THE CRIME:

(The opening statement By former Attorney General John Ashcroft, under oath, to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, more popularly known as the  9/11 Commission regarding the issue of covert actions or the lack of them- directed at Osama bin Laden prior to 2001. John Ashcroft, Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice, Center Street- Hachette Book Group USA, 2006, pg. 258-9)

"Let me be clear: My thorough review revealed no covert action program to kill bin Laden.  There was a covert action program to capture bin Laden for criminal prosecution.  But even this program was crippled by a snarled web of requirements, restrictions and regulations that prevented decisive action by our men and women in the field.

When they most need clear, understandable guidance, our agents and operatives were given the language of lawyers.  Even if they could have penetrated bin Laden’s training camps, they would have needed a battery of attorneys to approve the capture.”

Pg 244

The Millenium After Action Review, assembled and written by largely by Richard Clarke, President Clinton’s counterterrorism czar, recommended twenty-nine strategies, mostly directed toward rooting out, disrupting, and destroying terrorist threats within the United States…

When I sat before the 9/11 commission, I encouraged them to study carefully the classified Millenium After Action Review, which amounted to President Clinton’s National Security Council plan to disrupt the al Qaeda network in the U.S. and abroad. Unfortunately our government had failed to implement fully that plan, even though deterrents were spelled out clearly, a full seventeen months before the horrendous attacks of September 11, 2001…Among the many vulnerable areas of homeland defenses identified in the review as needing improvement, Justice department surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized as “glaring weaknesses.”…

But despite the warnings and the clear vulnerabilities identified by the NSC in 2000, no new pre-9/11 disruption strategy to attack the al Qaeda network within the United States was deployed. It was ignored in the justice department’s five year counterterrorism strategy. From my perspective it was buried.

I did not see the highly classified report before September 11, 2001.  It was not among the thirty items on which I was briefed in the transition period in which I took office.  Nor was it advanced as a disruption strategy during the 2001 summer threat period by the NSC staff, the same agency that had written the review more than a year earlier.

Why the blueprint for security was not followed during the Clinton years, and particularly after the report raised warnings in the year 2000, we may never know...It is impossible to say that the Justice department was not aware of the report in 2000.  They knew the review warned of a substantial al Qaeda network and affiliated terrorist presence within the United States, and it was critical of the nation’s security measures taken prior to 2000.

Yet something about that report must have seemed either profoundly valuable or extremely embarrassing.  Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger apparently felt the classified report was telling enough that he would risk smuggling draft copies of it out of the National Archives, ostensibly to prepare testimony for the 9/11 commission.  Berger went even further, taking copies of the classified after action report to his office and destroying them.*

*Hope Yen, “Judge Orders Berger to Pay $50,000 Fine for Taking Classified Material,” Associated Press, September 8, 2005; reprinted online in the San Diego Union-Tribune

The national security advisor holds a position of great trust, advising the president on a multitude of issues and coordinates all items related to national security, bringing together the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the attorney general and dealing with the internal and external security of the country.

After the Clinton administration left office, Sandy Berger, even as a former national security advisor, would not normally have had access to classified materials in the National Archives.  But he was designated by the former Clinton administration as their official person to review documents on the administrations behalf in preparation for the 9/11 Commission hearings.  Berger was charged with the responsibility of going through thousands of pages of material relating to the Clinton years in office, and managing the document flow from the Clinton administration to the 9/11 commission.  He was not a casual person with access; he had access to the documents because of his official responsibility to the 9/11 Commission.

Nor was Sandy Berger a buffoon, clumsily grabbing classified documents that would put him at such risk. Apparently, he knew what he was after and why.  And when he was caught, he chose to plead guilty to his crimes.   In court, Berger characterized his brazen theft as a lapse of judgment, stating, “I let considerations of personal convenience override clear rules of handling classified material.”  Berger continued, “I believe that this lapse, serious as it is, does not reflect the character of myself.” **

**U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, September 8, 2005; www.dcd.uscourts.gov/.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson disagreed; she ordered Berger to pay a $50,000 fine, a substantial increase over the $10,000 recommended by government lawyers, but considered a slap on the wrists by many others.  The question of why Sandy Berger took documents about the Clinton administrations unimplemented plan to disrupt terrorism in the United States continues to rankle many…

John Ashcroft, Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice, Center Street- Hachette Book Group USA, 2006, pg. 257-261

More to come...