Future National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote an article for the January/February 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs, which summed up future President Bush’s foreign policy. The article “was unusually critical of the Clinton administration for deploying American forces in conflicts like Haiti, and questioned the moral impulse to spread American democracy when what really mattered, […]
Category: quotes
1/15/2000
In January 2000, Ambassador for Counterterrorism Michael Sheehan phoned Taliban foreign minister Wakil Muttawakil and “read him an unambiguous statement from [President Bill] Clinton: ‘We will hold the Taliban leadership responsible for any attacks against US interests by al-Qaeda or any of its affiliated groups.’ Muttawakil, who was privately one of bin Laden’s most bitter […]
1/15/2000
In an article for the January/February 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs, future National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote: ” ‘Saddam Hussein’s regime is isolated, his conventional military power has been severely weakened, his people live in poverty and terror, and he has no useful place in international politics. He is therefore determined to develop WMD. […]
1/15/2000
“In a Foreign Affairs article in [January/February] 2000 that presented the Republican foreign policy manifesto for the upcoming presidential election, [future National Security Advisor] Condoleezza Rice chided the Clinton team for having failed to implement ‘a disciplined and consistent foreign policy that separates the important from the trivial.’ By contrast, Rice promised, a Republican administration […]
1/15/2000
Future National Security Advisor “Condoleezza Rice had set the tone for the [Bush] administration in her [January/February] 2000 Foreign Affairs article, in which she argued, ‘Using the American armed forces as the world’s *911* will degrade capabilities [and] bog soldiers down in peacekeeping roles.’ ” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes […]
1/15/2000
“…the CIA learned that [future 9/11 hijacker Nawaf al-] Hazmi had flown to Los Angeles on January 15, 2000. Had it checked the flight manifest, it would have noticed that [fellow hijacker] Khaled al-Mihdhar was traveling with him. The agency neglected to inform either the FBI or the State Department that at least one well-known […]
1/15/2000
From the list of Operational Opportunities: “January 2000: the CIA does not develop a transnational plan for tracking [Khalid al] Mihdhar and his associates so that they could be followed to Bangkok and onward, including the United States.” [The 15th of the month is used for date sorting purposes only.] – 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 […]
1/12/2000
“On January 12, 2000, the chief of the CIA’s al Qaeda unit briefed his bosses about the Kuala Lumpur [Malaysia] [terrorist summit] meeting. The official, apparently unaware that the meeting had broken up four days earlier, reported erroneously that the surveillance in Kuala Lumpur was continuing. Three days later, unbeknownst to U.S. officials, [future 9/11 […]
1/11/2000
Fearing upcoming attacks, counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke wrote to National Security Advisor Sandy Berger on January 11, 2000, saying: “The CIA, the FBI, Justice and the NSC [National Security Council] staff had come to two main conclusions. First, the U.S. disruption efforts thus far had ‘not put too much of a dent’ in Bin Ladin’s […]
1/8/2000
Following the summit of al Qaeda plotters in Malaysia, future 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, along with African embassy bombing planner Khallad bin Atash, flew to Bangkok, Thailand, on January 8, 2000. All three had been tracked by members of the intelligence agencies. “And yet following the January 8 flight, both the FBI […]