WASHINGTON – Bureaucratic confusion and the “moral” objections of top CIA officials to assassinations gummed up efforts to kill 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, investigators revealed yesterday.
Because of the confusion, CIA Director George Tenet said at the 9/11 Commission hearing yesterday that he thought he needed explicit permission to kill bin Laden, even though President Clinton thought he’d already given Tenet an OK to assassinate the Saudi terrorist.
Yet Clinton never asked Tenet why he wasn’t being more aggressive and Tenet, for his part, seemed content to watch bin Laden gain power and confidence while never launching any serious efforts to take him out.
“We always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him,” said one unnamed CIA specialist who led efforts to track bin Laden, according to a report released by the 9/11 panel.
But CIA agents around the world were told by Tenet that they should wait until they had a feasible shot at “capturing” bin Laden – a highly improbable mission.
After the hearing, commission chairman Tom Kean said Tenet was “gun shy” in going after Osama but he suggested that was understandable.
Commission deputy executive director Chris Kojm revealed at the nationally televised hearings that two unnamed top CIA officials were morally opposed to killing bin Laden.
“To further cloud the picture, two senior CIA officers told us that they would have been morally and practically opposed to getting the CIA into what might have looked like an assassination,” Kojm said.
On the question of killing bin Laden, Clinton’s National Security Adviser Sandy Berger testified yesterday that the CIA had a green light to kill bin Laden.
Clinton gave the CIA “every inch of authorization that it asked for,” said Berger.
“If there was any confusion down the ranks, it was never communicated to me nor to the president, and if any additional authority had been requested I am convinced it would have been given immediately,” said Berger, who noted that Clinton had the Pentagon launch missile strikes at bin Laden in 1998.
Under questioning, Tenet defended his passivity by claiming that his agency simply lacked the technology and the knowledge to launch a successful strike against bin Laden.
With no CIA agents in Afghanistan, the agency depended on paid proxies, he said.
An unidentified former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden section told the committee that officers “always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him,” the written report said.
Additionally, the commission said that when the leader of one of the Afghan groups was given his instructions, he “laughed and said, ‘You Americans are crazy. You guys never change.’ “
The commission’s written report said the CIA’s reliance on local Afghan forces reduced the chances for success.
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Richard Clarke
Counterterrorism and intelligence adviser to presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
“The Bush administration saw terrorism policy as important, but not urgent, prior to 9/11.”
* Before 9/11, convening a Cabinet-level anti-terrorism meeting was difficult under Bush.
* In a letter dated a week before Sept. 11, 2001, Clarke blasted the Pentagon and CIA for failing to act against al Qaeda.
* Administration officials sent the national security bureaucracy “unfortunate signals” about its attitude toward al Qaeda.
* Clarke, who said he voted Republican in 2000, denied a partisan motive in his criticism of Bush, and said he would not work for John Kerry if he is elected president.
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George Tenet
Director of Central Intelligence Agency, July 1997-present
“It’s coming. They are still going to try and do it [another terror attack] . . . Men and women here who have lost their families have to know that we’ve got to do a hell of a lot better.”
* Asked by a panel member if he was dissatisfied with the pace of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism planning after it took office in 2001, Tenet answered no.
* White House officials grasped the sense of urgency he passed on to them about the terrorism threat.
* The CIA might have been able to prevent Sept. 11 if it had integrated all its data on al Qaeda.
* It was unclear whether Osama bin Laden was at an Afghanistan hunting lodge with princes from the United Arab Emirates in 1999 – which some critics say was a lost opportunity to kill him.