Reality Intrudes
The Washington Post has a front page story today about a major policy speech Condi Rice had planned to make on Sept. 11, 2001. The speech was intended to outline the tough-minded administration's policy regarding "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday." Strangely, the policies she described seem rooted in the Cold War.
According to the Post, "The speech provides telling insight into the administration's thinking on the very day that the United States suffered the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text."
The speech also contained an implicit criticism of the Clinton administration who had spent $11 billion on counterroism in 2000 -- twice the amount spent on missile defense -- as not being concerned about the "real threat" -- long range missiles.
Oops.
Josh Marshall has further analysis.
Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal has what should be a front page story reporting on the significant efforts by the Clinton administration to protect against a predicted hijacking of a commercial jet liner which would then be used to disrupt a major event, such as the 50th anniversary of NATO in Washington DC, the G-7 Summit in Genoa, Italy, and the January 2001 inauguration of President George W. Bush. Planning was under way to protect the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics on Sept. 11, 2001.
New questions have emerged, in part from the just-published book by former senior National Security Council aide Richard Clarke, as to why the Clinton administration in the late 1990s failed to push through a proposal to extend the measures beyond special events to permanent protection of the skies over Washington. According to Mr. Clarke's book, and interviews with other former federal-government officials, that plan foundered because federal agencies whose cooperation was needed balked. The plan for permanent protection of Washington, however, was revived after Sept. 11 and was fully in effect by January 2003, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said.
Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks have said in interviews that they are looking closely at why the fear of airborne attacks didn't lead to more generalized, permanent measures to protect against aerial attacks before Sept. 11.
In the aftermath of those attacks, Bush administration officials have said they received no intelligence warning of such a tactic. "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a May 2002 news briefing.
Yet on several occasions starting in the mid-1990s, U.S. intelligence agencies had passed on information concerning such a possibility, including early plans by al Qaeda officials to use passenger jets as kamikaze weapons, according to records and current and former government officials.
As a consequence, a strategy for protecting airspace over special events was drawn up by the National Security Council staff for the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, in response to concerns about possible Iranian-backed terrorism. It included closing airspace over events to civilian air traffic, placing armed Air National Guard fighter jets on alert at a nearby base and launching on patrol a small air force belonging to the U.S. Customs Service, including jets, Black Hawk helicopters and a special radar-equipped plane. The customs service had the aircraft to interdict drug smuggling.
In addition, the plan was used for Mr. Clinton's second inauguration in 1997, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 50th anniversary celebration in Washington in 1999, the Republican and Democratic conventions in 2000 and the Bush inauguration in 2001, according to former White House officials and Mr. Clarke's book. The plan's use for designated "National Security Special Events" was made official in a classified portion of a "presidential decision directive" that Mr. Clinton signed in 1998. Use of the plan at these events wasn't publicized, and officials were forbidden to talk about it.
In his book, "Against All Enemies," Mr. Clarke describes the security planning for the Atlanta Olympics, and mentions later efforts to get the same measures applied permanently to Washington. Also, John A. Flaherty, chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, confirmed that before Sept. 11, the Bush administration was involved in planning airspace protection that was provided for the 2002 winter Olympics in Utah.
The possibility of terrorists using hijacked jets against major U.S. buildings had been raised in a public federal-government report in 1999 on terrorist threats facing the U.S. Prepared by the federal-research division of the Library of Congress, it warned: "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, or the White House." The report, referring to an al Qaeda leader captured in 1995, added that "Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters." Bush administration officials have said publicly that they weren't aware of the report before Sept. 11.
Rice's claim that, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile," is now, officially, impossible to square.
According to the Post, "The speech provides telling insight into the administration's thinking on the very day that the United States suffered the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text."
The speech also contained an implicit criticism of the Clinton administration who had spent $11 billion on counterroism in 2000 -- twice the amount spent on missile defense -- as not being concerned about the "real threat" -- long range missiles.
Oops.
Josh Marshall has further analysis.
Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal has what should be a front page story reporting on the significant efforts by the Clinton administration to protect against a predicted hijacking of a commercial jet liner which would then be used to disrupt a major event, such as the 50th anniversary of NATO in Washington DC, the G-7 Summit in Genoa, Italy, and the January 2001 inauguration of President George W. Bush. Planning was under way to protect the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics on Sept. 11, 2001.
New questions have emerged, in part from the just-published book by former senior National Security Council aide Richard Clarke, as to why the Clinton administration in the late 1990s failed to push through a proposal to extend the measures beyond special events to permanent protection of the skies over Washington. According to Mr. Clarke's book, and interviews with other former federal-government officials, that plan foundered because federal agencies whose cooperation was needed balked. The plan for permanent protection of Washington, however, was revived after Sept. 11 and was fully in effect by January 2003, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said.
Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks have said in interviews that they are looking closely at why the fear of airborne attacks didn't lead to more generalized, permanent measures to protect against aerial attacks before Sept. 11.
In the aftermath of those attacks, Bush administration officials have said they received no intelligence warning of such a tactic. "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a May 2002 news briefing.
Yet on several occasions starting in the mid-1990s, U.S. intelligence agencies had passed on information concerning such a possibility, including early plans by al Qaeda officials to use passenger jets as kamikaze weapons, according to records and current and former government officials.
As a consequence, a strategy for protecting airspace over special events was drawn up by the National Security Council staff for the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, in response to concerns about possible Iranian-backed terrorism. It included closing airspace over events to civilian air traffic, placing armed Air National Guard fighter jets on alert at a nearby base and launching on patrol a small air force belonging to the U.S. Customs Service, including jets, Black Hawk helicopters and a special radar-equipped plane. The customs service had the aircraft to interdict drug smuggling.
In addition, the plan was used for Mr. Clinton's second inauguration in 1997, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 50th anniversary celebration in Washington in 1999, the Republican and Democratic conventions in 2000 and the Bush inauguration in 2001, according to former White House officials and Mr. Clarke's book. The plan's use for designated "National Security Special Events" was made official in a classified portion of a "presidential decision directive" that Mr. Clinton signed in 1998. Use of the plan at these events wasn't publicized, and officials were forbidden to talk about it.
In his book, "Against All Enemies," Mr. Clarke describes the security planning for the Atlanta Olympics, and mentions later efforts to get the same measures applied permanently to Washington. Also, John A. Flaherty, chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, confirmed that before Sept. 11, the Bush administration was involved in planning airspace protection that was provided for the 2002 winter Olympics in Utah.
The possibility of terrorists using hijacked jets against major U.S. buildings had been raised in a public federal-government report in 1999 on terrorist threats facing the U.S. Prepared by the federal-research division of the Library of Congress, it warned: "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, or the White House." The report, referring to an al Qaeda leader captured in 1995, added that "Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters." Bush administration officials have said publicly that they weren't aware of the report before Sept. 11.
Rice's claim that, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile," is now, officially, impossible to square.
posted by John at 1:36 PM
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