1. It’s best to pay some attention to formatting when you’re posting something that is many inches long.

2. You don’t bother to reference the sources of those “news reports”.

3. You also don’t bother to make any tie-ins in your post.

4. Do you really think that only one copy of any given NSC report exists in the world? The inference in the articles you reference is that SB was wiping out all trace of any recommendations. :)

In testimony before the 9/11 Commission in April, Attorney General John Ashcroft detailed the highly classified March 2000 document, saying it contained a set of sweeping recommendations on how to combat the al-Qaida threat that were completely ignored by the Clinton White House.
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,” Ashcroft told the Commission.
“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,” declared Ashcroft, “that actions taken in the Millennium period should not be the operating model for the U.S. government.”
The Millennium plot review warned the Clinton administration “of a substantial al-Qaida network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here,” the Bush attorney general said.
“Furthermore, fully seventeen months before the September 11 attacks, the review recommends disrupting the al Qaida network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls,” he explained.
Ashcroft’s comments suggested why a former Clinton national security official (Sandy Berger) might not want the information contained in the Millennium review to ever see the light of day.
Here are some other facts to consider:
• “Here we’ve got the most important event in America in the past 50 years, the most horrible thing that’s happened to Americans, and yet we pick a bunch of people who are connected to the very people who are at the center of the question of who’s at fault,” says Terry Brunner, a former federal prosecutor who now runs the Aviation Integrity Project in Chicago. “It’s ridiculous.”
Brunner checked out the commissioners and discovered that out of 10, at least six represent the very companies they’re now investigating.
He says they are: “Fred Fielding, Spirit Airlines, United Airlines; Slade Gordon represents Delta Airlines; Sen. Max Cleland – $300,000 from the airline industry; Jim Thompson represents American Airlines; Richard BenVinesta represents Boeing and United Airlines; and Rep. Tim Roemer – Boeing and Lockheed Martin.”
“They’re all up to here, with either being connected to the airlines or to the manufacturer of the airplane,” says Brunner.
•

http://www.niagara-gazette.com/feeds/apcontent/apstories/apstorysection/D8K2SSCO0.xml.txt/resources_apstoryview

“Clarke said the movie ‘is an egregious distortion that does a deep disservice both to history and to those in both the Clinton and Bush administrations who are depicted. ‘ ”

I trust Clarke’s viewpoint because vidently he’s seen the entire thing (never mind having been part of both administrations); I gather tonight it’s Bush’s turn to be bashed.

You either call it a “history project” based primarily on the 9/11 report and you stick with info from that report (vs. directly contradict) or you call it a “docudrama”. You shouldn’t be able to have it both ways (again, esp. when you’re making an “educational program” to be distributed to school kids). In this case, with an exhaustive 20-month investigation, you don’t need a “docudrama” that castes certain folks in a terrible light when the truth is bad enough. The record reflects quite enough in terms of actual events, conversations; this isn’t “Flight 93″ or “United 93″ where so much will remain unknown in terms of filling in the blanks of events-conversations.

Again, Alan, you wouldn’t want folks taking “liberties” with actual events and making you look like a bumbling asshat were you involved. That’s the best, most objective way to look at the big picture.

The real hero’s are the ones who gave their lives trying to save those trapped in the towers.
Now on this day, may I just say, God be with us All.

the CIA was authorized
to kill Bin Ladin only in the context of a capture operation. CIA senior managers,
operators, and lawyers confirmed this understanding.“We always talked
about how much easier it would have been to kill him,” a former chief of the
Bin Ladin unit said.128

I think it’s clear that the specifics might have been overly dramatized, but it seems clear that there was a perhaps over concern about not killing bin Laden.

Wow! Where was all this outcry, publicity and demands when Michael Moore presented a now proven farsical tale of 911. Clinton’s is even quoted as saying:

“I think every American ought to see it.” (Rolling Stone, 7/13)

“As far as I know, none of the facts in the movie have been refuted. That is, I think the evidence in the movie is accurate.” (Nova TV (Dutch), 7/14)

I guess once he and his Administration are in the spotlight, the truth may actually matter now.

One billion dollars.

The con congess did not fund it. Instead they thought that a blue dress was more important.

Yes a lie is important. But Terrorism was more than wag the dog.

The cons blame Clinton for dropping the ball. The cons shot themselves in the foot.

That passage from the Report seems to indicate that while, no, the disputed Berger scene did not occur exactly as written, the “idea” underlying the scene is accurate; to wit, the administration in the 1990s (not Clinton himself) failed to deal with the Al Qaeda threat effectively. It seems the intent was there, but the execution was lacking.

It seems the “sense of the scene” would have been more accurate if it was Tenet who is seen saying no to launch the strike against Bin Laden.

I don’t see where you see that operatives were on the ground at a given time ready to take out OBL. “Tribals” in the area are not CIA field agents. And where do you see the event where they are moments from taking him out but Sandi Berger told them they weren’t authorized to do that and hung up on the operative??? ‘Cause that’s what the ABC program depicts.

The whole missile strike thing being nixed by Tenet is an entirely different matter. (And you’ll remember that when Clinton *did* order missile strikes, he was accused of “wagging the dog”.)

I think that ABC is already being forced to set things right. Hopefully, they will do judicious editing or at least insert a strong disclaimer at the bottom of the screen before/during these particular scenes. It won’t cut the mustard to have a vague disclaimer at the beginning about “dramatization” and “fictionalization”, etc.

Dramatization and “fictionalization” is appropriate in a “docudrama” when you *just don’t know what actually occurred*, e.g., conversations-events that took place on United 93. While they had some information about events because of the phone conversations, and could extrapolate from the cockpit voice recorder, they had to *imagine* quite a lot of it.

For instance, you don’t have the families of the pilots on that flight protesting that the pilots weren’t lax in terms of security for having opened the cockpit door because there a recording exists of what went on in the cockpit. The record evidently shows that they did not, even though they’d received the warning about cockpit intrusions, say anything or do anything before opening the door (like verify who it was that knocked on the door, or that the flight attendant wasn’t under duress). Had the record reflected otherwise, the families would have had the right to protest.

an excerpt:

The principals considered a cruise missile strike to try to kill Bin Ladin.One
issue they discussed was the potential collateral damage—the number of innocent
bystanders who would be killed or wounded. General Zinni predicted a
number well over 200 and was concerned about damage to a nearby mosque.
The senior intelligence officer on the Joint Staff apparently made a different
calculation, estimating half as much collateral damage and not predicting damage
to the mosque. By the end of the meeting, the principals decided against
recommending to the President that he order a strike.A few weeks later, in January
1999, Clarke wrote that the principals had thought the intelligence only
half reliable and had worried about killing or injuring perhaps 300 people.
Tenet said he remembered doubts about the reliability of the source and concern
about hitting the nearby mosque.“Mike” remembered Tenet telling him
that the military was concerned that a few hours had passed since the last sighting
of Bin Ladin and that this persuaded everyone that the chance of failure
was too great.118
Some lower-level officials were angry.“Mike” reported to Schroen that he
had been unable to sleep after this decision. “I’m sure we’ll regret not acting
last night,” he wrote, criticizing the principals for “worrying that some stray
shrapnel might hit the Habash mosque and ‘offend’ Muslims.” He commented
that they had not shown comparable sensitivity when deciding to bomb Muslims
in Iraq.The principals, he said, were “obsessed” with trying to get others—
Saudis,Pakistanis,Afghan tribals—to “do what we won’t do.”Schroen was
disappointed too.“We should have done it last night,” he wrote.“We may well
come to regret the decision not to go ahead.”119 The Joint Staff ’s deputy director
for operations agreed, even though he told us that later intelligence
appeared to show that Bin Ladin had left his quarters before the strike would
have occurred. Missing Bin Ladin, he said,“would have caused us a hell of a
problem, but it was a shot we should have taken, and we would have had to
pay the price.”120
The principals began considering other, more aggressive covert alternatives
using the tribals. CIA officers suggested that the tribals would prefer to try a
raid rather than a roadside ambush because they would have better control, it
would be less dangerous, and it played more to their skills and experience. But
everyone knew that if the tribals were to conduct such a raid, guns would be
blazing.The current Memorandum of Notification instructed the CIA to capture
Bin Ladin and to use lethal force only in self-defense.Work now began on
a new memorandum that would give the tribals more latitude.The intention
was to say that they could use lethal force if the attempted capture seemed
impossible to complete successfully.121
Early drafts of this highly sensitive document emphasized that it authorized
only a capture operation.The tribals were to be paid only if they captured Bin
Ladin, not if they killed him. Officials throughout the government approved
this draft. But on December 21, the day after principals decided not to launch
RESPONSES TO AL QAEDA’S INITIAL ASSAULTS 131
the cruise missile strike against Kandahar, the CIA’s leaders urged strengthening
the language to allow the tribals to be paid whether Bin Ladin was captured
or killed. Berger and Tenet then worked together to take this line of
thought even further.122
They finally agreed, as Berger reported to President Clinton, that an
extraordinary step was necessary. The new memorandum would allow the
killing of Bin Ladin if the CIA and the tribals judged that capture was not feasible
(a judgment it already seemed clear they had reached). The Justice
Department lawyer who worked on the draft told us that what was envisioned
was a group of tribals assaulting a location, leading to a shoot-out. Bin Ladin
and others would be captured if possible, but probably would be killed.The
administration’s position was that under the law of armed conflict, killing a
person who posed an imminent threat to the United States would be an act
of self-defense, not an assassination.On Christmas Eve 1998, Berger sent a final
draft to President Clinton, with an explanatory memo. The President
approved the document.123
Because the White House considered this operation highly sensitive, only a
tiny number of people knew about this Memorandum of Notification. Berger
arranged for the NSC’s legal adviser to inform Albright, Cohen, Shelton, and
Reno.None was allowed to keep a copy. Congressional leaders were briefed, as
required by law. Attorney General Reno had sent a letter to the President
expressing her concern: she warned of possible retaliation, including the targeting
of U.S. officials. She did not pose any legal objection.A copy of the final
document, along with the carefully crafted instructions that were to be sent to
the tribals,was given to Tenet.124
A message from Tenet to CIA field agents directed them to communicate
to the tribals the instructions authorized by the President: the United States
preferred that Bin Ladin and his lieutenants be captured,but if a successful capture
operation was not feasible, the tribals were permitted to kill them.The
instructions added that the tribals must avoid killing others unnecessarily and
must not kill or abuse Bin Ladin or his lieutenants if they surrendered. Finally,
the tribals would not be paid if this set of requirements was not met.125
The field officer passed these instructions to the tribals word for word. But
he prefaced the directions with a message:“From the American President down
to the average man in the street,we want him [Bin Ladin] stopped.” If the tribals
captured Bin Ladin, the officer assured them that he would receive a fair
trial under U.S. law and be treated humanely. The CIA officer reported that
the tribals said they “fully understand the contents, implications and the spirit
of the message” and that that their response was,“We will try our best to capture
Bin Ladin alive and will have no intention of killing or harming him on
purpose.”The tribals explained that they wanted to prove that their standards
of behavior were more civilized than those of Bin Ladin and his band of terrorists.
In an additional note addressed to Schroen, the tribals noted that if they
were to adopt Bin Ladin’s ethics,“we would have finished the job long before,”
132 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
but they had been limited by their abilities and “by our beliefs and laws we
have to respect.”126
Schroen and “Mike”were impressed by the tribals’ reaction. Schroen cabled
that the tribals were not in it for the money but as an investment in the future
of Afghanistan. “Mike” agreed that the tribals’ reluctance to kill was not a
“showstopper.” “From our view,” he wrote, “that seems in character and fair
enough.”127
Policymakers in the Clinton administration, including the President and his
national security advisor, told us that the President’s intent regarding covert
action against Bin Ladin was clear: he wanted him dead.This intent was never
well communicated or understood within the CIA.Tenet told the Commission
that except in one specific case (discussed later), the CIA was authorized
to kill Bin Ladin only in the context of a capture operation. CIA senior managers,
operators, and lawyers confirmed this understanding.“We always talked
about how much easier it would have been to kill him,” a former chief of the
Bin Ladin unit said.128
In February 1999,another draft Memorandum of Notification