Tenet claims Rice balked at pre-9/11 authorization to kill bin Laden

[Richard Tafoya]

NY Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/456839p-384345c.html


The CIA'S top counterterrorism officials felt they could have killed Osama Bin Laden in the months before 9/11, but got the "brushoff" when they went to the Bush White House seeking the money and authorization.

CIA Director George Tenet and his counterterrorism head Cofer Black sought an urgent meeting with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, writes Bob Woodward in his new book "State of Denial."

They went over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and "sounded the loudest warning" to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden.
Woodward writes that Rice was polite, but, "They felt the brushoff."

Tenet and Black were both frustrated.

Black later calculated that all he needed was $500 million of covert action funds and reasonable authorization from President Bush to go kill Bin Laden and "he might be able to bring Bin Laden's head back in a box," Woodward writes.

Black claims the CIA had about "100 sources and subsources" in Afghanistan who could have helped carry out the hit.

[tiger_rascal]

Richard, do you believe that if they had killed bin Laden (months before that is) that the attacks on 9/11 may have never happened?

[Richard Tafoya]

At that point in time, all intel points to al Quaida being a centralized organization with bin Laden as the final decision-maker on all major issues.

Taking him out pre-9/11 would have put the organization into chaos, and he would not have been in a position to orchestrate final wire-transfer funding or give final approval for the specifics of the attack.

I don't doubt that smaller attacks might have taken place, but the level of centralized coordination would have been seriously impacted.

Also, most supporters of the Iraq war fail to acknowledge that key terrorism experts concur that bin Laden's goal in the attacks had much less to do with the domestic aftermath of 9/11 and more to do with provoking a large U.S. military response on Muslim soil to rally disparate Muslim factions against a new incursion by the U.S.

And we've been unwittingly giving him exactly that, as the National Intelligence Estimate and many military chiefs agree.

From Wikipedia's overview of the 9/11 attacks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_attacks

According to counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, internal political conflicts within the Muslim world are the primary causal factors for the attacks of 9/11. Specifically, bin Laden and other residents of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, among other countries of the Middle East, believe that the vast majority of governments in the Middle East are apostate governments.[53] That is, these governments' collective religiosity does not meet bin Laden's standard of Muslim piety. The primary reason that bin Laden gives for this assertion is that none of these governments is a caliphate. Inspired by the Egyptian theologian and writer Sayyid Qutb, Bin Laden believes that it is his duty as a Muslim to establish a caliphate in the Middle East.[53]

Arising directly from these beliefs, bin Laden designed a strategy of attacking the United States in order to establish this caliphate. Terming the United States as the "Far Enemy," bin Laden designed the attacks of 9/11 to cause the U.S. to increase its military and cultural presence in the Middle East.[54] Bin Laden believes that once Muslim citizens of the Middle East confront the evils of a non-Muslim government, one that is not a caliphate, a popular social and political movement will catalyze around the desire for very conservative and zealous Muslim governments in the Middle East.[55]

According to Michale Doran, this goal is further demonstrated by bin Laden's use of the term "spectacular" as a noun when talking about the attacks of 9/11. For example, "This spectacular will greatly anger America." He hoped these attacks would provoke a visceral emotional response from the government and citizens of the United States. In so doing, he was attempting to ensure that Muslim citizens in the Middle East would react as violently as possible to an increase in U.S. involvement in their region.[56]

[db44]

Richard, do you believe that if they had killed bin Laden (months before that is) that the attacks on 9/11 may have never happened?

I don't know the answer to that, although I bet it would have slowed down any attempt.

However, more telling is the continual claims by Rice et. al. that they did all they could and they did more than Clinton, and that this was a concern before 9/11... Which the Administration has been accused of not doing on numerous occasions.