#55 | Posted by goatman
Clinton took over 60 shots. Bush 0 until after 9/11.
"The White House would have acted, but ``we depended upon what the CIA director brought to us," Berger said. ``There was never an occasion after August [1998] where [CIA director George] Tenet came to us and said, `We have a good shot.' If there was, we would have taken it. We were not afraid to shoot at this guy."
The administrations' actions suggested that Clinton was far more concerned than Bush about the threat bin Laden and Al Qaeda posed before Sept. 11.
Gary Hart , a Democrat and former senator from Colorado who co-chaired a government commission that studied threats to national security in the late 1990s, told the Globe that his commission concluded terrorism was a grave threat to national security ``because of testimony we received from the Clinton administration."
``The principal force in convincing us came from the White House itself," Hart said. ``They were trying to deal with Al Qaeda and bin Laden in Afghanistan and elsewhere."
But the incoming Bush administration made it clear that bin Laden was not a priority, Hart said. By ignoring the warnings -- and shunning assessments from experienced analysts such as Clarke -- it was partially Bush's own fault that he didn't have as many chances as Clinton to get bin Laden before Sept. 11, Hart said.
``That is not going to stimulate a lot of CIA proposals to get bin Laden if the people at the White House don't seem to care about it," Hart said.
Others in the Clinton White House said there was widespread frustration about the inability to locate bin Laden after the 1998 missile strikes failed.
``We kept ships offshore, we had the cruise missiles," said Daniel Benjamin , a member of Clinton's National Security Council and author of ``The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Blueprint for Getting it Right."
``Three times we were on the verge of firing," he said, ``but we did not have the corroborating intelligence. At least twice, Clinton went to the Joint [Chiefs of Staff] and said, `Give me options.' "
Benjamin also noted that Clinton launched a program to arm spy drones in Afghanistan during his last year in office, but the ``Bush administration didn't get it up until after 9/11."
In comparing Clinton's record with that of Bush, Benjamin concluded: ``The difference is between a group that was pushing hard to find the opportunities to get bin Laden or improve their chances, and a team that was talking about a whole new approach but was not pushing very hard."
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