Kerry Flip-Flops, Dumps Berger
My, that was fast. Sandy Berger's fellow Clintonistas and Kerryites today kept insisting there was no reason to dump him from John Kerry's presidential campaign. Yet this afternoon that's exactly what happened.
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Ashcroft: Berger 9/11 Docs Reveal Clinton Security Lapse
A sensitive after-action report on the foiled Millennium bomb plot, portions of which allegedly were pilfered by former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, sounded the alarm that al-Qaida operatives had entered the U.S. and were preparing to strike.
In testimony before the 9/11 Commission in April, Attorney General John Ashcroft detailed the highly classified March 2000 document, saying it contained a set of sweeping recommendations on how to combat the al-Qaida threat that were completely ignored by the Clinton White House.
"The NSC's Millennium After-Action Review declares that the United States barely missed major terrorist attacks in 1999 ? with luck playing a major role," Ashcroft told the Commission.
"Among the many vulnerabilities in homeland defenses identified, the Justice Department's surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized for their glaring weaknesses."
"It is clear from the review," declared Ashcroft, "that actions taken in the Millennium period should not be the operating model for the U.S. government."
The Millennium plot review warned the Clinton administration "of a substantial al-Qaida network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here," the Bush attorney general said.
"Furthermore, fully seventeen months before the September 11 attacks, the review recommends disrupting the al Qaida network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls," he explained.
Ashcroft's comments suggested why a former Clinton national security official might not want the information contained in the Millennium review to ever see the light of day.
"Despite the warnings and the clear vulnerabilities identified by the NSC in 2000," he told the Commission, "no new disruption strategy to attack the al-Qaida network within the United States was deployed. It was ignored in the Department's five-year counterterrorism strategy."