-Classified document signed by President Clinton in December 1998
YESTERDAY, in the wake of President Clinton’s interview on Fox News, Senator Hillary Clinton defended her husband’s counterterrorism track record. Reacting to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s assertion that the Bush administration “was at least as aggressive” in the eight months preceding September 11, 2001 as the Clinton administration was in the years prior, the former first lady remarked:
“I’m certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled ‘Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States’ he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team.”
Apparently referring to the August 6, 2001 presidential daily briefing, which was entitled “bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” Senator Clinton suggested that her husband did not receive the same type of warnings that President Bush did.
In fact, President Clinton signed a similar classified document–which contained an explicit warning from the U.S. Intelligence Community that bin Laden intended to strike inside the United States, more than two years prior to leaving office. And the U.S. intelligence community collected numerous pieces of intelligence concerning bin Laden’s determination to strike inside the United States during President Clinton’s tenure. In addition to the failed plot against the World Trade Center in 1993 and the failed al Qaeda plot against LAX airport in 1999, there were clear indications that bin Laden’s terror empire intended to strike targets in the continental United States.
The warning signs collected during the Clinton administration are outlined in the bipartisan “Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001,” which was jointly published by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in December 2002.
The Joint Inquiry outlines a number of U.S. government failures in the years leading up to September 11, 2001. Among the report’s findings, the committees concluded that prior to September 11, 2001: The “U.S. Intelligence Community was involved in fighting a ‘war’ against Bin Laden largely without the benefit of what some would call its most potent weapon in that effort: an alert and committed American public.”
The report goes on to list three examples of “information that was shared with senior U.S. Government officials, but was not made available to the American public because of its national security classification.” This information was “explicit about the gravity and immediacy of the threat posed by Bin Laden” and included “a classified document” signed by President Clinton in December 1998, which read in part:
“The Intelligence Community has strong indications that Bin Laden intends to conduct or sponsor attacks inside the United States.”
This conclusion was based on numerous threads of evidence. Beginning in 1998 the U.S. intelligence community received regular reporting concerning not only al Qaeda’s determination to carry out attacks in the United States but that the terror group also planned to hijack civilian aircraft. Some of the reporting even specifically referenced the World Trade Center.
On page 124, for example, the Joint Inquiry lists six instances–all prior to 2001–in which the intelligence indicated al Qaeda was planning attacks on U.S. soil:
In August 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to crash an explosive-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center;
In September 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information that Osama Bin Laden’s next operation could possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport;
In October 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information that al-Qaeda was trying to establish an operative cell within the United States, and that there might be an effort underway to recruit U.S. citizen- Islamists and U.S.-based expatriates from the Middle East and North Africa;
In September 1999, the Intelligence Community obtained information that Osama Bin Laden and others were planning a terrorist act in the United States, possibly against specific landmarks in California and New York City; and
In late 1999, the Intelligence Community obtained information regarding the Bin Laden network’s possible plans to attack targets in Washington, D. C. and New York City during the New Year’s Millennium celebrations.
The report goes on to note that the “group of unidentified Arabs” mentioned in the information obtained in August 1998 were later “linked to al-Qaeda.” The Federal Aviation Administration, however, “found the plot to be highly unlikely given the state of the foreign country’s aviation program” and “that a flight originating outside the United States would be detected before it reached its target.” The FBI’s New York office, therefore, “took no action on the information.”
On page 210, the Joint Inquiry reports this warning sign:
On page 211, of the Joint Inquiry report, we learn the following:
ALL OF THIS, and more, led the authors of the Joint Inquiry to conclude that from 1998 through the summer of 2001, the U.S. Intelligence Community was hindered in its counterterrorism efforts by a number of “systemic weaknesses,” including:
The report notes that the intelligence disseminated from 1998 on “encompassed, for example, indications of plots for attacks within the United States,” including “attacks on civil aviation; assassinations of U.S. public officials; use of high explosives; attacks on Washington, D.C., New York City, and cities on the West Coast; crashing aircraft into buildings as weapons; and using weapons of mass destruction.” [emphasis added]
As with the August 6, 2001 PDB, “the intelligence that was acquired and shared by the Intelligence Community was not specific as to time and place.” Nonetheless, it “should have been sufficient to prompt action to insure a heightened sense of alert and implementation of additional defensive measures.”
That’s the real point in all of this. Prior to September 11, 2001, no one in the U.S. Government–Republican or Democrat–did enough to stop the terrorist threat from metastasizing on U.S. soil.
Senator Clinton’s attempted whitewash of her husband’s record does not change that.
Thomas Joscelyn is an economist and writer living in New York.
