Posted on 03/23/2004 4:50:24 PM PST by CobaltBlue
In the days immediately following the bombing, "senior U.S. officials" (including a few "names," like national security adviser Sandy Berger) repeatedly claimed that Al Shifa produced "no commercial products," had a "secured perimeter patrolled by the Sudanese military," "in fact makes the components for VX gas and other chemical weapons," and "had links to Osama bin Laden." No details were given about how any of this was known. Within days, though, it all began to break down: it turned out that the plant was not only commercial but had been approved by the UN Security Council to package veterinary medicines for relief shipments to Iraq. (Indeed, medical vials and pharmaceutical parcels were identifiable among the wreckage at the plant formerly known as Al Shifa.) Scores of foreigners who had toured the facility— including the German and Italian ambassadors to Sudan— couldn't recall any security. And the British designers of the plant testified that it hadn't been built for, and couldn't produce, chemical weapons.
Then the administration changed its tune: Al Shifa had, officials claimed, been under CIA investigation for 18 months, and the CIA had a soil sample to prove that it had been up to no good. However, the agent who spoke to the Voice said there were problems on both fronts. Since the U.S. pulled out of Khartoum in 1996 (a decision based largely on false intelligence reports by a CIA asset), the CIA has treated Sudan as a "denied area"— off-limits to actual CIA officers. This led the CIA to depend on either recruiting a foreign national or one on loan from a friendly neighboring intelligence service. Egypt has no love for Sudan, and Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda all receive "non-lethal" U.S. military aid used to help the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement fight the Islamist regime in Khartoum. While declining to confirm specifics about how the sample was collected, the agent stated that the choice of operative for the mission likely did not lend itself to ensuring entirely objective results.
Immediately after the bombing, the U.S. propagated the notion that Al Shifa had vats of lethal brew ready for action. Indeed, unnamed government sources told U.S. News & World Report that this was old news: that Al Shifa "had been in the Pentagon's inventory of targets for several years," and that "one final step" before loosing the Tomahawks was running "computer models of the risk that explosions at the chemical factory would unleash a plume of poison gas across Sudan." However, when it quickly became evident that the plant was not the "clear and immediate danger" that Clinton had declared it to be, backpedaling commenced: the scientific basis for the attack was a soil sample containing EMPTA, a non-lethal VX precursor.
No more details than that, sayeth the White House, in the name of protecting intelligence "sources and methods." However, everyone from an EMPTA authority at Oxford's chemistry department to the American Chemical Society has pointed out that the presence of commercially used EMPTA proves nothing. According to a recent issue of ACS's Chemical & Engineering News, the administration's refusal to examine the results of Professor Tullius's investigation, and its contention that intelligence activities would be "jeopardized by disclosing the amount found, the analytical techniques used, or the other chemicals detected . . . [serve] only to exacerbate people's disbelief of the U.S. government's claims."
No matter. On January 22, as demonstrated in The Washington Post, the government's story underwent yet another permutation. Currently, according to White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke, the U.S. is "sure" that the Iraqis were the sinister force behind Al Shifa, producing what the Post characterized as "powdered VX-like substance at the plant that, when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active nerve gas." This, says Professor Tullius, strains credulity: "Bleach is often used to detoxify nerve agents," he says. "Using bleach to activate an agent makes no sense." While the Iraqi and Sudanese militaries are known to have collaborated on limited munitions projects, says investigative reporter Frank Smyth, there is nothing linking these endeavors to Al Shifa or Bin Laden. "It looks like the administration acted based on inferences drawn from pieces of intelligence they presumed were connected," he says.
(Excerpt) Read more at villagevoice.com ...
I'm tempted to say that Matt and I have a "working" relationship, but one previous story in the history of the DRUDGEREPORT hardly qualifies.......
FYI: Link for the 9/11 Commission: http://www.9-11commission.gov/
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
9/11 Commission website link in #46
The picture painted by those links is one of a man who, like Cervante's Don Quixote, was obsessed with imaginary demons. Clarke's demons were cyber-terrorists, but they were just as elusive as Quixote's "giants." It appears it was Clarke, not Bush and company, who were preoccupied with things that didn't really matter in the months leading up to 9/11/2001, and Clarke was demoted and stripped of his non-cyber anti-terror responsibilities as a consequence.
As a life-long bureaucrat at the end of his career, this must have been a bitter pill to swallow. Where he previously had direct access to the president during the Clinton administration, he had none with Bush II.
That Clarke spent his time in the post 9/11 days roaring about the country inspecting internet routers and servers pretty much tells it it all..... is it any wonder that an egotistical bureaucrat reduced to insignificance at the end of his career and obsessed with imaginary demons would lash out at what he perceived to be the source of his decline?
Well said.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.