The slides said that so far the CIA had "no definitive answer on [the]
crucial question of outside direction of the attack-how and by whom." The
CIA noted that the Yemenis claimed that Khallad helped direct the operation from
Afghanistan or Pakistan, possibly as Bin Ladin's intermediary, but that it had
not seen the Yemeni evidence. However, the CIA knew from both human sources and
signals intelligence that Khallad was tied to al Qaeda. The prepared briefing
concluded that while some reporting about al Qaeda's role might have merit,
those reports offered few specifics. Intelligence gave some ambiguous indicators
of al Qaeda direction of the attack.145
This, President Clinton and Berger told us, was not the conclusion they
needed in order to go to war or deliver an ultimatum to the Taliban threatening
war. The election and change of power was not the issue, President Clinton
added. There was enough time. If the agencies had given him a definitive answer,
he said, he would have sought a UN Security Council ultimatum and given the
Taliban one, two, or three days before taking further action against both al
Qaeda and the Taliban. But he did not think it would be responsible for a
president to launch an invasion of another country just based on a
"preliminary judgment."146
Other advisers have echoed this concern. Some of Secretary Albright's
advisers warned her at the time to be sure the evidence conclusively linked Bin
Ladin to the Cole before considering any response, especially a
military one, because such action might inflame the Islamic world and increase
support for the Taliban. Defense Secretary Cohen told us it would not have been
prudent to risk killing civilians based only on an assumption that al Qaeda was
responsible. General Shelton added that there was an outstanding question as to
who was responsible and what the targets were.147
Clarke recalled that while the Pentagon and the State Department had
reservations about retaliation, the issue never came to a head because the FBI
and the CIA never reached a firm conclusion. He thought they were "holding
back." He said he did not know why, but his impression was that Tenet and
Reno possibly thought the White House "didn't really want to know,"
since the principals' discussions by November suggested that there was not much
White House interest in conducting further military operations against
Afghanistan in the administration's last weeks. He thought that, instead,
President Clinton, Berger, and Secretary Albright were concentrating on a
last-minute push for a peace agreement between the Palestinians and the
Israelis.148
Some of Clarke's fellow counterterrorism officials, such as the State
Department's Sheehan and the FBI's Watson, shared his disappointment that no
military response occurred at the time. Clarke recently recalled that an angry
Sheehan asked rhetorically of Defense officials: "Does al Qaeda have to
attack the Pentagon to get their attention?"149
On the question of evidence, Tenet told us he was surprised to hear that the
White House was awaiting a conclusion from him on responsibility for the Cole
attack before taking action against al Qaeda. He did not recall Berger or anyone
else telling him that they were waiting for the magic words from the CIA and the
FBI. Nor did he remember having any discussions with Berger or the President
about retaliation. Tenet told us he believed that it was up to him to present
the case. Then it was up to the principals to decide if the case was good enough
to justify using force. He believed he laid out what was knowable relatively
early in the investigation, and that this evidence never really changed until
after 9/11.150
A CIA official told us that the CIA's analysts chose the term
"preliminary judgment" because of their notion of how an intelligence
standard of proof differed from a legal standard. Because the attack was the
subject of a criminal investigation, they told us, the term preliminary
was used to avoid locking the government in with statements that might later be
obtained by defense lawyers in a future court case. At the time, Clarke was
aware of the problem of distinguishing between an intelligence case and a law
enforcement case. Asking U.S. law enforcement officials to concur with an
intelligence-based case before their investigation had been concluded
"could give rise to charges that the administration had acted before final
culpability had been determined."151
There was no interagency consideration of just what military action might
have looked like in practice-either the Pentagon's new "phased
campaign" concept or a prolonged air campaign in Afghanistan. Defense
officials, such as Under Secretary Walter Slocombe and Vice Admiral Fry, told us
the military response options were still limited. Bin Ladin continued to be
elusive. They felt, just as they had for the past two years, that hitting
inexpensive and rudimentary training camps with costly missiles would not do
much good and might even help al Qaeda if the strikes failed to kill Bin Ladin.152
In late 2000, the CIA and the NSC staff began thinking about the
counterterrorism policy agenda they would present to the new administration. The
Counterterrorist Center put down its best ideas for the future, assuming it was
free of any prior policy or financial constraints. The paper was therefore
informally referred to as the "Blue Sky" memo; it was sent to Clarke
on December 29.The memo proposed
- A major effort to support the Northern Alliance through intelligence
sharing and increased funding so that it could stave off the Taliban army
and tie down al Qaeda fighters. This effort was not intended to remove the
Taliban from power, a goal that was judged impractical and too expensive for
the CIA alone to attain.
- Increased support to the Uzbeks to strengthen their ability to fight
terrorism and assist the United States in doing so.
- Assistance to anti-Taliban groups and proxies who might be encouraged to
passively resist the Taliban.
