“On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council\u2019s counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: \u201cIn the margin next to Clarke\u2019s suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, \u2018no.\u2019 \u201d In August of 2000, Mr. Berger was presented with another possible plan for attacking Mr. bin Laden.This time, the plan would be based on aerial surveillance from a \u201cPredator\u201d drone. Reports the commission: \u201cIn the memo\u2019s margin,Berger wrote that before considering action, \u2018I will want more than verified location: we will need, at least, data on pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place.\u2019 \u201d In other words, according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times \u2014 Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action. Had he been a little less reluctant to act, a little more open to taking pre-emptive action, maybe the 2,973 killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be alive\\ today. “<\/a><\/p>\nA career ruined to stupidly cover up a lapse in judgement on the importance of terrorism widely shared by the entire bipartisan foreign policy establishment stretching back to the 1970’s. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERGER UPDATE Blowing My Own Horn Department: Yesterday I wrote about Sandy berger’s pilfering in the National Archives…. “Probably Richard Clark had a strong ” get bin Laden ” recommendation in his after-action report that Bill Clinton personally nixed or something of that nature.” Today, according to an editorial in the New York Sun, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}