was first appointed as a staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1985. He advanced to be Senior Director for Intelligence Programs for the National Security Council in 1993. He was appointed Deputy Director of the CIA in 1995.

Unlike many CIA directors, Tenet never was a spook. He was a skilled bureaucrat with solid political instincts and the perfect exception to the Peter Principle. He rose to his level of incompetence, then, by a stroke of luck, advanced another step.

In this case, it was Clinton’s nomination of Anthony Lake to be CIA Director that worked in Tenet’s favor. Senate Republicans, zeroing in on Clinton in pursuit of any excuse to impeach him, rejected Lake. Clinton, seeking to depoliticize the nomination, turned to the previously approved number two guy, which brought Tenet to the top spot in January 1997.

Tenet proved his chameleon-like political acumen by lasting through the transition from a Democratic to Republican president, where he served till June 2004 - the second longest serving CIA Director in history. Like Michael Brown’s exit from FEMA, Tenet’s departure was necessary to Bush’s political survival but unlike Brown, when Tenet fell on his own sword, Bush rewarded him with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Critics on both sides of the partisan devide feel Tenet’s performance as a key national defender fell considerably short of that award.

The AP’s Pete Yost summed up Tenet’s chief appeal perfectly when he wrote: “Even when his political capital appeared to be tanking, Tenet managed to hang on with what some say was a fierce loyalty to Bush and the CIA personnel. A likable, chummy personality, also helped keep him above water.”

National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, Clinton’s top national defense guy

Berger, by most accounts, served Clinton and the country honorably and ably when Clinton was in office. That record’s since been undermined by his actions during the 9-11 Commission’s investigation.

When Richard Clarke (who’s profiled below) was scheduled to appear before the Commission, Berger utilized his security clearance to access and review records at the National Archives. He subsequently smuggled copies of several documents out of the Archives and destroyed three that were nearly identical to another pair, then lied about what he did and why. He was subsequently prosecuted and, after a plea agreement, was given a relatively minor punishment.

It’s never been clear to the public what Berger was attempting to conceal. The five documents in question were essentially the same and he didn’t destroy two of them. As the five had circulated separately to different intel and government people, we can speculate that some added a notation or question about something, that Berger thought would reflect unfavorably on someone, perhaps himself or Clinton. Yet that remains purely speculative.

What remains reasonable to assume was that Berger was attempting to distort the record. As a result, I no longer give credence to anything Berger says about the fight against terrorists. That he’s opposed to the ABC fiction is insufficient cause, on its own, to reject that fictional account.

The fact remains that the original documents were never removed from the Archives, so Berger actually concealed nothing from anyone - like the 911 Commission - who could subsequently access the documents. If it doesn’t compromise national security, I believe the five versions of that document should be released to the public, so we can fairly judge if the crude attempt at concealment tried to hide something substantive about the performance of Clinton or his subordinates.

Personally, I rank Berger’s actions as the most egregious case of a Clinton appointee acting disreputably, even if it was long after Clinton left office. While other Clinton appointees are, in my opinion, deserving of criticism for other actions, Berger’s action appears to be an attempt to change a physical record, which is worse than a dishonest verbal critique, which can arise from nothing more than a personality clash.

I’d not object if ABC presented that story. It’s historical fact, even if his motive remains unknown and the material information remains speculative.

Beyond O’Neill: Other Intelligence Heroes

There’s no doubt John O’Neill was a lead mover and shaker in the war on terrorism. From 1996 till shortly before his death at the WTC, O’Neill may have known more about Osama and Al Qaida than anyone outside of the inner circle in Al Qaida. But there were other people just as alarmed, pushing for more info, pushing bosses and White House officials to pay closer attention or to take action, and rubbing folks the wrong way at times.

Among them:

1) Mary Jo White, who, as a US Attorney, worked closely with O’Neill in the FBI’s NY office. From a PBS documentary (link later), she described her earliest impressions of O’Neill:

Confident. Very knowledgeable about terrorist groups — all of them, not just Al Qaeda. Said all of the right things to me so that we would work together from the beginning in a partnership. You could almost see it on his face — he wanted to get to know me as the person he was talking to, so that he could make that relationship work. We were different kinds of people, but certainly united in the main mission, which was counterterrorism. He knew that about me before he came.

I had a reputation of being fairly autonomous also, and not being afraid to rattle cages to get things done. He had that reputation, too. So when he came to New York, he wanted to try to get us both off on the right foot and not have those two cage-rattlers working at counter-purposes.

2) Barry Mawn, the Assistant Director in charge of the NY office of the FBI, he got the job O’Neill wanted and served as O’Neill’s boss. While acknowledging that O’Neill was more knowledgeable early on than he was about Al Qaida, Mawn felt his longer service gave him the edge in getting the promotion. He also strongly supported O’Neill’s efforts throughout and they both worked together well in the fight against Al Qaida. He was so close to O’Neill that when it became clear his further advance within the FBI would likely be blocked, he told him he ought to consider an outside job, which led to O’Neill getting the lucrative security position at the WTC.

3) Coleen Rowley, one of several Minnesota FBI agents who, twenty days before the 9-11 attacks, became convinced the now-convicted Zacarias Moussaoui was involved in a plot to commit a terror attack using a plane and desperately tried to get FBI headquarters to get a FISA warrant to search his laptop computer. The effort got blocked by the bureaucracy and Rowley risked her career by turning whistleblower to reveal that the FBI did have info that could have prevented the attack. The headquarters agents who blocked that request were later promoted. Rowley was subsequently named one of several of Time Magazine’s ‘Persons of the Year’. (After concluding her FBI career later, Rowley decided to run for Congress from her district in Minnesota and is currently the Democratic nominee for that position.)

4) Richard Clarke, who was the head White House anti-terror guy in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, came to the federal intelligence field the same time as Tenet did, though their expertise and approaches differed significantly.

Clarke became Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence in 1985, during Reagan’s term. When the first President Bush took over in 1989, Clarke became Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs throughout Bush’s term. After nearly eight years service in the State Department, he was moved to the National Security Council by Clinton, where he was Chair of the Counter-terrorism Security Group, from 1992 through his departure in the second President Bush’s third year. In addition to that anti-terror chief position, he also was the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism from 1998-2000. Then, while also maintaining his Chair of the Security Group, when Bush took over in 2001, he served as Special Advisor till his departure in 2003.

As the second-ranking intelligence official in Reagan’s State Department, he was given credit for developing successful methods of psychological warfare used to counter Moammar Gaddafi of Libya. When he moved to the NSC under Clinton, he chaired a newly created committee that included influential members of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and US military. That committee was tasked with developing anti-terror and global anti-drug strategies.

Clarke came to national attention for one of the first military responses to Al Qaida when he pushed for a cruise missile strike against a target in Sudan that was believed to be an Al Qaida chemical weapons factory. The target proved to be a medicine production facility. Clarke claimed the error was caused by faulty intelligence, but Clinton detractors claimed the President was ‘wagging the dog’ to divert attention from his pending impeachment at the time.

Clarke, in his actions, was closer to the pushy John O’Neill model than the gladhanding George Tenet one. He was aggressive in his pursuit of new and effective counter-terrorism strategies. But operating within the bureaucracy instead of out in the field where O’Neill operated, he had to accede to the diplomatic goals of the presidents he served under from time to time.

A Summation of the Key Personnel Profiled and the Measures of Our Presidents

Every one of these people contributed to the counter-terrorism fight. So did President Clinton and President Bush. Some made errors and some had insufficient hierarchical strength to withstand the larger diplomatic and international political goals of superiors. And any reasonable interpretation of the anti-terror fight has to remember that the struggle takes place within the bigger picture of global political realities that presidents must contend with.

For many decades, US economic strength has depended on the steady acquisition of dependable supplies of oil and that unspoken reality was formalized in the late 1970s with a presidential declaration that the stability of that oil flow was part of the nation’s national security interest.

Since Saudi Arabia possessed the largest supply by far, and the amounts controlled by Iran and Iraq were next in line, a significant part of our foreign policy since the first OPEC oil embargoes has centered on how to achieve the most productive relations possible with those three oil giants. Because of the repressive governments of all three, balancing that need for oil with human rights concerns and anti-terrorist concerns has always been problematic for every US president since. Simply saying “it’s our way or the highway” to those nations was not at all viable when the USSR existed, as they had counter forces in place to prevent that and such a stance could have led to a nuclear confrontation.

After the USSR fell apart, our Presidents have had to redefine alliances, revamp our military for post-Cold War needs, compete with the rising oil needs of the world’s two largest populations in China and India, modernize our communications technology in the midst of a global information technology revolution, recognize that groups of terrorists were utilizing those same technological advances to build global terror capacities, counter that growing threat, and still seek, via diplomacy, the proper balance of ‘carrot-and-stick’ initiatives to try and move major oil supplying nations to less repressive societies, and to try to do so with minimal loss of life.

That’s a pretty tall order that takes time to achieve. From the time the USSR dissolved till the 9-11 attacks occurred was just under ten years. All three presidents during that period countered terrorists throughout, but each also made some choices that caused some terrorists to react with further violence. As none of the three presidents was a mindreader, it was generally impossible to predict the logic of terror masterminds, especially when new ones arose -like Bin Laden - who were largely unknown.

Yet, as information about such key terrorists grew, analysts could occasionally make successful predictions about likely responses. And that had to be weighed along with other intel data, in presidential decisions about Bin Laden and other Al Qaida leaders, as the avalilable knowledge about them grew. Thus, it’d be reasonable to expect that Bin Laden was unknown to the first President Bush, that Clinton, especially in his second term, would gain some advantage from the growing knowledge and the second President Bush would have the broadest knowledge of all available to him.

Properly weighing the appropriateness of presidential actions takes that into account. How well they acquire that knowledge, and what they do in response to counter such terrorists are the two best ways to measure their effectiveness.

My excessive detail is complete with those profiles and background information. On Friday, before noon, the slimmer Part Two of my report will deliver the strongest points and most surprising finds I encountered in my research.

As the ABC fictionalized docudrama is likely to present John O’Neill as a superheroic protagonist who could do no wrong - a formula appropriate for gripping drama, but weak as a vehicle for factual history - Part Two will be centered on O’Neill and the people who he considered allies or (in the case of Ambassador Barbara Bodine) foes.

That and the measure of the two presidents who’ve had to deal with Al Qaida, provide the meat of my presentation. Up to now, I’ve mainly provided the boring old potatoes.