Clinton Report Fails to Mention Al Qaeda - RushOnline.com

Clinton's Final National Security Report Fails to Mention Al Qaeda

By Michael Illions, April 7, 2004 (Talon News)

Former President Bill Clinton's last policy paper on national security that was submitted to Congress in December of 2000, fails to mention al Qaeda at any time in the entire report.

The report, 45,000 words in length, entitled "A National Security Strategy for a Global Age", was the final official assessment of national security policy and strategy by the Clinton administration.

The report does mention that the Clinton administration's response to terrorist strikes was to "neither forget the crime, nor ever give up on bringing the perpetrators to justice" and highlights the "dozen terrorist fugitives," including the men responsible for the first attack on the World Trade Center, who had been captured overseas and handed over to the United States "to answer for their crimes."

President Bush has often been critical of the Clinton administration for categorizing terrorist attacks at home and abroad as a law enforcement issue. This report appears to contradict testimony by former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, in which he claimed that the Clinton administration considered al Qaeda an "urgent threat."

But this final national security document, which fails to mention al Qaeda, was written while Mr. Clarke was a high-level national security advisor with the Clinton administration.

"Clarke was on the job as terrorism czar at that point," a senior Bush administration official told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. "He played a significant role. His concerns should have been well-known."

A senior Bush administration official called the scant references to Osama bin Laden and the lack of references to al Qaeda interesting, but was quick to downplay "word-counting games."

"We don't measure progress or response [to terrorism] by how many speeches, words, utterances or meetings were held on a particular issue, but by action taken," he said.

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