O'Neill Was Right

As I speculated and continue to believe regarding the pre-nine eleven state of readiness, John O'Neill was right.

So Rice is technically correct. But her "context" for the case omits the bigger picture -- which tends, in fact, to corroborate Clarke's version, and moreover paints Rice and her Team Bush cohorts in a decidedly incompetent light.

The bigger picture includes what happened next: Namely, FBI agents and the Clinton counterterror team, headed by Clarke -- realizing the enormity of what Ressam represented -- sprung quickly into action and soon uncovered most of the rest of his co-conspirators. Ressam, it must be remembered, was scheduled to bomb L.A. International Airport. However, there were at least three other millennium plots, all outside the U.S. but against mostly American targets. (As far as I know, the speculation that the Space Needle was targeted has been mostly discredited.) More to the point, investigators began uncovering a much broader assortment of Al Qaeda terrorist cells operating within the U.S.

This happened largely because of Clarke's "battle station" status for officials in Washington. The Seattle FBI agent investigating the case, Fred Humphries, was quickly brought under the wing of John O'Neill, Clarke's counterterrorism chief (and himself a victim of 9/11, having been forced out by the Bush administration). And O'Neill, as Clarke explained in a PBS interview last year, used Ressam to springboard into a broad swath of terrorist cells -- and because of that, the other components of the Millennium Plot were stymied:

Orcinus demonstrates the patience I lack these hectic days in his review of the Rice testimony vis a vis Clarke's claims. I questioned her placement in the Bush Administration but only in hindsight. She's a cold warrior and her bailiwick is Russia, it is certainly reasonable to question what she does (and why) when the war has turned to terror. Surely she's not contemplating what the Russians are doing in Chechnya.

At any rate, this is a rabbit hole I am likely to pursue with the understanding that as a long time advocate of cloak & dagger activities against terrorists I am likely to land on the hawkish side of affairs. Clarke, with only a cursory review, appears to be more intelligently hawkish on the matter than Rice and his suggestion that there are profound differences in the interpretation of the same facts is quite damning of the wisdom of the current administration - namely Rice if CT is indeed her job.

Rice can't be blamed entirely. She rode in on the coattails of GWBush who was not elected in the context of terror. It would have been McCain. So when and how Rice knew O'Neill is what I want to know next.