Posted on 09/27/2006 8:42:13 AM PDT by shhrubbery!
Michael Scheuer, former head of the "bin Laden desk" at the CIA, was interviewed on the John Gambling radio show on WABC radio (NYC) this morning.
Here are a few points Scheuer made, as well I can remember (there is no transcript of the interview yet as far afaik):
1. Clinton was presented with a near perfect opportunity to kill bin Laden around December 23 or 24, 1999. (IIRC on the dates.) Clinton refused to pull the trigger in that instance NOT because he was afraid of human collateral damage, Scheuer says, but because Clinton was afraid shrapnel would hit a nearby mosque.2. According to Scheuer, Clinton was presented with no fewer than two opportunities to capture bin Laden, and EIGHT opportunities to KILL bin Laden while Clinton was president.
3. By contrast, Scheuer says, President Bush had NO opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden in the months prior to 9/11/01, because intelligence agencies did not know where bin Laden was during those months.
4. Clinton had another chance to kill bin Laden while OBL was being visited by a Saudi prince, in a camp somewhere out in the desert. Scheuer says Richard Clarke called the Saudi gov't to warn them, and the Saudi prince decamped pronto. Bin Laden left too.
5. Scheuer says that Bush did pass up on several opportunities to kill al Zarqawi, while Zarqawi was in northern Iraq in the months running up to the war in Iraq. Scheuer says that Bush held back because he was still "wining and dining" France and Germany in an effort to get them to be allies against Saddam, and didn't want to appear "trigger happy" during that courtship.
At the end of the interview, Gambling asked Scheuer what he thought of Clinton's interview with Chris Wallace. Scheuer said something like this: "Well, this might not be the most appropriate metaphor, but Clinton got caught with his pants down."
General information about the John Gambling show here: WABC radio.
Political Correctness - Islam's Trojan Horse
Well, look now to what the 9/11 report has to say about the man to whom President Clinton, under attack by an independent counsel,delegated so much in respect of national security, Samuel “Sandy” Berger. The report cites a 1998 meeting between Mr. Berger and the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, at which Mr. Tenet presented a plan to capture Osama bin Laden.
“In his meeting with Tenet, Berger focused most, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured. He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted,” the report says, citing a May 1, 1998, Central Intelligence Agency memo summarizing the weekly meeting between Messrs. Berger and Tenet.
In June of 1999, another plan for action against Mr. bin Laden was on the table. The potential target was a Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan known as Tarnak Farms. The commission report released yesterday cites Mr. Berger’s “handwritten notes on the meeting paper” referring to “the presence of 7 to 11 families in the Tarnak Farms facility, which could mean 60-65 casualties.”According to the Berger notes, “if he responds, we’re blamed.”
On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council’s counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: “In the margin next to Clarke’s suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, ‘no.’ ”
In August of 2000, Mr. Berger was presented with another possible plan for attacking Mr. bin Laden.This time, the plan would be based on aerial surveillance from a “Predator” drone. Reports the commission: “In the memo’s margin,Berger wrote that before considering action, ‘I will want more than verified location: we will need, at least, data on pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place.’ ”
In other words, according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times — Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action. Had he been a little less reluctant to act, a little more open to taking pre-emptive action, maybe the 2,973 killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be alive today.
Bump
Does anybody know if this the memo Berger stole from the National Archives, and then destroyed? (Or was there more than one memo he destroyed?)
I've never been clear on exactly what happened with the Berger theft (and the MSM sure haven't been on the ball in reporting on it).
What I think we know is that Berger destroyed original memos with handwritten notes --notes written by either Berger or Richard Clarke, or both-- in the margins.
The MSM have told us that "copies" existed of all the destroyed material. But does the National Archives still possess copies that show the handwritten notes?
bump
Bingo...
Wasn't Scheuer a darling of the media and the left when it was disovered he wrote "Imperial Hubris"?
Now, he'll be "Hitchens-ed".
And now you know what the Bergler stole, notes related to AD. I also noted that they trotted out Gorelick to defend Clinton this week as well, very telling.
More from my files:
We already know exactly what Berglar took and why...pay close attention to the last para on the Clarke/Kerrick memo. From Ashcroft's testimony:
The NSC's Millennium After Action Review declares that the United States barely missed major terrorist attacks in 1999 — with luck playing a major role. Among the many vulnerabilities in homeland defenses identified, the Justice Department's surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized for their glaring weaknesses. It is clear from the review that actions taken in the Millennium Period should not be the operating model for the U.S. government.
In March 2000, the review warns the prior Administration of a substantial al Qaeda network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here.
Furthermore, fully seventeen months before the September 11 attacks, the review recommends disrupting the al Qaeda network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls.
[My note: Able Danger info?]
It falls directly into the AD timeline. In that same post, I note that what Sandy Berger stole was the versions of the after action report:
The missing copies, according to Breuer and their author, Richard A. Clarke, the counterterrorism chief in the Clinton administration and early in President Bush's administration, were versions of after-action reports recommending changes following threats of terrorism as 1999 turned to 2000. Clarke said he prepared about two dozen ideas for countering terrorist threats. The recommendations were circulated among Cabinet agencies, and various versions of the memo contained additions and refinements, Clarke said last night.
Therefore, they were never provided to the Commission, as evidenced by the Commission Report footnotes (#769):
46. NSC email, Clarke to Kerrick,“Timeline,”Aug. 19, 1998; Samuel Berger interview (Jan. 14, 2004). We did not find documentation on the after-action review mentioned by Berger. On Vice Chairman Joseph Ralston’s mission in Pakistan, see William Cohen interview (Feb. 5, 2004). For speculation on tipping off the Taliban, see, e.g., Richard Clarke interview (Dec. 18, 2003).And to what does footnote (46) refer? On p. 117, Chapter 4, we find this:
Later on August 20, Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea fired their cruise missiles. Though most of them hit their intended targets, neither Bin Ladin nor any other terrorist leader was killed. Berger told us that an after-action review by Director Tenet concluded that the strikes had killed 20–30 people in the camps but probably missed Bin Ladin by a few hours. Since the missiles headed for Afghanistan had had to cross Pakistan, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was sent to meet with Pakistan’s army chief of staff to assure him the missiles were not coming from India. Officials in Washington speculated that one or another Pakistani official might have sent a warning to the Taliban or Bin Ladin. (46)How about that? How many times have we heard Clinton say that he missed Bin Ladin by just a few hours? Yet the after-action report is missing, so the Commission relied on Sandy Berger's testimony.
Then the Clarke/Kerrick memo peaked my interest and I found this (#784):
Clarke was nervous about such a mission because he continued to fear that Bin Ladin might leave for someplace less accessible. He wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin's having met with Iraqi officials, who "may have offered him asylum." Other intelligence sources said that some Taliban leaders, though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin to go to Iraq. If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq, wrote Clarke, his network would be at Saddam Hussein's service, and it would be "virtually impossible" to find him. Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Clarke declared.Kerry and crew could not afford to have this info come out before the election.
Clinton has admitted he was targeting Santa Claus, not Bin Ladin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u_HuqllpQw
Yes, relegated to the John Gambling shows of the world. Gambling's a pleasant guy, mostly right of center (except on guns), and has a good audience in NYC; but he doesn't get any national exposure.
Oh dear, even worse than I imagined. A near perfect opportunity? Even if that is exaggerated in any way, the bottom line is Clinton was afraid. Once this new item circulates, I expect will see even more Clinton public melt downs. And he just keeps on lying, over and over.
btt
The Washington Post refers to hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar when it later reports, “In November 1999, two Saudi Arabian men moved into a ground-floor apartment at the Parkwood Apartments, a town house complex near a busy commercial strip in San Diego .” [Washington Post, 9/30/01] Alhazmi's name is on the apartment lease beginning in November 1999. [Washington Post, 10/01] The Los Angeles Times similarly notes, “A man by [the name Alhazmi] moved to the Parkwood Apartments in San Diego in 1999, according to manager Holly Ratchford.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/15/01] Some reports even have them visiting the US as early as 1996. [Wall Street Journal, 9/17/01; Las Vegas Review Journal, 10/26/01] However, FBI Director Mueller has stated the two hijackers did not arrive in the US until the middle of January 2000, after an important meeting in Malaysia. While some news reports mention that the hijackers first arrive in late 1999 [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/02; Los Angeles Times, 11/24/02] , over time, mentions of the lease beginning in 1999 will slowly fade from media accounts.
He was on CBS Morning Show the other day, the bald interviewer was having a stroke trying to avoid Sheuer's answers regarding Clinton.
That was probably Scheuer's swan-song with the MSM.
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