14 November 1998

Posted on November 14, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Saddam Hussein revokes his August 5 decision to cease cooperation with the United Nations inspectors (UNSCOM). Iraq states in a letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan that it is willing to resume inspections. But the U.S. and U.K. argue that the country imposes a number of unacceptable conditions with its offer, particularly restrictions on visiting presidential sites and including American inspectors. Capitulating, Iraq then informs the U.N. Security Council that it was the “clear and unconditional decision of the Iraqi government to resume cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA.”

As Iraq deliberates on resumption of inspections, an air and cruise missile operation (Desert Viper) is being prepared and even implemented: aircraft moving into place, armed, with targets selected. When Iraq notifies the Security Council, President Clinton aborts Desert Viper just minutes before the designated H-hour (11:00 AM EST).

In a televised address, President Clinton later says that Iraq has “backed down” and pledged full cooperation with UNSCOM. The president also makes clear that U.S. policy includes the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as a prerequisite for resumption of normal relations. The UNSC accepts Iraq’s decision and issues a statement in which it stresses that Iraq’s commitment “needs to be established by unconditional and sustained cooperation with the Special Commission and the IAEA in exercising the full range of their activities provided for in their mandates.”

The U.S. and U.K. then threaten that without full cooperation, they will strike Iraq without warning. According to the Iraq Survey Group, the events of 1998 “had so poisoned the atmosphere with UNSCOM that the relationship could not be repaired.” It was the end of inspections and the beginning of the road to certain war, but also not the last time that a president stopped an underway bombing operation, President Trump doing so vis-à-vis Iran.

12 November 1994

Posted on November 12, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Wandering around the globe, oblivious to everything terrorism and Islam going on around him, Bill Clinton lands in the Philippines on a two-day state visit, visiting Corregidor, site of the Japanese victory in the conquest of the American commonwealth in World War II, and of the U.S. Army’s return.

While in the Philippines, what are now believed to be al Qaeda operatives (including Ramzi Yousef) undertake surveillance of the presidential party, preparing for an assassination attempt on Clinton’s life. The 911 Commission says that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sent $3,000 to Yousef to fund the plot.

According to Triple Cross (p. 163), Yousef and associate Wali Khan Amin Shah applied for visas on November 3 and travel to Manila (Khan would later be captured and tortured by Philippine police and then “rendered” to the United States). Triple Cross claims that Terry Nichols, accomplice in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was also in the Philippines at the same time.

Clinton arrived in the country after a visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met with King Fahd at King Khalid Military City in Hafr-Al-Batin in the north, near the Iraqi border. “I had been impressed by Fahd’s call, in early 1993, asking me to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslims,” Clinton later writes (My Life, p. 627).

It was hardly a humanitarian move on the Saudi part. Bosnia would be one of the first locations outside Afghanistan where radical Islamists and al Qaeda adherents would travel to and carry out jihad, and Osama bin Laden certainly saw the slaughter of Muslims in Bosnia as part of the global assault on the Islamic people.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the Taliban have their first significant military success, capturing Kandahar in the south. It all happened in November 1994, all the threads gathering, but the global pattern was unseen at the time.

31 October 2000

Posted on October 31, 2020November 3, 2020 by William Arkin

President Clinton signs additional covert action authorities for fighting al Qaeda, including expanding the number of individuals who were subject to capture operations. The formal presidential “findings,” a series of six Memorandum of Notifications, built upon previous (July 1999) covert action authorities already granted to the CIA.

Authority to undertake capture operations are specified by individuals and by country as to what assistance and circumstances the Agency can seek foreign government (and foreign organization) help. There are no “lethal” authorities per se, though obviously in 1998, cruise missile attacks against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda sought to kill the leader.

CIA Director George Tenet is also instructed to develop additional capabilities beyond those already granted in 1999, such as strengthening relationships with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and Uzbek groups in Afghanistan. Another Memorandum calls for covert action to fight the expansion of al Qaeda into Lebanon.

22 October 2000

Posted on October 22, 2020October 30, 2020 by William Arkin

The government in Yemen stonewalls after the attack on the USS Cole (see October 12), thereby confusing the collection of “evidence” that al Qaeda is responsible and impeding retaliation. There are many reasons—the election voting standoff between Bush and Gore, an impending change in administrations, disbelief in al Qaeda, and skepticism about the value of cruise missile attacks—that also ultimately stand in the way of an American “response,” but Yemen’s foot-dragging, and even lying, has a major impact.

Within the first weeks after the Cole attack, the Yemenis arrest two key figures in the attack. But they forbid the FBI investigators on the ground from participating in the interrogations. President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and CIA Director George Tenet all intervene to try to help but Yemen doesn’t budge. Ultimately, the 911 Commission concludes that because information from the suspects comes in that is secondhand, the U.S. could not make its own assessment of its reliability (911 Commission, p. 192).

Yemen would continue to be a haven for al Qaeda, even after 9/11. It would take the Arab Spring—and not anything about the American global war on terror—to finally unseat the first and only president of the country, Ali Abdullah Saleh. That has been followed by a never-ending civil war and Saudi (and Gulf state) intervention, turning the country into a humanitarian disaster and a basket case. Saleh was killed by a sniper in December 2017.

21 October 1998

Posted on October 21, 2020October 30, 2020 by William Arkin

President Bill Clinton signs Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 67, Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations, the first major post-Cold War re-articulation of plans for survival of the presidency and continuity of the federal government.

PDD-67 covers president continuity of government, enduring constitutional government (ECG—which relates to presidential successors outside the executive branch and continuity of Congress and the Supreme Court), and continuity of operations planning (COOP—which applies to the day-to-day business operations of non-national security agencies of the government). PDD-67 states that the purpose of enduring constitutional government (ECG), continuity of government (COG), and continuity of operations (COOP) is to ensure survival of a constitutional form of government and the continuity of essential federal functions. The directive requires every federal department and agency to submit a new COG plan.

PDD-67 replaced the Bush administration’s National Security Directive 69 (NSD-69), Enduring Constitutional Government of 2 June 1992, which in turn succeeded NSD-37, Enduring Constitutional Government, 18 April 1990 and National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 55, Enduring National Leadership, 14 September 1982.

President Clinton’s new directive moves the COG system further away from sole preparation for nuclear war towards a day-to-day posture that also does not rely upon underground bunkers. But it does “require” evacuation of presidential successors when a continuity event is declared, measures that would be ignored both on 9/11 and during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.

13 October 2000

Posted on October 13, 2020October 20, 2020 by William Arkin

Vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney urges swift retaliation for the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. “Any would-be terrorist out there needs to know that if you’re going to attack, you’ll be hit very hard and very quick. It’s not time for diplomacy and debate. It’s time for action.”

It is tantamount to approval for the Clinton administration to attack al Qaeda, even with an upcoming election.

The October surprise “norm” for a sitting president—if there is one—is to settle (or at least not exacerbate) pending foreign policy complications for an incoming administration, thereby not tilting the election one way or another. Bill Clinton himself inherited a losing hand in both Somalia and Iraq from George Bush the elder. Somalia would end up a disaster for the Clinton team and Iraq of course would dog the White House for the next eight years. And Barack Obama would hesitate to take stronger action against Russia in 2016, not wanting to tilt the election or tie the hands of an incoming Hillary Clinton administration.

Perhaps Cheney’s bluster was just pre-election posturing, but more important, the former secretary of defense believed that the implications of striking at al Qaeda was cost-free, that attacking—“very hard and very quick”—had no implications for blowback on the United States, that an attack on the U.S. itself wasn’t even conceived. Ultimately this belief was as much responsible for the new Bush administration’s slow development of a counter-terrorism policy in the nine months of 2001 before 9/11—that it just didn’t see al Qaeda as more than a run-of-the-mill terrorist organization.

2 October 1999

Posted on October 3, 2020October 3, 2020 by William Arkin

The CIA readies an operation to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, secretly training and equipping approximately 60 military commandos supplied by the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) establishment.

The covert action, approved by President Clinton, includes a quid pro quo, that Pakistan would train and prepare the commandos and conduct the operation, in return for the lifting of economic sanctions imposed with Pakistan’s nuclear testing.

The plan is briefed and supposedly ready to go, but it is then aborted because on October 12, Pakistan Army General Pervez Musharraf takes control of the country in a military coup. Most would later say that no ISI-sponsored operation would have been successful given that the organization was filled with Taliban and al Qaeda sympathizers.

28 September 2000

Posted on September 28, 2020September 28, 2020 by William Arkin

A mythical pre-9/11 event gains traction, after the first two missions of an unarmed Predator reconnaissance drone are flown over Afghanistan on September 7 and 8. In review of the videos of the flights, the CIA comes to believe that Predator drones captured images of Osama bin Laden, “a tall man dressed in white robes,” during the overflights.

The 9/11 commission says that the conclusion was made after-the-fact. The drone imaged Tarnak Farms in Kandahar, a former Soviet agricultural collective taken over by al Qaeda. “A group of 10 people gathered around him [the tall man] were apparently paying their respects for a minute or two,” the report says.

CIA director George Tenet sends the video to the White House. White House terrorism specialist Richard Clarke wrote to national security advisor Sandy Berger that there was a “very high probability” bin Laden had been located. President Clinton is then shown the video. It is a mythical event, and not provable one way or another; bin Laden is never to be sighted again in Afghanistan, not before or after 9/11. The lore associated with locating bin Laden fed acceleration of an armed version of the Predator drone and a year of covert action to come up with various schemes to capture or assassinate him while at his Tarnak Farms residence east of the city.