Clinton Admits Doubts About His Administration's al-Qaeda Response
Posted April 9, 2004
By Shaun Waterman
The commission probing the Sept. 11 terror attacks met Thursday with
former President Bill Clinton in a three-and-a-half hour, closed-door
session during which, commissioners said, he expressed some doubts
about his administration's response to terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda.
"He was very frank. He gave us a lot of very helpful insight into
things that happened [and his] policy approaches [to them]," said
Reagan-era Navy secretary commissioner John F. Lehman.
The meeting -- though likely to be overshadowed by the public testimony
under oath the commission heard the same day from current National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice -- brings into sharp relief
long-standing allegations that Clinton's response to a series of
attacks by Islamic terrorists made the United States appear weak and
encouraged al-Qaeda in their belief that they could strike the United
States with impunity.
"We did go into some of the obvious criticisms of the eight years under
his tenure," Lehman told CNN, after news of the Clinton meeting broke
late Thursday afternoon.
He added that the former president was now second-guessing some of the
decisions that he made at that time. "He was very frank, very open
about talking about some decisions where, had he known some things,
[they] might have gone one way or another way."
The commission -- formally known as the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Against the United States -- has already reported
that there were several occasions after the attacks on two U.S.
embassies in East Africa when senior officials might have had an
opportunity to order terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden killed,
either with cruise missiles or by locally recruited Afghan CIA agents.
On four occasions in 1998-99, commission investigators said at a
hearing last month, officials -- including counterterrorism tzar
Richard A. Clarke, CIA Director George Tenet and Clinton National
Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger -- opted not to strike locations
where bin Laden was thought to be. Officials said their information was
not certain enough and the number of innocent civilians who might be
killed was unacceptably high.
Commissioners said they also asked Clinton about policy matters. "We
asked him a host of big questions, big policy recommendations," said
former Indiana Democratic congressman and commission member Tim
Roemer.
The former president's office said in a statement that Clinton was
"pleased" to have had the opportunity to meet with the panel "and
believed it was a very constructive meeting."
Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, who was Clinton's deputy attorney general,
told CNN that the former president -- as he is wont - was very
voluble. "He even answered questions we didn't ask," she joked.
Commissioner Slade Gorton, the former GOP senator from Washington
state, added that the meeting ran over by almost an hour but was "very
valuable" because "President Clinton has done a lot of thinking since
he left office on issues like this," and said the commission was
grateful for his advice.
Both panelists also took the opportunity to comment on papers from the
Clinton White House, which, though provided to the current
administration by the former president's archive, were not turned over
to the commission.
After the issue was brought to light by former Clinton official Bruce
R. Lindsey, commission lawyers were given access to the papers and
concluded that, of more than 10,000 documents, less than 70 were
relevant to their inquiry and not duplicative of material already
obtained elsewhere.
"We haven't gotten them yet," Gorton said of the documents, "and they
are relevant to our mission. ... We fully expect that we will get all
of them so that they can inform our ultimate report."
"Now that we found out why it was that we didn't get certain Clinton
administration documents that were withheld by the White House," added
Gorelick, "we're going to issue a parallel request for similar Bush
administration documents."
Shaun Waterman is the homeland and national security editor for UPI, a
sister news organization of Insight.
http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/04/13/Politics/Clinton.Admits.Doubts.About.His.Administrations.AlQaeda.Response-656714.shtml
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