t3 b5 pres bush-vp cheney fdr- 1st pgs of all reference material in fdr (for reference- fair use)...

8/14/2019 T3 B5 Pres Bush-VP Cheney Fdr- 1st Pgs of All Reference Material in Fdr (for Reference- Fair Use) 021

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14. Before 9/11 - andAfterLOUIS J. FREEHThe Wall Street JournalAl Qaeda was at war with the U.S. even before Sept. 11, 2001. In August 1998, it attacked ourembassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In December 1999, one of al Qaeda's soldiers, AhmedRessam, entered the U.S. to bomb Los Angeles airport. In October 2000, al Qaeda attacked theUSS Cole in the port of Aden.The question before the 9/11 Commission is why our political leadership declared war back on alQaeda only after Sept. 11, 2001. Osama bin Laden had been indicted years before for blowing upAmerican soldiers and embassies and was known as a clear and present danger to the U.S. Sowhat would have happened had the U.S. declared war on al Qaeda before Sept. 11 ? Endless andultimately useless speculation about "various threads and pieces of information," which arecertainly "relevant and significant," at least in retrospect, will not take us very far in answering thiscentral question.* * *On Jan. 26, 2001, at 8:45 a.m., I had my first meeting with President Bush and Vice PresidentCheney. They had been in office four days. We discussed terrorism, and in particular al Qaeda,the African embassy bombings, the Cole attack and the June 1996 Khobar bombing in SaudiArabia. When I advised the president that Hezbollah and Iran were responsible for Khobar, hedirected me to follow-up with Condoleezza Rice. I did so at 2:30 p.m. that day and she told me topursue our investigation with the attorney general and to bring whatever charges possible. Withinweeks, a new prosecutor was put in charge of the case and on June 21 an indictment wasreturned against 13 Hezbollah men who had been directed to bomb Khobar by senior officials ofthe Iranian government. I know that the families of the 19 murdered airmen were deeply gratefulto President Bush and Ms. Rice for their prompt response and focus onterrorism.I believe that any president and Congress faced with the reality of Sept. 11 would have actedswiftly and overwhelmingly as did President Bush and the 107th Congress. They are to becommended. However, those who came before President Bush can only be faulted if they hadhad the political means and the will of the nation to declare a war back then, but failed to do so.The fact that terrorism and the war being waged by al Qaeda was not even an issue in the 2000presidential campaign strongly suggests that the political will to declare and fight this war didn'texist before Sept. 11.All of this is not to say that the intelligence and law enforcement communities couldn't have donemore to protect the nation from a Sept. 11. As FBI director I share in that responsibility. And Idon't know of any FBI agents who would not have given their lives -- two did -- to prevent Sept.I1from happening. The Joint Intelligence Committee and now the 9/11 Commission are properlyseeking to understand how Sept. 11 was able to happen. But the grand failure to comprehend thecontrast between the pre-9/11 fight against terrorism with the total war being waged since Sept.11 blinds us to an immensely significant historical and political dialectic.The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center by foreign-trained terrorists focused the FBI onhomeland security and prevention as its counterterrorism priority. Excellent investigation andskillful prosecution effectively identified the terrorists involved. Those who were quickly capturedwere tried and convicted. Ramzi Yousef, a terrorist mastermind, fled to Pakistan along with KhalidShaikh Mohammed, now believed to be one of the architects of Sept. 11. The FBI's 1993 criminalinvestigation identified and stopped another plan by Sheik Rahman to blow up New York Citytunnels, bridges and buildings (dubbed "Terrstop"). Important lesson learned: Good investigationis also good prevention. Two years later, FBI agents surprised Yousef at a guest house inPakistan and brought him back to Foley Square, where he was convicted for two terrorist attacks.Besides the 1993 WTC murders, he was also convicted for his plot to blow up 11 U.S. airliners.

PRESS CLIPS FOR FEBRUARY 13, 2004 23


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washingtonpost.com: Com mission Seeks Author of Brief Page 1 of 3

THE RIGHTINFORMATION.IN REAL T IME

i&AWARFIGMTER'SMOST POWERFUL

WEAPON.

washingtonpost.com

Commission Seeks Author of BriefInterview With CIA Analyst R equestedBy Walter PincusWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A03The commission investigating the Sept. 11,2001, attacks, rebuffed oncepreviously, asked again yesterday to interview the CIA analyst who wrote theAug. 6, 2001, intelligence briefing given to President Bush on al Qaeda'sthreat to the United States, according to administration sources."A new request from the commission has just come in, and it is beingconsidered," said a senior intelligence official, who requested anonymitybecause such negotiations are supposed to be conducted privately.The commission wants to interview the author of the article in the now-famous President's Daily Brief to determine her purpose in assembling thedocument and how much information she sought in doing so.Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean (R), a former New Jersey governor,said yesterday the Bush administration in the past refused to allow the panel tointerview CIA analysts responsible for assembling the briefs, which areamong the government's most sensitive and closely held intelligencedocuments."I don't know if we'll ever get that," Kean said. In the past, he added, theWhite House has argued that those who supply information to the presidentshould not be subjected to external inquiries.The senior intelligence official said the commission made its previous requestbefore last Saturday, when the 11/2-page memo was declassified and releasedpublicly.The analyst, who works in the Directorate of Intelligence on terrorism matters, was questioned m orethan a year ago by the joint H ouse-Senate committee that studied intelligence failures befo re the terroristattacks. But the interview did not cover the memo, which was not given to the congressional panel.The origins and purpose of the briefing document have become the subject of more intense scrutinysince national security adviser Condoleezza Rice described it last Thursday as "not a warning" but "anhistorical memo prepared by the agency b ecause the president was asking questions."Comm issioner R ichard Ben-Veniste, a Democrat, said Sunday on CN N's "Late Edition" that he thought"the author of this mem o was alerting the president to the possibility that the strike that we were allanticipating in the summer of 2001 might w ell occur within the U nited States." Ben-Veniste said herecognized that the document did not give a time or place for an attack, and was "not a silver bullet," butthat it should have prompted a government response.

http://ww w.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6590-2004Aprl 2?language=printer 4/13/2004


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Mike HurleyFrom: Warren BassSent: Friday, April 02, 2004 1:21 PMTo: Team 3Subject: WP analysis: Clinton-Bush continuity

Copyright 2004 The Washington PostThe Washington Post

March 27,2004 SaturdayFinal Edition

SECTION: A Section; A01LENGTH: 1278 wordsHEADLINE: Bush, Clinton Varied Little on TerrorismBYLINE: Dana Milbank and Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff WritersBODY:

Fo r all the sniping over efforts by the Bush and Clinton administrations tothwart terrorism, information from this week's hearings into the Sept. 11, 2001,attacks suggests that the two administrations pursued roughly the same policiesbefore the terrorist strikes occurred.

Witness testimony and the findings of the commission investigating theattacks indicate that even the new policy to combat Osama bin Laden and hisTaliban hosts, developed just before Sept. 11, was in most respects similar tothe old strategy pursued first by Clinton and then by Bush.

The commission's determination that the two policies were roughly the samecalls into question claims made by Bush officials that they were developing asuperior terrorism policy. The findings also put into perspective the criticismof President Bush's approach to terrorism by Richard A. Clarke, the former WhiteHouse counterterrorism chief: For all his harsh complaints about Bushadministration's lack of urgency in regard to terrorism, he had no seriousquarrel with the actual policy Bush was pursuing before the 2001 attacks.

Clarke did not respond to efforts to reach him for comment yesterday.Bush officials have claimed that their al Qaeda strategy took eight months to

develop because it was significantly more aggressive and sweeping than thetactics employed by the previous administration. "Our strategy marshaled allelements of national power to take down the network, not just respond toindividual attacks with law enforcement measures," national security adviserCondoleezza Rice wrote in an op-ed article published in The Post earlier this

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-President William Jefferson Clinton's Speech-National Academy of Sciences Page 1 of 4

REM ARKS BY PRESIDENT CLINTONON KEEPING AMERICA SECURE FOR THE 21ST CENTURYJanuary 22,1999National Academy of SciencesWashington, D.C.

10:30A.M. ESTTH E PRESIDENT: Thank yo u very much. Jamie, Dr. Lederberg, I'd like to thank you for yourservice in this and so many o ther ways. I would like to thank Sandy Berger fo r many things,including indulging my nagging on this subject for the better part of six years now . I was sorelieved that Dr. Lederberg not very long ago ~ well, last year ~ brought a distinguished panelbioterrorism threat, because I then had experts to cite o n my concern and nobody thought I was justreading too many nove ls late at night.Madame Attorney General, Secretary Shalala, Secretary Richardson, Director Witt, DeputySecretary Hamre, Co mmandant o f the Coast Guard and our other military leaders who are here, M r.Clarke, ladies and gentlemen. I'm delighted to be here to discuss this subject. With sometrepidation, Sandy Berger no ted that Dr. Lederberg won a Nobel Prize at 33, and I was governoryou can infer from that that I was not very good at chemistry an d biology.But any democracy is imbued with the responsibility of ordinary citizens who do not haveextraordinary expertise to meet the challenges of each new age. And that is what we are all tryingto do. Our country has always met the challenges of those who w ould do us harm. At the heart ofour national defense I have always believed is our attempt to live by our values ~ democracy,freedom, equal opportunity. We are working hard to fulfill these values at home. And we areworking with nations around the world to advance them, to build a new e ra of interdependencewhere nations w ork together no t simply fo r peace and security, but also fo r better schools andhealth care, broader prosperity, a cleaner environment and a greater involvement by citizenseverywhere in shaping their own future.In the struggle to defend our people and values and to advance them wherever possible, weconfront threats both old and new ~ open borders and revolutions in technology have spread themessage and the gifts of freedom but have also given new opportunities to freedom's enemies.Scientific advances have o pened the possibility of longer, better lives. They have also given theenemies of freedom new opportunities.Last August, at Andrews Air Force Base, I grieved with the families of the brave Americans wholost their lives at our embassy in Kenya. They were in Africa to promote the values America shareswith friends of freedom everywhere -- and for that they were murdered by terrorists. So , too, weremen and women in Oklahoma City, at the Wo rld Trade Center, Khobar Towers, on Pan Am 103.

http://www.cybercrime.gov/nas9901.htm 4/5/2004


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79 of 100 DOCUMENTSCopyright 1996 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.

FDCH Political Transcripts

July 29, 1996, Monday

TYPE: NEWS BRIEFINGLENGTH: 1216 wordsHEADLINE: WEB WIRE-MEETS WITH VICE PRESIDENT, FBI DIRECTOR FREEH AND CONGRESSIONALLEADERS TO DISCUSS ANTI-TERRORISM MEASURESSPEAKER:

WILLIAM J. CLINTON,PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATESAL GORE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATESLOUIS FREEH, FBI DIRECTORU.S. SENATOR TRENT LOTT (R-MS),SENATE MAJORITY LEADERU.S. SENATOR THOMAS DASCHLE (D-SD),SENATE MAJORITY LEADERU.S. REPRESENTATIVE NEWT GINGRICH (R-GA),SPEAKER OF THE HOUSEU.S. REPRESENTATIVE RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO),HOUSE MINORITY LEADER,

LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C.BODY:

CLINTON: We have followed a three-part strategy consistently. First of all, we have worked with our friendsaround the world to try to increase international cooperation against terrorists and to isolate the states that supportterrorism.

Just today in Paris, the G-7 conference on terrorism is opening. And I believe after this meeting the attorney generalis going to Paris to represent the United States there. We have intensified our antiterrorism efforts here at home. I wantto thank the Congressional leadership and members of Congress from both parties that strongly supported theantiterrorism bill and other efforts that we have made to strengthen our hand here at home. And we've have had someresults preventing terrorism action, catching people who commit terrorist acts and we intend to do more.

The third thing we have done is to increase airport security. We will be looking at what else we can do through thecommission that I have asked the vice president to head to intensify airport security in the weeks and months ahead.

Again let me say if you look around this room, the Speaker, Senator Lott, Senator Daschle, Mr. Gephardt, SenatorsHatch and Biden, Congressman Hyde and Congressman Conyers, the secretary of state, the attorney general, the

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