22 January 2001

Posted on January 22, 2021May 20, 2021 by Featherproof Books

On the second day of the Bush administration, The New York Times runs a story about Iraqi WMD (Steven Lee Myers and Eric Schmitt, “Iraq Rebuilt Weapons Factories, Officials Say”), the beginning of a relentless drumbeat creating the impression that Saddam has managed—with and without U.N. sanctions—to continue the development of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

The WMD narrative will build after 9/11 and as the 2003 second Gulf War nears. Many would go on to say and believe that the Bush administration both “fixed the facts” on Iraqi WMD and was the sole champion for a final showdown and regime change with Saddam Hussein. But the fretting about Iraq’s WMD—and the many intelligence blind spots and misinterpretations about Iraq’s continued pursuit of WMD—was a holdover from the Clinton administration, which had additionally adopted American policy that there would be no normalization of relations with Iraq without regime change.

The role that the Times and other news media played in trumpeting the threat of WMD, in shaping elite opinion, is still largely unexamined as history. Yes, there were countervailing stories questioning the facts on this or that piece of evidence, but the more war with Iraq became “Bush’s war,” the more any contrary view of the strategic purpose (and effects) of a war was also drowned out.

20 January 2001

Posted on January 20, 2021May 20, 2021 by Featherproof Books

President George W. Bush takes the oath of office. The “compassionate conservative” vows to lead “through civility, courage, compassion and character.”

The former Texas governor had been briefed by the outgoing Clinton administration about the threat from al Qaeda, and while most of the principals in the new administration thought the fixation on terrorism “odd” (Against all Enemies, p. 226), in truth, the new team had an ABC policy: “Anything But Clinton.”

During the campaign, Condoleezza Rice argued in an article in Foreign Affairs that a new foreign policy was required that “separates the important from the trivial.” She took the Clinton administration to task for having “assiduously avoided implementing such an agenda.” Terrorism, she contended, only needed attending to insofar as it was used by rogue states to advance their interests.

Richard Clarke and his counter-terrorism staff was kept on, National Security Advisor Rice admitting that the Bush team was more focused on Cold War issues. Clarke was demoted and would eventually be seen as a pest, constantly promoting warnings and crisis. By the time summer rolled in, most in the administration had grown tired of the chicken littles constantly warning of upcoming terrorist attacks.

10 January 2001

Posted on January 10, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

President-elect George W. Bush is briefed in the famous and highly secure JCS “tank” at the Pentagon—on the national security situation and the immediate threats ahead.

The focus is on the immediate threat from Iraq, the absence of U.N. inspectors, the unravelling of international sanctions, the continued build-up of weapons of mass destruction, the hardening of Iraq’s air defense and communications infrastructure with buried fiber optics, Iraqi relations with terrorists, and Saddam’s Hussein’s human rights record. It is a bracing and single-minded presentation. In other words, Iraq wasn’t just some concoction of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. It was the number one threat as conceived by the Pentagon.

28 December 2000

Posted on December 28, 2020January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

President Bill Clinton announces that he will not travel to North Korea before the end of his term, citing “insufficient time to complete the work at hand.”

White House national security adviser Sandy Berger and other White House officials were hesitant to have the president leave the country during the ongoing election dispute between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Berger called it a “potential Constitutional crisis.”

Whether Clinton’s trip to North Korea would have achieved anything anyhow is questionable, but the precedent had also been set for an outgoing president not to leave new and pressing national security business for their successors. Hence the real reason behind not “retaliating” for the October attack in Yemen on the USS Cole: that the reverberations might have locked the new administration into some specific action.

15 December 2000

Posted on December 15, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia telephones George W. Bush to finally congratulate him on being elected president. The Saudi press release reads:

“Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd bin Abdulaziz yesterday telephoned George W. Bush to congratulate him on his election as the 43rd President of the United States of America and wish him every success, stressing the deep-rooted historical relations between the two friendly countries. Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the National Guard Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz made a similar telephone call.

Earlier, King Fahd sent a cable of congratulations to the President-Elect, expressing in his own name and on behalf of the people and government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia best wishes for continued success and a good leadership of the American people. He confirmed the ties of friendship that bind the two countries and declared that the Saudi leadership looks forward to enhancing these relations for the sake of consolidating the bases of security, stability and peace not only in the Middle East but in the whole world. Crown Prince Abdullah sent a similar cable, as did Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector-Gen Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz.”

In Khobar, site of the June 1996 bombing of the U.S. military base, a terrorist bomb goes off, severely injuring a British citizen.

9 November 2000

Posted on November 9, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

George W. Bush’s lead over Al Gore in all-or-nothing Florida presidential race slips beneath 300 votes in a suspense-filled recount. Vice President Gore telephones Bush to concede but then calls back about an hour later to retract his concession.

Bush’s camp presses Gore to concede without pursuing multiple recounts. The unofficial tally gives Bush a 327-vote lead. A statewide recount begins in Florida the next day. Over the next two weeks, some 19,000 votes were disqualified.

Gore then takes the presidential election to the courts, claiming “an injustice unparalleled in our history.” Bush’s team goes to court, seeking an order to block manual recounts. When Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announces she would end the recounting at 5 p.m. on November 14, it prompts an immediate appeal by Gore lawyers.

6 November 2000

Posted on November 6, 2020November 6, 2020 by William Arkin

On Election Eve in the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore, Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi take their instrument rating airplane test at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida. Atta receives a score of 90 in 122 minutes and al-Shehhi receives a score of 75 in 89 minutes. Two weeks later, they each receive an FAA Temporary Airman Certificate, qualifying them as “private pilots.”

With their temporary licenses, the two were then able to sign out airplanes for solo flights. They did so on a number of occasions, often returning at 2:00 and 3:00 A.M., after logging four or five hours of flying time. They would also begin training simulations to fly larger commercial airliners, though neither would pilot or even co-pilot a commercial jet before September 11.

24 October 2000

Posted on October 24, 2020October 30, 2020 by William Arkin

In the category of nothing ever changes… Secretary of State Madeleine Albright concludes a two-day visit to Pyongyang, North Korea, meeting with Kim Jong Il, the father of Kim Jong Un. During the visit, Kim tells her that North Korea would not further test its Taepo Dong-1 long-range missile. In addition to discussing Pyongyang’s indigenous missile production, the talks cover North Korean missile technology exports, and greater nuclear transparency.

On the agenda also are the carrot of the normalization of relations and a possible trip by President Bill Clinton to Pyongyang before he leaves office.

In the final presidential debate of the 2020 election season, former Vice President Joe Biden and President Trump traded barbs over North Korea, Biden criticizing Trump for being too chummy with Kim. Trump shot back that the Obama administration had watched North Korea develop its nuclear weapons and missiles without doing much, failing as well to secure a meeting.

Biden shot back: “We had a good relationship with Hitler before he, in fact, invaded the rest of Europe. The reason [Kim] wouldn’t meet with President Obama is because [Obama] said we’re going to talk about denuclearization.”

Biden and company continue to argue that pursuing denuclearization makes no sense because… because it’s not going to happen. “What has he done?” Biden said of Trump. “He’s legitimized North Korea…” And yet that’s been the American endeavor for decades, and not only that, but backwater North Korea has learned that nuclear weapons earn it a place in American foreign policy—as much an incentive as any other to be a nuclear power.

As for the connection to 9/11, the attacks completely took the American eye off the peninsula and North Korea went on to test its first nuclear device on October 9, 2006, while the Bush administration was amidst the worst phase of violence in Iraq and still aggressively pursuing the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

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.

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.