|
"In hindsight, [what we did] wasn't enough, and anyone involved in policy would have to admit that." -Nancy Soderberg, a former senior aide on Clinton's National Security Council
Former Clinton deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick concurred: "Clearly, not enough was done. . . . We should have caught this. Why this happened, I don't know. Responsibilities were given out. Resources were given. Authorities existed. We should have prevented this."
 During the Clinton administration's two terms in office, terrorism was treated primarily as a criminal justice problem and was not allowed to get in the way of the "real" foreign policy issues -- relations with Russia and China and the dynamics of the western alliance, according to former Clinton aide Dick Morris. Morris says the administration opposed almost every proposal for toughening measures against terrorism. For example:
- When legislation was proposed to cripple Iranian funding of terrorism by mandating U.S. retaliation against companies that aided its oil industry, the administration first threatened to veto it unless the president were allowed to waive sanctions, then blocked sanctions in virtually every case after the legislation was passed.
- When Clinton was advised to pass a law requiring that driver's licenses for aliens expire when their visas do (so that a routine traffic stop could trigger the deportation process), the White House rejected the idea on the grounds that it would constitute racial profiling.
- Clinton refused to establish a "president's list" of seemingly charitable groups that were in fact fund-raising fronts for terrorists.
- Despite staff recommendations that he require baggage X-ray screening at airports, federalization of air security and restoration of air marshals to commercial flights, Mr. Clinton did nothing to implement any of these proposals.
- When advisers proposed an oil embargo against Iran, the president did nothing, despite evidence that the 1998 Khobar Towers bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, had Iranian backing.
Under Clinton, America was made vulnerable to terrorism.
The number of foreign visitors and workers at the nation's defense labs from sensitive countries, including ones sponsoring terrorism, exploded under the Clinton administration, according to ret. Col. Edward McCallum, former head of Energy's Office of Safeguards and Security.
Clinton invited terrorist-sponsoring Middle Eastern countries.
"Every terrorist country was represented at the labs, either as post-doctoral workers and students assigned there, or as visitors," said ret. Col. Edward McCallum, former head of Energy's Office of Safeguards and Security.
"Iran, Iraq, Syria ... you name it, we had them from all of those places."
McCallum revealed that, over the last decade, "hundreds" of students from sensitive Middle Eastern countries worked at Energy's labs, including Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia labs, where America's nuclear weapons are designed and maintained.
"And we got hundreds of visits from their intelligence agencies -- that we knew about," he added.
At Los Alamos, which designed most of the warheads in the U.S. arsenal and stores nuclear materials at its New Mexico facilities, the number of foreign nationals from sensitive countries working at the lab soared to 182 in 1999 from 31 in 1992, internal lab records show.
Countries the lab classifies as sensitive are: Iran, Iraq, India, China, North Korea, Russia, Taiwan, Pakistan and Syria.
In 1998 alone, the three major labs, plus Oak Ridge in Tennessee, hosted more than 10,700 foreign visitors and academic assignees, some of whom stayed on site for as long as two years, according to the House Science Committee, which oversees the labs. Those from sensitive countries totaled more than 3,100.
"They kicked the doors wide open," McCallum said, despite his protests. "They were encouraging visitation."
"When Hazel O'Leary was on her flying carpet trips in the mid-'90s, one of the pitches she made was, 'Send your scientists. We have technology to share,'" McCallum said.
Under the Reagan and Bush administrations, Energy required background checks on foreign visitors. But in 1994, O'Leary granted Los Alamos and Sandia exemptions from the rule. As a result, few background checks were conducted at those labs, and the number of foreign visits exploded.
Los Alamos, for example, had 2,714 visitors in two years from sensitive countries, but only 139 were checked, according to a 1997 congressional report.
He and other security officials worried that the uncontrolled access to the labs invited not only espionage, but terrorism.
"Hazel said to me, and this is a quote, 'Boy, don't you understand that the Cold War is over, and all these people are our friends now?'" McCallum said. "And we were talking about security against terrorists and espionage in the same conversation."
After McCallum told Congress about Energy's security problems, he was punished by former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. He left the department in 1999.
"I've always felt that if there were an insider at one of the labs who had access to nuclear materials, it would be tough to stop them," said Troy Wade, former assistant Energy secretary for Defense Programs under the Reagan administration.
Nuclear materials are kept at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Livermore, as well as other labs. Having access to the labs would, of course, make it easier for would-be terrorists to steal such materials.
It takes less than 50 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium or highly enriched uranium to craft a crude nuclear device.
"But they don't have to steal it," McCallum said. "All they have to do is detonate it right there. It's a one-way trip for an Islamic student or visitor."
Clinton signed a disastrous Executive Order, prohibiting the CIA from dealing with shoddy informants.
It led to the most devastating blow to intelligence gathering in decades on 9-11.
Bill O'Reilly of the Fox News Channel interviewed 5 CIA station chiefs and they said that as a result it effectively stopped the use of informants and devastated human intelligence capabilities.
Clinton changed the rules of how spies are recruited, raising the bar on requirements to such a high degree that the most valuable spies could never meet CIA standards and couldn't work for the CIA.
Al Gore may have contributed, in his own politically ambitious, selfish way, to the deaths of some of the victims of the terrorist attacks Sept. 11.
Following the downing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, Gore was entrusted by President Clinton to investigate airline safety. He was named chairman of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety.
The Gore commission produced what most observers considered to be a tough preliminary report unveiled Sept. 9 of that year one that included tough counter-terrorism procedures.
Gore sent a letter to airline lobbyist Carol Hallett promising that the commission's findings would not result in any loss of revenue.
In what can only be seen as a pure political payoff, the Democratic National Committee received $40,000 from TWA the next day. Within two weeks, Northwest, United and American Airlines ponied up another $55,000 for the 1996 campaign.
In the next two months leading up to the November elections, American Airlines donated $250,000 to the Democrats. United donated $100,000 to the DNC. Northwestern put $53,000 more into the kitty.
Following the election, in January, Gore floated a draft final report that eliminated all security measures from the commission's findings, according to Victoria Cummock.
Fearing more political heat, Gore pulled back the draft report. A month later, the final report was issued.
But there were two things missing from the report, said Cummock there was no deadline by which those requirements would have to be implemented and no funding mechanism for ensuring that they were.
Thus, the requirements were not in place Sept. 11 of this year when terrorists hijacked four airliners, crashing two into the World Trade Center, another into the Pentagon and crashing a fourth in Pennsylvania. In fact, they are still not in place.
In a meeting with other commission members Feb. 12, 1997, Gore said he would leave room for a dissent by those who opposed the report. Cummock expressed her strong dissent. But within minutes, she says, Gore was announcing to the president and the public that the report was the work of a unanimous commission.
Cummock filed suit to gain access to files she and the public were denied. She won the case, but the material still has not been made available to her.
Hallett now also agrees that the original 31 recommendations of that commission might have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.
Cummock insists that the change would have taken place if the Gore commission had simply provided deadlines for action. She believes Gore sold out airline security for campaign cash.
In 1993, terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the World Trade Center in New York City. In response, Bill Clinton turned the massive resources of the U.S. intelligence community away from national security and instead focused on commercial espionage.
The Clinton administration did not consider Russia, China or Osama bin Laden to be a threat against the United States. Instead, Bill Clinton considered the economic threat of losing global contracts to our allies in Europe to be the greatest evil.
The Clinton administration did not consider Russia, China or Osama bin Laden to be a threat against the United States. Instead, Bill Clinton considered the economic threat of losing global contracts to our allies in Europe to be the greatest evil.
The 1995 Motorola letter is proof positive that Bill Clinton is directly responsible for the present-day U.S. intelligence disaster. Bill Clinton turned America's spy network into a personal cash cow, aimed at pleasing big-dollar contributors instead of protecting the free world.
Notra Trulock, the former highest-ranking intelligence officer in the Energy Department says you can blame the Clinton administrations pervasive inattention to security throughout government leading to last months terrorist attacks.
Notra Trulock in an exclusive interview with NewsMax.com, some Clinton appointees had a blame-America-first attitude. This in turn bolstered the belief in some government quarters that perhaps the world would be better off if the U.S. did share its nuclear secrets with China and other nations that hated us.
"I put it at the feet of the Clinton administration for the complacency they displayed on any threat to American security, not just terrorism, but anything that put in jeopardy their specious arms control and foreign policy objectives was really minimized and downplayed and dismissed as 'a worst-case scenario,' " a phrase of ridicule that Trulock heard over and over again as he tried to warn the Clinton appointees in the department of the loose or almost non-existent security procedures.
Everywhere in government where national security was a factor "felt the deadening hand of the Clinton administration," Trulock says.
This also applies to the Transportation Department. And it is especially lax at the Federal Aviation Administration, which is supposed to protect airline and airport security. Trulock recalls that Federico Pena had been DOT secretary before moving over to the Energy Department. This was the kind of blasé attitude "during the Air Florida debacle" that would later cause airport security to allow four airliners to be hijacked almost simultaneously. That same shrug-of-the-shoulders approach was thus transferred to the area of government supposedly protecting nuclear secrets. It was there that Trulocks warnings were ignored or ridiculed.
Notra Trulock pinpoints "a certain ambivalence about American power" amongst people "who cut their teeth on the notions that America was to blame for much of what had happened in the last 30 or 40 or 50 years in the world."
Time and time again, "we would see people in charge of the laboratories who were just hostile" to the notion that any scientist from China, Russia or North Korea would ever attempt to steal any of our secrets. Indeed, some officials at energy felt "it might be a good thing if the Chinese sort of knew our secrets and how to build nuclear weapons. The world might be a better place."
It was Trulocks alertness to the Chinagate scandal that induced the Clintonites to force him out. At a subsequent House hearing, he and his Clintonite supervisor gave conflicting accounts of what happened. Trulock agreed to take a lie detector test. His Clintonista opponent declined to do likewise.
In his new book "The High Cost of Peace," author Yossef Bodansky writes that dozens of Sunni officers in mid-1999 wanted to overthrow Assad and bring Damascus into the modern world with economic development and a representative government. They asked the U.S. for help.
The U.S. Embassy requested a list of the coup leaders and details of the plan. "Naively, the Syrians complied," Bodansky writes.
Then "the Clinton administration decided to save Assad." It squealed, and a purge resulted in Syria.
"Washington betrayed an intended coup that was supposed to be pro-American against a regime that was on the United States' own terrorism and drug-trafficking lists," the author summarizes.
Clinton betrayed pro-American Syrians who sought to oust the reviled, terroristic, drug-dealing Assad regime. Under Clinton, state sponsors of terror were equipped.
Clinton exported NSA-ducking phone, high-tech encryption devices to Syria.
Islamic terrorists who pulled off the plot to strike at America's nerve centers in New York and Washington were using the world's most sophisticated telecommunications equipment, some secured by advanced encryption technology that most armies don't have.
Peter M. Leitner, a senior strategic trade adviser at the Defense Department, says the previous administration rubber-stamped the shipment of top-end military-related telecommunications equipment to Syria, which is on the FBI's list of sensitive countries that pose a threat to U.S. security.
"The technology that would allow these terrorists to mask their communications was given away, hand over fist, by the Clinton administration," Leitner said in an interview with WorldNetDaily.
"Syria is a terrorist-supporting nation," he said. "They provide infrastructure to bastards like [Osama] bin Laden. They provide backup and support and communications abilities to these terrorist cells," said Leitner.
"We're giving them spread-spectrum radios, which are almost impossible to break into. We're giving them fiber optics. We're giving them a high level of encryption. We're giving them computer networks that can't be tapped," Leitner said.
Under Clinton, terrorists used tax-exempt U.S.-based charities to bankroll terror.
Judicial Watch, which has filed a complaint with IRS Commissioner, Clinton holdover Charles Rossotti, charging that Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network, Hamas and others continue to use tax-exempt U.S.-based charities to bankroll terror, unencumbered by even the hint of an audit.
Bill Clinton's IRS pursued his personal enemies with great enthusiasm - auditing Billy Dale, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick and dozens more - America's enemies, it seems, got a free pass from the same agency.
At least 16 U.S.-based non-profit entities have been linked financially to bin Laden, the legal watchdog group says.
One such questionable non-profit, the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), has been directly linked to earlier attacks on U.S. interests by bin Laden.
"IARA reportedly transferred money to Mercy International, another non-profit Muslim organization that purchased vehicles used by Osama bin Laden to bomb the U.S. embassies in both Kenya and Tanzania on August 8, 1998," the complaint notes.
Not only did Rossotti & Co. not investigate, that same year the Clinton State Department showered the IARA with $4.2 million in grants.
Other non-profits said by Judicial Watch to have ties to Hamas include:
The United Association for Studies and Research
Islamic Association for Palestine
North American Islamic Trust
The Islamic Relief Association
Muslim American Society
The Cultural Society
the Muslim Arab Youth Association
The Alaqsa Educational Fund
Council on American Islamic Relations
Islamic Society of North America
Islamic Circle of North America
American Middle Eastern League for Palestine
Quaranic Literacy Institute
Rossotti's decision to look the other way happens to coincide with a series of generous donations by Muslim non-profits to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign.
In Boston - the same city where two hijacked planes departed before slamming into the World Trade Center nearly two weeks ago - Mrs. Clinton held a June 13, 2000, fundraiser hosted by the American Muslim Alliance.
Clinton "clearly understood that her hosts were concerned that the U.S. war on terrorism might be too harsh."
In her speech, "Mrs. Clinton vowed to pursue fairness and justice in the issue of secret evidence and the Anti-Terrorism Act," the AMA website noted.
At the Boston event, the former first lady accepted a $1,000 contribution from Abdurahman Alamoudi, an official with the American Muslim Council who once vowed to eliminate Israel and had previously boasted, "We are the ones who went to the [Clinton] White House and defended what is called Hamas."
When Mrs. Clinton's campaign reported Alamoudi's American Muslim Council donation to the FEC, the AMC was camouflaged as the "American Museum Council."
Alamoudi had pledged his $1,000 at a fundraiser held a month earlier at the Washington, D.C., mansion of Yasser Arafat crony Hani Masri - a gathering Mrs. Clinton's campaign went to great lengths to conceal.
"The event, which sources said raised more than $50,000, was closed to the press, which wouldn't have known about the event anyway, since it wasn't listed on Mrs. Clinton's public schedule," the Jewish Forward reported at the time.
Under Clinton, America looked weak and vulnerable to terrorists.
In a bone-chilling chapter of her new book "The Final Days," late heroine-author Barbara Olson warned that ex-president Bill Clinton's pardons of terrorists who had repeatedly bombed buildings in New York City "send a signal" that the U.S. isn't serious about fighting terrorism.
In words that now seem like a harbinger of her own Sept. 11 death at the hands of the Middle Eastern terrorists, Olson cited example after example of how U.S. officials strenuously warned Clinton that pardoning FALN Puerto Rican separatists who had waged their own bombing jihad on America posed a threat to national security.
In August 1999 Clinton pardoned 16 FALN terrorists without even being asked, in a move that was widely seen as a cynical ploy to win Hispanic votes for his wife's New York Senate bid.
The group had planned and executed 130 bombing attacks on New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., from 1974 to 1983. Miraculously, the FALN managed to kill just six Americans. But hundreds more were seriously wounded.
Olson continued:
"Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder ... conceded that the nation owed much greater consideration to the victims. And Holder's boss, Janet Reno, explicitly acknowledged that groups aligned with the FALN still posed a threat to national security."
In comments turned gut-wrenching in light of last month's attacks, former Justice Department pardon attorney Margaret Love told the late author that Clinton's terrorist pardons should have set off alarm bells.
"We should have seen a big flashing red light because of the FALN cases. ... That was a foreshoadowing of what happened later."
Love was referring to Clinton's January 2001 pardons of drug dealers and international fugitives, not the attacks on the U.S., which no one foresaw. But it's nearly impossible now to read those words as anything but prophecy of the terrorist acts that murdered Olson and nearly 3,000 others last month.
- NCPA, "Morris Critiques Clinton's Anti-Terrorism Policy," available here.
- World Net Daily, "Clinton opened nuclear labs to terrorist-state visitors," available here.
- World Net Daily, "U.S. equipped terror sponsors," available here.
- The Washington Times, "Stifle Thyself," available here.
- Newsmax, "CIA Officials Reveal What Went Wrong - Clinton to Blame," available here.
- World Net Daily, "Why airline security failed - Gore commission study material still classified," available here.
- Newsmax, "Judicial Watch: Clinton IRS Turned Blind Eye to Terrorists," available here.
- Newsmax, "Olson Book's Chilling Warning: Clinton's Terrorist Pardons Sent Signal," available here.
- Newsmax, "How Clinton Turned U.S. Intelligence Into a Cash Cow," available here.
- Newsmax, "Trulock: Security Lapses Are Clinton's Fault," available here.
- Newsmax, "How Clinton Aided Terrorist Syria," available here.
|
