I’ve been busy working on other stuff, and have not had time to address the fact that there is apparently still some confusion over Bill Clinton’s claim that, at the very end of his presidency, he came up with a “comprehensive” plan to destroy al Qaeda. After the October, 2000 attack on the USS Cole, Clinton said in his interview with Fox, “I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full-scale attack search for bin Laden.” Although he didn’t do that, Clinton said, at the end of his administration, “I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy” to the new Bush administration.
Responding to my article, “Did Clinton Really Give Bush a ‘Comprehensive Anti-Terror Strategy?’”, some Clinton defenders have pointed to the 9/11 Commission report as proof that Clinton really had a big, new plan. Not quite. The report says that in the last weeks of Clinton’s presidency, the CIA came up with something called the “Blue Sky” memo. The memo was so named because it was a list of actions that might be taken against al Qaeda if there were, in the 9/11 Commission’s words, “no prior policy or financial restraints” — in other words, under perfect (“Blue Sky”) conditions. The memo was sent to White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke on December 29, 2000, 22 days before the inauguration of George W. Bush. According to the 9/11 Commission report, the Blue Sky memo called for, among other things, a major effort to support the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, assist other anti-Taliban groups, and support Uzbek efforts against terrorism.
Sounds like a plan, right? Maybe not. From the Commission report:
No action was taken on these ideas in the few remaining weeks of the Clinton administration. [National Security Adviser Sandy] Berger did not recall seeing or being briefed on the Blue Sky memo. Nor was the memo discussed during the transition with incoming top Bush administration officials. [CIA Director George] Tenet and his deputy told us they pressed these ideas as options after the new administration took office.
Well, so much for the Blue Sky memo. But wait. The Commission reports that about that time — “as the Clinton administration drew to a close” — Clarke and his staff “developed a policy paper of their own, the first such comprehensive effort since the Delenda plan of 1998.” The paper, according to the Commission, “reviewed the threat and the record to date, incorporated the CIA’s new ideas from the Blue Sky memo, and posed several near-term policy options.” One non-near-term policy proposal that has been much discussed was the goal to “roll back” al Qaeda over the next three to five years. According to the 9/11 Commission, Clarke’s paper re-hashed his old 1998 policy plan, which almost no one in the White House had paid any attention to, and threw in proposals from the Blue Sky memo, which almost no one in the Clinton White House had paid any attention to: “The paper backed covert aid to the Northern Alliance, covert aid to Uzbekistan, and renewed Predator flights in March 2001,” the Commission reported. “A sentence called for military action to destroy al Qaeda command-and-control targets and infrastructure and Taliban military and command assets. The paper also expressed concern about the presence of al Qaeda operatives in the United States.”
A sentence called for military action to destroy al Qaeda command-and-control targets and infrastructure and Taliban military and command assets. That certainly sounds like a comprehensive strategy. And concern about the presence of al Qaeda operatives in the United States? Well, there you go.
In addition, Clarke himself, in his book, Against All Enemies, makes almost no mention of the big plan. On page 224, he explains that in the final months of 2000, “There was going to be one last major national security initiative and it was going to be a final try to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.” No action on terrorism. Clarke was disappointed. Instead of taking action, he writes, “The Principals asked me to update the Pol-Mil Plan for the transition, flagging the issues where there was not consensus, where decisions had not been agreed. I listed aiding the Northern Alliance, eliminating the camps, and flying armed Predators to eliminate the al Qaeda leadership.” (The Pol-Mil Plan was short for the politico-military plan, called Delenda, that Clarke had drawn up to fight al Qaeda in 1998.)
In other words, what Clinton and his supporters called a “comprehensive” plan supposedly handed to the incoming Bush administration was a list of policy options that Clinton administration officials had not been able to agree on. As David Frum wrote a few days ago, “It is very seriously misleading to suggest that the Clinton administration left behind a plan that would have overthrown the Taliban, destroyed al Qaeda, or stopped or even interfered with the 9/11 attacks. And it is fair to note that the steps they did recommend to their successors were steps they had declined to take themselves, not just in 2000, but over the whole period 1998-2000.”
Is that what any fair-minded person would call a new and “comprehensive” plan to destroy al Qaeda?