Friends:
You know the flak.
Everyone does. President Bill Clinton, in an ambush effort by Fox News
Sunday, did not just roll over the way host Chris Wallace anticipated.
Rather, the president openly admitted the failure of his administration to
locate and kill bin Laden. He also stated emphatically, "At least I tried." He
added that when he left office, his administration provided the incoming Bush
administration with a "comprehensive anti-terrorism plan." Secretary Rice
couldn't seem to locate a newsperson quickly enough to loudly assert the
president had given them no such thing.
Well, as has been the
case so frequently with statements by the Bush administration honchos, what
they're screaming, the evidence strongly suggests, just ain't so. Read on, and
please pass this on.
Ed Tubbs
PS --- Also, at the end of the article,
are photocopied portions of the declassified document provided to the Bush
administration, the document Rice says she never received, regardless that
Richard Clarke (appointed by President Reagan, by the way) obtained Rice's
signed signature of receipt.
2001 memo to
Rice contradicts statements about Clinton,
Pakistan
09/26/2006 @ 12:59 pm
A memo received by United States
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shortly after becoming National Security
Advisor in 2001 directly contradicts statements she made to reporters
yesterday.
"We were not left a comprehensive
strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice told a reporter for the New York Post on
Monday. "Big pieces were missing," Rice added, "like an approach to Pakistan
that might work, because without Pakistan you weren't going to get
Afghanistan."
Rice made the comments in response
to claims made Sunday by former President Bill Clinton, who argued that his
administration had done more than the current one to address the al Qaeda
problem before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. She stopped short of
calling the former president a liar.
However, just five days after
President George W. Bush was sworn into office, a memo from counter-terrorism
expert Richard A. Clarke to Rice included the 2000 document,
"Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of
al-Qida: Status and Prospects." This document devotes over 2 of
its 13 pages of material to specifically addressing strategies for securing
Pakistan's cooperation in airstrikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in
Afghanistan.
The Pakistan
obstacle
The strategy document includes "three levers" that the United States
had started applying to Pakistan as far back as 1990. Sanctions, political and
economic methods of persuasion are all offered as having been somewhat
successful.
Other portions of the passages relating to Pakistan –– marked as
"operational details" –– have been redacted from the declassified memo at the
CIA's request.
The document also explores broader strategic approaches, such as a "need to
keep in mind that Pakistan has been most willing to cooperate with us on
terrorism when its role is invisible or at least plausibly deniable to the
powerful Islamist right wing."
But Clarke also made it clear that the Clinton Administration recognized
the problem that Pakistan posed in mounting a more sweeping campaign against bin
Laden: "Overt action against bin Laden, who is a hero especially in the
Pushtun-ethnic border areas near Afghanistan," Clarke speculated in late 2000,
"would be so unpopular as to threaten Musharraf's government." The plan notes
that, after the attack on the USS Cole, Pakistan had forbidden the United States
from again violating its airspace to attack bin Laden in Afghanistan.
The memo given by Clarke to Rice, to which the Clinton-era document was
attached, also urges action on Pakistan relating to al Qaeda. "First [to be
addressed,]" wrote Clarke in a list of pending issues relating to al Qaeda, is
"what the administration says to the Taliban and Pakistan about ending al Qida
sanctuary in Afghanistan. We are separately proposing early, strong messages on
both."
A disputed history
The documents have been a source of controversy before. Rice contended in a
March 22, 2004 Washington Post piece that "no al Qaeda plan was turned over to
the new administration."
Two days later, Clarke insisted to the 9/11 Commission that the plan had in
fact been turned over. "There's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a
strategy or a series of options, but all of the things we recommended back in
January," he told the commission, "were done after September 11th."
The memo was declassified on April 7, 2004, one day before Rice herself
testified before the 9/11 Commission.
Excerpts from documents
relating to the situation follow:
#
Pages 11-13 of the Clinton-era document sent to Rice from Clarke, detailing
Pakistan's role in the al Qaeda problem. The plan was referred to by Clarke, and
later by Rice in public statements:
Page 2 of memo from Clarke to Rice, urging "early, strong messages" to
Pakistan on the al Qaeda problem. The Clinton "plan" was attached to this
memo:
