Intelligence briefers meet with Vice President Cheney and tell him that the CIA has concluded that al Qaeda was responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000.
Just before the Clinton administration left office, the CIA Cole Task Force presented the team’s findings to the National Security Council, stating that their “preliminary judgment” was that al Qaeda “supported the attack” on the Cole. The CIA said that it had “no definitive answer on [the] crucial question of outside direction of the attack—how and by whom. The CIA noted that the Yemeni government claimed that the perpetrators were not tied to al Qaeda.
President Clinton said the report was not conclusive enough to go to war or deliver an ultimatum to the Taliban threatening war. Richard Clarke believed that the CIA and FBI were actually “holding back” evidence because neither CIA director Tenet nor Attorney General Janet Reno thought that the White House wanted to be put into a position of conducting any military strikes so close to the change in administrations.
As a result of the conclusion of the USS Cole task force, CIA director George Tenet directs the Counterterrorist Center form a strategic analysis group to do better forecasting and provide an overview for the voluminous threat reporting that is now flooding into U.S. intelligence.
Day: February 9, 2021