Did Clinton Really Give Bush a "Comprehensive Anti-Terror Strategy?"

The former president says he did. The record says he didn’t.

By Byron York
http://www.nationalreview.com/
September 26, 2006

“The country never had a comprehensive anti-terror operation until I came to office,” former president Bill Clinton told Fox News on Sunday. “I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy.”

“We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda,” says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a new interview with the New York Post. “The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn’t [fight al Qaeda] is just flatly false.”

Well, which is it? The argument over whether, in January 2001, the Clinton administration left the incoming Bush administration a blueprint to destroy Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda has been going on for years now.

Long before the Clinton Fox interview, it came to a boil in the late summer of 2002, on the eve of the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, when Time magazine published a 10,400-word story, “They Had A Plan,” blaming the Bush administration for not following the Clinton newly developed administration’s strategy.

The Clinton plan, Time reported, was drawn up after the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole. In the wake of that bombing, Time said, White House anti-terror chief Richard Clarke put together “an aggressive plan to take the fight to al-Qaeda.” Clarke reportedly wanted to break up al Qaeda cells, cut off their funding, destroy their sanctuaries, and give major support to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. In addition, Time reported, “the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan.” It was, in the words of a senior Bush administration official quoted by Time, “everything we’ve done since 9/11.”

Time said Clarke presented the “strategy paper” to national-security adviser Sandy Berger on December 20, 2000, but Berger decided not to act on it. “We would be handing [the Bush administration] a war when they took office,” Time quoted an unnamed former Clinton aide saying. “That wasn’t going to happen.” Instead, Berger — who is portrayed as a tough-talking hardliner on terrorism — urged Rice, the incoming national-security adviser, to take action. But the new administration didn’t follow that good advice. The Clinton proposals, Time reported, “became a victim of the transition process, turf wars and time spent on the pet policies of new top officials.”

The Time account was explosive. Or at least it seemed to be explosive — until we heard more of the story.

After the article appeared, National Review talked to Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss, who was then a member of the House, chairing the Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security. Chambliss was perplexed. “I’ve had Dick Clarke testify before our committee several times, and we’ve invited Samuel Berger several times,” Chambliss told NR, “and this is the first I’ve ever heard of that plan.” If it was such a big deal, Chambliss wondered, why didn’t anyone mention it?

Sources at the White House were just as baffled. At the time, they were carefully avoiding picking public fights with the previous administration over the terrorism issue. But privately, they told NR that the Time report was way off base. “There was no new plan to topple al Qaeda,” one source said flatly. “No new plan.” When asked if there was, perhaps, an old plan to topple al Qaeda, which might have been confused in the Time story, the source said simply, “No.”

Finally, Richard Clarke himself debunked the story in a background briefing with reporters. He said he presented two things to the incoming Bush administration: “One, what the existing strategy had been. And two, a series of issues — like aiding the Northern Alliance, changing Pakistan policy, changing Uzbek policy — that they had been unable to come to any new conclusions from ‘98 on.”

A reporter asked: “Were all of those issues part of an alleged plan that was late December and the Clinton team decided not to pursue because it was too close to — ”

“There was never a plan, Andrea,” Clarke answered. “What there was was these two things: One, a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat. And two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years, and which were still on the table.”

“So there was nothing that developed, no documents or no new plan of any sort?

“There was no new plan.”

“No new strategy? I mean, I mean, I don’t want to get into a semantics — "

“Plan, strategy — there was no, nothing new.”

“Had those issues evolved at all from October of ‘98 until December of 2000?”

“Had they evolved? Not appreciably.”

Amid all the controversy, some former Clinton-administration officials began to pull back on their story. One of them — who asked not to be named — told NR that Time didn’t have it quite right. “There were certainly ongoing efforts throughout the eight years of the Clinton administration to fight terrorism,” the official said. “It was certainly not a formal war plan. We wouldn’t have characterized it as a formal war plan. The Bush administration was briefed on the Clinton administration’s ongoing efforts and threat assessments.” That, of course, was pretty much what the Bush White House said had had happened all along.

But now, the story is back in the news. “At least I tried [to destroy al Qaeda],” Clinton told Fox. “That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try and they didn’t…I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy…” Perhaps the former president hoped to put an end to the questions about his record on terrorism. Instead, he just brought the issue back to public scrutiny.

— Byron York, NR’s White House correspondent, is the author of the book The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President — and Why They’ll Try Even Harder Next Time.