Posted on 09/11/2006 7:41:28 PM PDT by texas_mrs
ON THE MORNING of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans — and the world — froze, saddened and angry. Five years later, we stop to remember those we lost and those who have sacrificed in our defense since, and to reflect on what we must learn. History will define us not by the events of that day but by who we choose to become as a result.
Regrettably, ABC has chosen not to document but to dramatize this most critical of times. Its miniseries, "The Path to 9/11," opts for fiction when fact is needed and chooses mythmaking when the candor of history is called for. The 9/11 commission report tells the story with clear-eyed honesty, precision and studious impartiality. The ABC drama does not. The 9/11 commission spent hours interviewing virtually everyone connected not just with the events of that day but those involved in counter-terrorism over 25 years — Republican as well as Democrat. ABC did not.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Did 'Nightline' ask Gorelick why the FBI couldn't search Moussaui's laptop?
this just in:
crybaby btches cry like baby btches.
Gotcha
No wonder she'd blast the mini-series. Her portrayal tonight was astonishing in its brashness. She looked like a real (b)itch -- a stupid one, at that.
Leave it to a bitch to bitch.
As you can see not many Freepers want to look at anything LA Times prints.
I am happily astonished that ABC so clearly anti-Bush in the past even aired anything once Clinton complained.
Part 2 is about to start and if it does not bash Bush then ABC did something quite decent for a change.
History will show Clinton had one thing on his mind while "acting" as the POTUS - getting his zipper down!
I bet she can't even do her "gozintas".
I agree on Gorelick; to me, the media is complicit in all of this, for example, giving Gorelick the change to appear as an "expert" last night..
I was thinking tonight, I cannot name one Clinton adminstration official who hasn't put in their two cents worth.
Except Tenet.
O'Neill could have gotten those guys if Bodine hadn't been riding a peraonal paranoia train.
And another question: why are all these Democratic women so BUTCH?
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
If she is only 1% as nasty and incompetent as she was portrayed in the movie, she should be shot.
Judging from that movie, Clarke did everything on 9-11 except fly those planes.
Yeah, right, Clinton was obsessed with catching OBL.
PBS supports O'neils version, not Bodines
Even Richarde claek slams Bodine
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/could/
Following Sept. 11, Fahad al-Quso was interrogated again in Yemen on Sept. 12, 13 and 14 by FBI and Navy investigators, who had only just returned to Yemen a few days earlier. One of O'Neill's last acts at the FBI in late August 2001 was to sign the authorization for that return.
Interrogators showed al-Quso the CIA surveillance photos taken at the critical January 2000 Malaysia meetings. Al-Quso identified Alhazmi and Almidhar and admitted he was a bagman for Al Qaeda, presumably to fund the conspirators' future operations. He claims he wasn't at the meetings, but that Alhazmi and Almidhar met with him soon after the meetings concluded.
One investigator admitted to FRONTLINE that al-Quso's connections to the 9/11 conspirators was a staggering revelation, and he still had nightmares about it. When asked what might have been discovered if they'd learned of al-Quso's connections earlier, he responded, "the possibilities are mind-boggling."
So there was the trail -- the pieces of information linking the Malaysia meetings in January 2000, to the USS Cole attack of October 2000, to the 9/11 plot. At those meetings in Malaysia, it's believed both the 9/11 and Cole plots were planned, their operatives met with each other, and investigators suspect one or more Al Qaeda operatives at the meetings worked both the Cole and 9/11 plots.
The stunning and logical question that hangs in the air about John O'Neill's compromised USS Cole investigation in Yemen is, "What if?"
What if FBI headquarters had backed O'Neill and pushed the State Department to allow him to return to Yemen in January 2001 (over the objections of U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine) to continue his investigation?
If O'Neill had been allowed to go back, what could he have done that wasn't already being done? Given his aggressiveness in investigations, it would have meant more wiretaps, more surveillance of suspects, and pushing the government for more arrests. And as his colleagues like Barry Mawn, Clint Guenther and Mary Jo White knew so well, it all would have been done in the John O'Neill style:
-- wining and dining the head of Yemen's PSO, Yemen's equivalent to the FBI...
-- working with the CIA agents in Yemen and building on those past relationships from his Station Alex days...
-- holding the Yemeni officials' feet to the fire to get more access to those detained, and using the interrogations to slowly unravel the Al Qaeda network in Yemen -- especially, Fahad al-Quso, who O'Neill knew had been holding back ...
This is the scenario that might have played out in Yemen and the one that still bothers O'Neill's former allies and supporters. For them, it is conceivable that, in the end, John O'Neill would have been able to learn about that critical January 2000 meeting in Malaysia, and to start connecting the dots that ultimately led to Sept. 11, 2001.
Read this April 2004 update on Fahad al-Quso and Tawfiq bin-Atash.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/john/yemen.html
Ruchard Clarke
NSC Coordinator for Counterterrorism, 1992-2001
I think there were two things going on in Yemen. The first thing was the government of Yemen didn't want us to know all the details; in part, because that would reveal that some low-level people in the Yemeni government may have been part of the conspiracy; in part, because it would have shown that the Yemeni government didn't really have control over a large section of Yemen; in part because it would have shown that Yemen was filled with terrorists from a whole variety of different organizations. So Yemen didn't want to cooperate fully, didn't want us to see everything that was there.
The other thing that was going on was that you had an U.S. ambassador who wanted to be fully in control of everything that every American official did in the country, and resented the fact that suddenly there were hundreds of FBI personnel in the country and only a handful of State Department personnel. She wanted good relations with Yemen as the number one priority.
John O'Neill wanted to stop terrorism as the number one priority, and the two conflicted. Almost all of us who were following the details in Washington, whether we were in the Justice Department, the FBI, the White House, State Department, the Defense Department -- almost all of us thought that John O'Neill was doing the right thing.
But the State Department has to support its ambassador. State Department doesn't have a lot of assets. It doesn't have a lot of airplanes or a lot of guns. It's basically got its ambassador. It's got a letter to every ambassador from the president of the United States saying, "You, Ambassador, are my personal representative in the country. You're in charge of everything the United States does." So when the ambassador makes the decision, the State Department feels, for institutional reasons, that they have to back her up.
So I think even though the people we were working with in the State Department who were following the case thought the ambassador was wrong, nonetheless, they decided to back her up.
Barry Mawn
Head of the FBI's New York office, 2000-2002
Were Washington headquarters or the FBI happy that O'Neill was going [to Yemen]?
My recollection is that I got questioned on it, "Is John the best guy to send?" I had no hesitancy, and said, "Absolutely, he's the best guy to send."
But soon there's friction between the U.S. ambassador in Yemen, Barbara Bodine, and O'Neill.
Initially, some of the main areas of disagreement were security, amounts of people that were over in Yemen, as well as, potentially, who was in charge and who was running it.
That being said, with the FBI and with John, there's no question that we recognize the ambassador is the person in charge, the president's representative in a foreign country; the person, overall, responsible for everything that happens with U.S. citizens over there.
But we also take a view recognizing that, if there's an investigation, that we're in charge of the investigation. We don't cut in people just for the sake of them being in the know. We realize, obviously, the ambassador should be briefed as to what's going on, what's happening and, in particular, if we're encountering any difficulties.
To a certain extent, some of the reporting that John told me is that she became very involved, and wanted to know exactly what was going on, when and where. And that's kind of contrary to our thinking. If there's a need to know, or if it's something that's obviously going to impact on those country authorities then, obviously, we'd tell. So that's one issue.
There was also, in John's mind, security -- [in] which I fully supported him -- that we go over as a big group. What we like to do is send over either a hostage rescue team or some of our SWAT fellows to provide security for the agent investigators, for the bomb techs, for the folks doing the Evidence Response Team. We like to have an in-house security. So we go as a pretty big package.
When we initially responded, we were probably a couple hundred in strength. Being fair to the ambassador, she maybe got some flack from Yemen authorities as to the overwhelming U.S. government response to this particular incident, that we didn't need to be as strong as we were.
Again, I fully believed and supported John as far as security. Yemen is a tough country. I guess there's more guns than people. I don't know if it was particularly friendly to the U.S. investigators, so we wanted to be secure with our people. I didn't want to send anybody over there and get them hurt.
What is your sense of O'Neill's feelings as he comes up against these obstacles?
I think he was very frustrated in that he wasn't being allowed to do his job, that he wasn't getting support, and that she was supporting the Yemen authorities, as opposed to the investigators and himself. Of course, our view on that is you're the U.S. ambassador. We understand your position. But you need to be weighing in for us more so than the Yemenis, and she had her own ideas. She basically wanted to have a smaller contingent of people over there as possible. That's not how we operate. Things just continued to escalate.
I really think it became a personality conflict between the two of them. Whether she viewed John as coming in and trying to take over and was usurping her as the head U.S person or not, I don't know. But I think that was probably part of it. Again, I don't know. With these two individuals, I think from the get-go, they probably rankled one another, and it went from bad to worse.
In the upper echelons of the FBI, this may be confirming people's worst fears about O'Neill?
There may have been people at FBI headquarters that were going, "See, I told you so. John does upset people, and get them upset. And maybe he wasn't the right guy." But that's all childish gossip and rumoring, as far as I'm concerned.
But it proved to be true in some ways.
In some ways. But at the same time, I'd balance that against, "Who is the right guy to go? What do we need to get done, and who's going to know what to do?" In that regard, there are very few in the FBI that had the criteria to go over and do the job that he did.
I should tell you the story. When I went over there, one of the complaints against him is that John didn't have any knowledge, that he was a cowboy; he was upsetting the Yemenis; he didn't know how to get along, and that they were all making complaints about him. Initially, I found that very hard to believe. I had seen John in New York with a lot of people from the Arab countries come in and visit with him. I know he had gone over there. I knew he was well thought of by Arab intelligence agencies and law enforcement. I knew he was well thought of by other U.S. ambassadors. So I had a hard time accepting this.
I was there for about a week and half. One of the evenings that I went -- [the head of the PSO], which is the equivalent of the director of the FBI that we're talking to --he, unsolicited, said that when the USS Cole first happened, he said the entire government response was pretty large. He was referring to not only the FBI, but the State Department, the agency, and primarily the military. The military responded there in very big fashion, obviously, because the ship had been bombed. They had people hurt. So they came in there.
I said, "Did you have a problem with our presence?" He said, "No, I never cared about the FBI. You could have a thousand FBI here, because we're both working to do the same thing. We're looking to get who's responsible for this. No, I have no problem with the FBI being here, and you can decide whatever you want as to how many you have here."
So that refuted anything that I heard. It was also said that they didn't like him. I mean, that was clearly not observed by me in going with these visits every night.
Then January 2001 comes, and O'Neill wants to go back to Yemen. But Ambassador Bodine wouldn't give him clearance.
What it told me is that, clearly, the ambassador had the upper hand, she was backed by the State Department, and that we had to find another way of addressing it.
How did O'Neill handle it?
I think John was upset. This didn't help him. She was badmouthing him. She had caused a stir at headquarters. I actually think John was more disappointed that our headquarters didn't back us as far as sending him back, and taking a stronger stand with the State Department. Eventually, our headquarters said, "Let's try and work around."
What did that say to you about headquarters and John O'Neill?
On that particular issue, they decided that they weren't going to take that on. They got to make that their other options, as opposed to having a turf battle with State Department. They may have been right; I'm not saying they were wrong there. But I felt the investigation was important.
Did we lose anything by not sending John O'Neill back into that place?
I felt that we didn't progress as quickly as we could have by John not going back. John kind of held their feet to the fire. He had developed the relationship with the head of the PSO. By John not going back, we lost contact with the head of PSO. The director of the PSO is not going to see John's deputy or lower-level people. So there's that protocol situation.
If we had sent him back, I think the information and progress in the investigation would have gone quicker and smoother. I think we were somewhat frustrated. There was a deliberate slowing down. I think John could have kept that on track.
Clint Gunether
Former FBI Agent NYC - Counterterrorism
Do you remember his first phone call back to you where he mentioned [Ambassador] Bodine and what his reaction to all this was?
One of his first calls back where you knew that he was having problems with the ambassador was when he had gotten his people into Aden and realized that there were no facilities available for them to stay. There was no hotel available. A lot of other government agencies had sent people over there. A lot of intelligence groups had sent people, and there was absolutely no place for FBI personnel to stay. The ambassador basically just said, "Let them sleep on the floor in the ballroom, because we're not finding additional facilities for them."
And John, being a guy who always took care of his troops was just incensed that she would not try to find some sort of accommodations so that he could make his people as comfortable as possible also. Right then and there, you knew that there was going to be strife between the two, because John was going to take care of his people, and he was going to do everything he possible could to make sure that they had what they needed to conduct their investigation.
So what was the next problem with Bodine?
The next thing with her was guns, weapons. She couldn't understand why our personnel needed to be armed. She wanted the weapons sent out of the country immediately. As a matter of fact, I think she even commanded that they turn in their weapons the next military flight that came through, they would all be shuttled out of the country. John wouldn't stand for that. He stood his ground on that and did win the fight.
The next battle that I recall that they had was over manpower. The ambassador decided that there were absolutely too many people involved in this investigation. She made an arbitrary decision as to how many she thought that O'Neill would need to conduct his investigation. If memory serves me right, I think 27 was the number or something like that. She came up with this number. I don't know how she derived that number, but she did.
Therefore, John was only allowed to have 27 people in the country at a time and, if he wanted to bring in, say, five additional specialized investigators, well then five people would have to leave. This became impossible for John O'Neill to comprehend, because he wanted his people there. He wanted them there now. He didn't want to have to give up people. He didn't want to give up security personnel in order to bring investigators in. But that's what she was forcing him to do was to make these compromises and he was incensed by that.
So what did he do?
He did learn to play her game to some degree. Every time he wanted to try to get some personnel in, they would be in negotiations to try to say, "Well, I can't lose five people. Can I send out three people for the five?" Depending on any given day or argument, he would win certain concessions. That's the way he had to play to game.
So what was this doing to the investigation?
It was bogging it down. I mean, surely we could've used all the manpower. It would've helped to have had as many people as possible early on. It would have benefited her also, because we could've gotten accomplished what needed to be done as far as evidence recovery, going over the crime scene, and moving on.
Tell me about the phone call that he was talking about with his dealing with the ambassador.
It was sometime early on in his stay over there. But it was after he had several encounters with Madame Ambassador that he called back one time and I got him on the phone. I think we were getting ready to do a conference call. He says in the impish way that he could have, "Clint. I have tried everything in my power to win this woman over with my O'Neill charm, but it just isn't working. I don't understand this." So he laughed at himself and went on.
That was the way it was. I don't think that he ever hated the woman or had any real dislike for her. He just couldn't understand why he couldn't get her to see his way and to deal with him.
To some extent, perhaps headquarters helped or didn't help enough in clearing it up and standing behind John O'Neill?
I think the stance in Washington at all levels was that Ms. Bodine was coming to the end of her tenure over there and would be rotating out in August of last year anyway, so let's just let it flow and have the transition occur normally. That didn't help O'Neill's case at all, because there was still a lot of investigative time between present, when they were having the problems, and when she was going to be leaving.
They were out for months?
They were out for a month or a little bit more than a month. Probably around July that we started focusing on coming up with a plan and working with the embassy over there to try to establish a reentry. That's when John said, "Well, I'll go over and sit down with the ambassador and we'll work out the details," and she denied him entry into the country.
John kind of wore that as, I think, a badge of some type. He was very amused that it was determined that he was persona non grata. He never got furious over it. He was kind of tickled by it.
Now we know the connections. There were connections between some of the individuals there in Yemen and the Malaysian meetings and some of the [9/11] hijackers. There were dots to be connected. What did we lose by, months before 9/11, having to pull out the best people to investigate the case, having to pull them out of Yemen?
That's hard to say, what we lost. We could've lost a lot. We could've lost the intelligence that could've connected that dot to the World Trade Center. I don't know that to be a fact, but a lot of the Al Qaeda people are coming out of Yemen. A lot of the Yemenis are involved. I think if we could have had better investigative effort over there, had been able to build the confidence of the local law enforcement, we may have been able to find people, interrogate them, and get a lot more intelligence that would have shown us something going on.
It's kinda hard when you don't have one.
The subversive wing of State was operational here.
Seems not all the DUmmies are pleased with Slick:
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tularetom (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-11-06 03:41 PM Response to Original message
6. Clinton when confronted - "Ah didn't tell 'em to write that"
"Anybody can hide behind a lawyer especially someone who is trying to stay on the good side of ol' GHW Bush and preserve his future place on the Carlyle board of directors.
"But you won't see Clinton stand up like a man and denounce this (expletive deleted). I've defended this wimp for 10 years, but if he won't stand up for himself, (expletive deleted) him. If everybody wants to believe 9/11 was his fault, and he won't lift a finger to contradict them, then maybe there is some truth to it.
"The only bad part is he is dragging good people like Albright and Berger down with him."
---
LOL
ROFLROFLROFL!!!
Me too. Barbara Bodine and the odious Joseph Wilson are both distinguished alum. Not much to be proud of there.
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