http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/9/4/03534.shtml
Posner: Clinton’s Negligence Led to 9/11
Dave Eberhart and NewsMax.com Staff
Thursday, Sept. 4, 2003
The Facts are also found on the CIA's website...
Best-selling author Gerald Posner says much of the blame for 9/11 and the U.S. government’s negligence falls squarely on the shoulders of Bill Clinton and his administration.
In a stunning revelation made in his just released “Why America Slept: the Failure to Prevent 9/11” – Posner asserts the disaster of Sept. 11 could have been prevented and that President Clinton passed on more than one opportunity to arrest or kill Osama bin Laden.
Posner describes one incident in 1996 when Clinton passed on an easy opportunity to nab bin Laden.
“When bin Laden leaves the Sudan on a chartered commercial airliner with 150 of his top aides and his family, he goes to Qatar to refuel on his way to Pakistan,” Posner recounted to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly Wednesday night.
Posner continued: “And Qatar, being an ally of the U.S. calls up and says ‘what should we do with this guy?’
“And the word comes back from the top of the [Clinton] administration ‘let him land and proceed on to Pakistan.’”
Posner’s revelations come on top of one previously reported on NewsMax.com - that Clinton himself admitted he turned down an offer by Sudanese authorities to have bin Laden extradited in 1996.
But Posner’s revelations show just how close U.S. authorities came to capturing bin Laden – but was allowed to go free and implement a worldwide terror spree.
“Why America Slept” paints a picture of gross negligence from the Clinton administration.
“We just weren't focused on Islamic militants,” Posner told NBC’s Katie Couric Wednesday, explaining, “You had President Clinton in an eight-year period, there was two years he met with the head of the CIA twice. That was it. He just wasn't attuned to foreign policy or the issue of terrorism.”
Posner told O’Reilly his investigation of Clinton’s handling of bin Laden left him disgusted.
“This is from a fellow who voted twice for Clinton,” a repentant Posner said. “I wouldn’t do it again.”
Posner argues that had the Republicans been in charge in the 90s, he would have demanded the same accountability.
“I was infuriated. My blood kept boiling as I realized that eight of these ten years leading up to 9/11 were under his watch – and the job that was done was just terrible.”
Posner doesn’t buy arguments that bin Laden was not perceived as a great threat in 1996.
He notes that the CIA came to Clinton with significant evidence about bin Laden before 1996. “He didn’t put bin Laden on the wanted list until 1996, and he doesn’t pull the trigger time and time again.”
Posner is angered that instead of honing up to their culpability for 9/11, Clinton and top aides have been engaging in a false, “revisionist history.”
“You have Berger, you have Albright, and you have Clinton saying this was priority one; we wanted bin Laden with everything we had.”
Saudi Role
What was in those infamous 28 pages censored from Washington's official report on 9/11? Gerald Posner makes some startling revelations in “Why America Slept.”
Posner not only weaves a riveting tale of U.S. intelligence blunders that led to 9/11, he also makes the shocking disclosure of a Saudi-Pakistani-Osama terrorism triangle that should cause U.S. leaders to re-assess exactly who our friends are.
Posner, a former Wall Street lawyer and award-winning author of eight books on subjects ranging from Nazi war criminals, to assassinations (he debunked claims of a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination), to the careers of politicians, spent 18 months investigating 9/11 -- uncovering explosive new evidence through interviews and in classified documents.
He reveals in “Why America Slept:"
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had foreknowledge that a terrorist attack was scheduled for September 11, 2001 on U.S. soil.
A startling account of the interrogation of one of bin Laden’s most senior aides, Abu Zubaydah. He is thought to have been in operational control of al-Qaeda's millennium bomb plots, as well as the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000.
Facts about a series of deaths that point to an ongoing effort by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to hide the extent of their earlier relationships with al-Qaida.
Details about a secret deal made between Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden more than a decade ago - keep your militant fundamentalists away from the Kingdom and we will help fund you.
How the U.S. government under Bill Clinton missed several chances to kill or capture bin Laden.
Evidence that German intelligence may have protected an informant who was involved with many of the 9/11 plotters.
How the CIA tracked - and then lost - two of the hijackers when they entered the United States more than twenty months before the attacks.
The devastating consequences of the crippling rivalry between the CIA and FBI as the United States moved unwittingly toward 9/11.
In his dramatic narrative, Posner exposes the frequent mistakes made by law enforcement and government agencies, and demonstrates how the failures to prevent 9/11 were tragically not an exception but typical.
Along the way, by delving into terror financing, the links between far-flung terror organizations, and how the United States responded over the years to other attacks, Posner also makes a damning case that 9/11 could have been prevented.
Special Interrogation
Posner graphically reveals how U.S. interrogators used drugs to make Zubaydah talk.
When the questioning falters, CIA operatives spirit him to an Afghan complex rigged as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, use more drugs and threats to scare him into revealing his secrets.
At one defining point when accused of lying, Zubaydah responds by erupting with the details of a Saudi-Pakistani-Osama triangle of intrigue.
He ticks off telephone numbers of a senior member of the royal family, that of Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd. The Saudi connection was through Prince Turki Al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom’s intelligence chief.
Further, he reveals how bin Laden had personally told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let Laden leave Saudi and provide him with funds to keep al-Qaida away from the kingdom.
The Pakistani contact, Air Force chief Mushaf Ali Mir, enters the conspiracy at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan. Bin Laden cuts a deal with Mir, who was tied closely to Islamists in Pakistan’s ISI to provide protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaida.
In the end, Posner reveals how the conspirators lose their lives -- seriatim.
On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed dies of a heart attack at 43; a day later Prince Turki, 41, is killed in “a high-speed car accident.” The last member, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, mysteriously perishes of thirst while traveling east of Riyadh - just a week after. Finally, seven months later, Mir perishes in a plane crash.
While the details of the terrorism triangle form the explosive heart of Posner's examination of who did what wrong before Sept. 11, most is a lucid analysis of how the CIA, FBI and U.S. leaders missed a decade's worth of clues and opportunities - if heeded, Posner postulates, might have foiled the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Since 9/11, one important question has persisted: What was really going on behind the scenes with intelligence services and government leaders during the time preceding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks?
For sure, the official investigation stops far short of the new revelations offered by Posner.
Hog
