When President Clinton took office, he decided right away to
coordinate counterterrorism from the White House. On January 25, 1993, Mir Amal
Kansi, an Islamic extremist from Pakistan, shot and killed two CIA employees at
the main highway entrance to CIA headquarters in Virginia. (Kansi drove away and
was captured abroad much later.) Only a month afterward came the World Trade
Center bombing and, a few weeks after that, the Iraqi plot against former
President Bush.
President Clinton's first national security advisor, Anthony Lake, had
retained from the Bush administration the staffer who dealt with crime,
narcotics, and terrorism (a portfolio often known as "drugs and
thugs"), the veteran civil servant Richard Clarke. President Clinton and
Lake turned to Clarke to do the staff work for them in coordinating
counterterrorism. Before long, he would chair a midlevel interagency committee
eventually titled the Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG).We will later tell
of Clarke's evolution as adviser on and, in time, manager of the U.S.
counterterrorist effort.
When explaining the missile strike against Iraq provoked by the plot to kill
President Bush, President Clinton stated: "From the first days of our
Revolution, America's security has depended on the clarity of the message: Don't
tread on us. A firm and commensurate response was essential to protect our
sovereignty, to send a message to those who engage in state-sponsored terrorism,
to deter further violence against our people, and to affirm the expectation of
civilized behavior among nations."99
In his State of the Union message in January 1995, President Clinton promised
"comprehensive legislation to strengthen our hand in combating terrorists,
whether they strike at home or abroad." In February, he sent Congress
proposals to extend federal criminal jurisdiction, to make it easier to deport
terrorists, and to act against terrorist fund-raising. In early May, he
submitted a bundle of strong amendments. The interval had seen the news from
Tokyo in March that a doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo, had released sarin nerve gas
in a subway, killing 12 and injuring thousands. The sect had extensive
properties and laboratories in Japan and offices worldwide, including one in New
York. Neither the FBI nor the CIA had ever heard of it. In April had come the
bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City; immediate suspicions
that it had been the work of Islamists turned out to be wrong, and the bombers
proved to be American antigovernment extremists named Timothy McVeigh and Terry
Nichols. President Clinton proposed to amend his earlier proposals by increasing
wiretap and electronic surveillance authority for the FBI, requiring that
explosives carry traceable taggants, and providing substantial new money not
only for the FBI and CIA but also for local police.100
President Clinton issued a classified directive in June 1995, Presidential
Decision Directive 39, which said that the United States should "deter,
defeat and respond vigorously to all terrorist attacks on our territory and
against our citizens." The directive called terrorism both a matter of
national security and a crime, and it assigned responsibilities to various
agencies. Alarmed by the incident in Tokyo, President Clinton made it the very
highest priority for his own staff and for all agencies to prepare to detect and
respond to terrorism that involved chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.101
During 1995 and 1996, President Clinton devoted considerable time to seeking
cooperation from other nations in denying sanctuary to terrorists. He proposed
significantly larger budgets for the FBI, with much of the increase designated
for counterterrorism. For the CIA, he essentially stopped cutting allocations
and supported requests for supplemental funds for counterterrorism.102
When announcing his new national security team after being reelected in 1996,
President Clinton mentioned terrorism first in a list of several challenges
facing the country.103 In 1998, after Bin Ladin's fatwa and other
alarms, President Clinton accepted a proposal from his national security
advisor, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, and gave Clarke a new position as
national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and
counterterrorism. He issued two Presidential Decision Directives, numbers 62 and
63, that built on the assignments to agencies that had been made in Presidential
Decision Directive 39; laid out ten program areas for counterterrorism; and
enhanced, at least on paper, Clarke's authority to police these assignments.
Because of concerns especially on the part of Attorney General Reno, this new
authority was defined in precise and limiting language. Clarke was only to
"provide advice" regarding budgets and to "coordinate the
development of interagency agreed guidelines" for action.104
Clarke also was awarded a seat on the cabinet-level Principals Committee when
it met on his issues-a highly unusual step for a White House staffer. His
interagency body, the CSG, ordinarily reported to the Deputies Committee of
subcabinet officials, unless Berger asked them to report directly to the
principals. The complementary directive, number 63, defined the elements of the
nation's critical infrastructure and considered ways to protect it. Taken
together, the two directives basically left the Justice Department and the FBI
in charge at home and left terrorism abroad to the CIA, the State Department,
and other agencies, under Clarke's and Berger's coordinating hands.
Explaining the new arrangement and his concerns in another commencement
speech, this time at the Naval Academy, in May 1998, the President said:
First, we will use our new integrated approach to intensify the fight against
all forms of terrorism: to capture terrorists, no matter where they hide; to
work with other nations to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries overseas; to respond
rapidly and effectively to protect Americans from terrorism at home and abroad.
Second, we will launch a comprehensive plan to detect, deter, and defend against
attacks on our critical infrastructures, our power systems, water supplies,
police, fire, and medical services, air traffic control, financial services,
telephone systems, and computer networks.. . . Third, we will undertake a
concerted effort to prevent the spread and use of biological weapons and to
protect our people in the event these terrible weapons are ever unleashed by a
rogue state, a terrorist group, or an international criminal organization.. . .
Finally, we must do more to protect our civilian population from biological
weapons.105
Clearly, the President's concern about terrorism had steadily risen. That
heightened worry would become even more obvious early in 1999, when he addressed
the National Academy of Sciences and presented his most somber account yet of
what could happen if the United States were hit, unprepared, by terrorists
wielding either weapons of mass destruction or potent cyberweapons.
Back to 911 Report CONTENTS
