Clinton wags the dog!
ME
terrorist targets in Afghanistan and the Sudan without
involving four
members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and FBI Director
Louis Freeh, The
New Yorker magazine reported.
The magazine also said in its Oct. 12 edition, due on
newsstands Monday,
that Attorney General Janet Reno was ignored when she
questioned
whether evidence linking Islamic extremist Osama bin
Laden to the
terrorist bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa was
strong enough to
justify the retaliatory attacks.
The Aug. 20 Tomahawk missile strikes hit bin Laden's
purported terrorist
training camp in Afghanistan and a chemical plant in
Khartoum, Sudan.
President Clinton said the latter raid was based on
evidence of a nerve
gas component found at the Al Shifa plant.
The New Yorker said the White House consulted Joint
Chiefs Chairman
Hugh Shelton on the raid plans but instructed him not
to brief the three
generals and one admiral who run the nation's armed
forces, nor to
consult with experts in the Defense Intelligence
Agency.
So ''the four men who know more about the use of force
than anyone in
the White House'' were kept out of the planning loop,
learning of the
attack only one day before it was carried out, the
article said.
The four service chiefs were able to force one
significant change in
strategy when informed of the planned attack, calling
off a strike on a
storage facility in Khartoum, the magazine said.
The New Yorker also wrote that there is ''widespread
belief that senior
officials of the White House misrepresented and
overdramatized
evidence suggesting that the Tomahawk raids had
prevented further
terrorist attacks.''
The Pentagon declined to comment on the article. ''I
have nothing for you
on that,'' Marine Maj. Elizabeth Kerstens said Sunday.
David Leavey, spokesman for the National Security
Council, said, ''We
feel confident in the evidence that shows bin Laden
association with Al
Shifa and fully justifies the action the president
ordered on Aug. 20.''
Freeh was excluded, the magazine said, even though his
agency had
actively investigated the events that precipitated the
raids - the Aug. 7
terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi,
Kenya, and Dar es
Saalam, Tanzania, that killed 12 Americans and more
than 250 Africans.
The article said Freeh and many of his top aides
believe the agency was
left out because President Clinton ''questions his
political loyalty.''
Reno, it said, believed that the evidence tying bin
Laden to the embassy
attacks did not meet the ''Tripoli standard,'' a gauge
used to justify the
1986 bombing of Libya in retaliation for actions by
Libyan leader
Moammar Gadhafi.
Chris Watney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said
she could not
comment on ''internal security deliberations.''
The FBI did not immediately return a call seeking
comment.