Tag: George Tenet

25 January 2001

Posted on by Featherproof Books

 

White House counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke sends an urgent memo to Condoleezza Rice and deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley warning that there are al Qaeda sleeper cells within the United States and of an impending terrorist attack on America soil.

In a grand strategy paper on dealing with terrorism, Clarke advocates targeting al Qaeda training camps in response to the October attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. He proposes “rolling back” al Qaeda over a period of three to five years, proposes military action as well that would attack Taliban infrastructure. (At the Center of the Storm, p. 143)

Clarke writes that al Qaeda “is not some narrow, little terrorist issue that needs to be included in broader regional policy,” taking a jab at Rice’s concept of a “regional” solution to terrorism. He says that key decisions that had been deferred with the end of the Clinton administration dealing with covert aid to the Northern Alliance and the Uzbeks, to political messages to the Taliban and Pakistan, and new money for CIA operations need to be resolved regardless of larger policy.

Though the 9/11 Commission would say that Rice did not respond directly to Clarke’s memo and no principals committee meeting regarding al Qaeda took place until September 4 (911 Commission, p. 201), the truth was that Clarke’s memo presented nothing new and didn’t represent any new intelligence regarding the immediate threat. One can fail the Bush administration for not seriously engaging with the issue, but it is also the case that Clarke failed (as did CIA director George Tenet) to convince the new administration of the threat, later trumpeting so many warnings that they drowned the new administration. And in his January 25 memo, which the 9/11 Commission tartly labels “elaborate,” Clarke’s inclusion of his 2000 strategy and his 1998 plan annoyed Rice and Hadley, that it was both too stale and too narcissistic.

14 January 1996

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The special Osama bin Laden virtual station inside the CIA Counterterrorism Center (CTC) gets underway. The “virtual” station is similar to the virtual Iran station (located in Frankfurt, Germany) that was created because of an inability to have an actual physical station in Tehran.

But because the bin Laden “station” is not about a country, and it is in the backwater of the then secondary and unimportant counterterrorism portfolio, few pay much attention. If anything, it even has an opposite effect. Rather than creating a bin Laden czar who focuses the Agency’s attention, it is seen as a hotbed of obsessed extremists focused on a questionable threat. That legacy would persist even through CIA director Tenet’s December 1998 declaration of war against al Qaeda and up until 9/11—the station an epicenter of analysis (and obsession), but the actual action regarding countering bin Laden taking place in the physical Pakistan and Uzbekistan stations (and in Yemen and other country stations) where covert action is being undertaken.

23 December 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Osama bin Laden meets with a Time Magazine correspondent at his tented encampment in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

“Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so,” he says, referring to nuclear weapons.

George Tenet later testifies before the 9/11 Commission that that the CIA took notice of this December statement and sent out a warning regarding al Qaeda’s interest “in acquiring chemical and biological weapons and nuclear materials.”

14 December 1999

Posted on by William Arkin
Ahmed Ressam

 

Ahmed Ressam, traveling on a Canadian passport under the name of Benni Antoine Noris, is arrested at Port Angeles, Washington at the U.S.-Canadian border. His car contains bomb-making chemicals and detonator components and he is entering the U.S. with the intention of blowing up a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve.

Algerian native Ahmed Ressam is later found to have trained in Afghanistan al Qaeda camps in Khalden and Darunta, receiving instructions on bomb making and probably the Los Angeles assignment. His case involved terrible failures by French and Canadian authorities. Ressam managed to initially fly from France to Montreal using a photo-substituted French passport under another false name, that of Tahar Medijadi. Under questioning in Canada, he admitted that the passport was fraudulent and claimed political asylum. He was released pending a hearing, which he failed to attend. He was then arrested four times for pick-pocketing, usually from tourists, but was never jailed nor deported.

Ressam eventually obtained his genuine Canadian passport through a document vendor who stole a blank baptismal certificate from a Catholic church. He used the passport to travel to Pakistan, and from there to Afghanistan for his training, returning to Canada before attempting to enter the United States.

Though the CIA and others in the Clinton administration would later crow about the capture of Ressam, his arrest in Port Angeles was completely by chance, due to the work of an individual customs agent on the spot (who had never received any terrorist warnings from higher headquarters or Washington).

“In looking back,” George Tenet later wrote, “much more should have been made about the significance of this event. While Ressam’s plot was foiled, his arrest signaled that al Qaeda was coming here.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 126)

13 December 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

FBI director Louis Freeh briefs White House national security advisor Sandy Berger about the conclusion that Iran and Hizballah were behind the terrorist attack at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

According to Freeh, Berger asks, “Who knows about this,” saying the Bureau’s conclusions seem to be hearsay. Later, Berger convenes a meeting including Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Henry (Hugh) Shelton, and CIA director George Tenet.

Freeh writes: “I thought that we were meeting to discuss what our next move would be, given the fact that we now had solid evidence that Iranians, with involvement at the highest official levels, had blown up nineteen Americans. But I was wrong. The meeting started with how to deal with the press and Congress, should news of Iranian involvement in the Khobar murders leak outside of the room.”

Freeh says that Shelton invited him to the ‘tank’ at the Pentagon to brief the Joint Chiefs on Iranian sponsorship. There, Marine Corps commandant Chuck Krulak said he would do whatever was necessary to bring the Khobar bombers to justice, “even if that meant taking on the White House.” (My FBI, pp. 29ff) Nothing was really ever done. The Iran connection faded into history.

10 December 1995

Posted on by William Arkin
John Deutch

 

CIA director John Deutch, brought over from the Pentagon in May to replace James Woolsey, who had resigned during Christmas, insults his own Agency, sort of setting the stage for a rocky tenure and the ascension of George Tenet.

The New York Times quotes Deutch slamming his own people, comparing CIA operations officers to military officers. “They certainly are not as competent, or as understanding of what their relative role is and what their responsibilities are,” Deutch says. Within six month, the rumor mill begins whispering that Deutch—scornful of his own people, aloof and technocratic—would be departing at the end of the year for the top job at the Pentagon (and indeed he stepped down on December 15, a year after he made his remarks.)

George Tenet, then Deutch’s deputy, disingenuously writes later that Deutch “abruptly resigned” when in fact he maneuvered behind the scenes to unseat Deutch and become director. (At the Center of the Storm, p. 5)

Deutch never got the Pentagon job, and in the ultimate act of revenge, CIA counterintelligence goons later pulled the former director’s security clearance for improperly handling classified material on his home computer.

7 December 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

CIA director George Tenet gives a presentation on “What U.S. Intelligence Does for You” at a town hall in Los Angeles. The Millennium threat scare and the Y2K rollover now behind the threat watchers, Tenet is all swagger and promotion.

“We have, since July 1998,” Tenet boasted, “in partnership with governments around the world, helped deliver to justice more than two dozen terrorists—more than half of whom were linked to Usama bin Laden. These actions have shattered terrorist cells and networks, disrupted terrorist plans, and—in some cases—prevented terrorist attacks from taking place.”

It is a speech that one gets the sense could be delivered any day or any year, that typical happy talk of government which pretends real progress, and even resolution of problems, when in fact there is no true progress towards eliminating terrorism or even diminishing the size of the terrorist armies that would wish us harm.

6 December 1999

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Further increasing the level of anxiety about terrorist attacks during the Millennium transition, Jordanian authorities arrest 16 alleged terrorists who were accused of planning attacks on the John the Baptist’s shrine on the Jordan River and the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman. George Tenet later wrote: “The Jordanian intelligence service, through its able chief, Samikh Battikhi, told us that individuals on the team had direct links to Usama bin Ladin.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 125)

The CIA Counterterrorist Center circulates an intelligence report, according to Tenet: “accepting the theory that UBL [Osama bin Laden] wants to inflict maximum casualties, cause massive panic, and score a psychological victory, then UBL may be seeking to attack between 5 and 15 targets on the Millennium. Because the U.S. is UBL’s ultimate goal… we must assume that several of these targets will be in the U.S. …”

Over the next weeks, the CIA and allied intelligence services would launch operations in 55 countries against 38 separate targets to disrupt plots in the making and to arrest terrorists under surveillance. But there is no question that once the Millennium passed without incident, the intensity of these efforts would generally decline. And they had little impact on al Qaeda central.

Of note, the same Radisson hotel was one of three hotels in Amman later attacked within a half an hour of each other on the night on November 9, 2005. There, suicide bombers killed over 50 and wounded over 100.

5 December 1999

Posted on by William Arkin
Richard Clarke's book "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror"

 

A year after CIA director George Tenet’s “We Are at War” memo, White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke is still agitating for stronger action against al Qaeda, for a comprehensive strategy, for stronger covert action, for even the use of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan.

On December 4, Clarke wrote a memo to White House national security advisor Samuel “Sandy” Berger. In it, he laid out a proposal to attack al Qaeda facilities again in the week before the Millennium transition. On December 5, Clarke got the memo back. In the margin, Berger wrote “no.”

4 December 1998

Posted on by William Arkin
George Tenet

 

“We Are at War.” It is perhaps the most ridiculous memo ever written by a government bureaucrat, with neither the authority or the army to so declare. And it made no difference.

On the evening of December 3, CIA director George Tenet “furiously drafted” a longhand memo declaring war and telling his staff that “I wanted no resources or people spared in the effort to go after al Qaeda.”

“We must now enter a new phase in our effort against Bin Ladin,” Tenet wrote in the top-secret memo that circulated the next day. “We all acknowledge that retaliation [for American cruise missile attacks] is inevitable and that its scope may be far larger than we have previously experienced.”

Tenet later writes: “I want [deputy CIA director] Charlie Allen to immediately chair a meeting with NSA, NIMA, CITO [our clandestine information technology organization] and others to ensure we are doing everything we can to meet CTC’s [Counterterrorist Center] requirements.”

“The 9/11 Commission later said that I declared war but that no one showed up. They were wrong.” (At the Center of the Storm, pp. 118–119)