INTEL WARNINGS SURROUNDED U.S.S. COLE BOMBING

From President Clinton last month, recalling some information from a previous Cole bombing post:

"I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole," Clinton tells New York magazine this week. "Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early."

From Able Danger today:

Members of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit known as Able Danger warned top military generals that it had uncovered information of increased al Qaeda "activity" in Aden harbor less than three weeks before the attack on the USS Cole, The Post has learned.

In the latest explosive revelation in the Able Danger saga, two former members of the data-mining team are expected to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee next week that they uncovered alarming terrorist activity and associations in Aden weeks before the Oct. 12, 2000, suicide bombing of the U.S. warship that killed 17 sailors.

This info from 2000 on what the DIA knew may be related to Able Danger:

Pentagon officials have identified the Defense Intelligence Agency counterterrorism analyst who quit in protest a day after the bombing of the USS Cole. Kie Fallis is charging that a report he wrote on the threat of a terrorist attack in Yemen was suppressed by senior DIA officials.

And then from the NSA in the same article:

The top-secret National Security Agency report was issued about six hours after the attack. It said that terrorists were engaged in "operational planning'' for an attack and had traveled to Dubai and Beirut in preparation.

And finally from the FBI, possibly referring to that NSA report:

By the time we realized what was happening, 6:30-7:00 in the morning, that it was another terrorist attack, that it very well could be something perpetrated by the bin Laden group, John [O'Neill] immediately seized on the opportunity to say, "New York should have the team going." ...

It wasn't until later in the afternoon when O'Neill was able to convince FBI headquarters that, yes, there was intelligence out there prior to the event from bin Laden's organization that, yes, they were going to attack a U.S. ship in such a manner. They finally relented and said, "OK, if it's a bin Laden event, it should be New York.

So it looks like President Clinton was well aware that Al Qaeda was behind the USS Cole bombing from the very first hours. He should have at the very least least told his Ambassador in Yemen, Barbara Bodine, to step back and not obstruct complete FBI access. Despite the investigation issues, there was this recommendation later from his top terrorism experts, including Richard C. Clarke:

Some also say that due to the Lewinsky scandal, more action perhaps was never undertaken. In your eyes?

The interagency group on which I sat and John O'Neill sat -- we never asked for a particular action to be authorized and were refused. We were never refused. Any time we took a proposal to higher authority, with one or two exceptions, it was approved....

But didn't you push for military action after the Cole?

Yes, that's one of the exceptions.

How important is that exception?

I believe that, had we destroyed the terrorist camps in Afghanistan earlier, that the conveyor belt that was producing terrorists sending them out around the world would have been destroyed. So many, many trained and indoctrinated Al Qaeda terrorists, which now we have to hunt down country by country, many of them would not be trained and would not be indoctrinated, because there wouldn't have been a safe place to do it if we had destroyed the camps earlier.

Just as with the offer from Sudan to hand over bin Laden to U.S. custody before he went to Afghanistan (which the State Dept warned was a mistake), one man in the United States government stood in the way as a virtual defense lawyer, protecting al Qaeda's "civil rights" and demanding all but a confession from bin Laden before he would act in a military capacity.

Let me be the first to suggest that President Clinton's legacy and leadership as Commander in Chief over the U.S. military should be seen in the exact same light as Gov. Kathleen Blanco's command over the Louisiana National Guard. He protected and defended the U.S. from threats as well as she protected and defended New Orleans.

UPDATE: So what is Mr Clinton up to now?

Clinton Summit: Don't Shun Terror Groups

Antendees at the Clinton Global Initiative were told on Friday that terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas should be "engaged" by the world's peace loving nations - even if their members persist in trying to destroy Israel and America.

Newsday reports that during a session on religious-political relations, Alastair Crooke, director of the British-based Conflicts Forum, said:

"Governments should engage groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, who, despite their use of violence, were willing to participate in the political process and had strong credibility with many people in the Middle East."

By ignoring such groups, Crooke warned, governments risk inadvertently creating and promoting far more radical organizations.

For his part, ex-President Clinton suggested that the best way to prevent terrorists from discouraging economic growth in the Middle East was to offer businesses looking to invest there terrorism insurance.
"I think we ought to consider maybe setting up some sort of an insurance program against terror because I think there’s maybe too much fear of it," he told the group.

"So I would just like to ask that you consider setting up some sort of insurance structure where, for a modest fee, an entrepreneur could participate in pooled insurance so that if something happened because of a terrorist act they could be made whole. Then I think we’d have a lot more success in getting venture capital in there."

Figuring out more creative ways to "hustle up" venture capital for terrorists havens like Gaza? Priceless.

MORE: Updates on the new Able Danger developments and the Curt Weldon press conference.