U.S. Pulled Plug On 2005 Al Qaeda Chiefs Raid And Irked Intelligence Specialists

Once again it seems a perception about the Bush administration is proven “inoperative” by new facts.

The mantra has been that the Clinton folks blew it on terrorism. And the legend, recorded for posterity on an ABC special, was that a top Clinton aide pulled the plug on an operation to catch the bad guys.

Now it turns out there reportedly was such an event — but the plug was pulled by the Bush administration.

Remember the monster controversy over ABC’s “The Path To 911″ which set off a firestorm of protest from Clinton administration members and many other Americans because it took historical license with the facts?

Remember the biggest fuss?

It was over a scene that showed former Clinton National Security advisor Sandy Berger as refusing to authorize a 1998 raid designed to capture bin Laden, events that were contradicted by the 9/11 Commission. It also suggested that President Bill Clinton was too occupied with a certain intern working on his staff to take care of the terrorism biz properly.

The problem: those were unsubstantiated allegations and branded as outright falsehoods by the people involved. ABC wound up calling it a docudrama and Scholastic Publications distanced itself (and school kids) from the widely denounced film. In the end, the people hailing it were mostly people named Rush, Sean and many other people who regularly talk and write a lot defending people with a party affiliation containing a “R” in it.

But, now, a new report in the New York Times now lays out in more than a dramatist’s speculation that a major operation against Al Qaeda was scrapped — by the Bush Administration.

That’s the administration that was portrayed in “The Path To 911″ as being comprised of people who REALLY a) understood the terrorist threat b) dealt with the terrorist threat and c) had the cojones to follow through with dealing with the terrorist threat.

It now turns out that, in reality, Sandy Berger should have been played in the film by Donald Rumsfeld:

A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

Will Rush, Sean and the others be taking Donald R. to task? Or will it be “But under Clinton…” on Monday?

We’ve noted on this site often, if you read the history of how American administrations responded to terrorist threats before 9/11, it is clear there was a bipartisan failure to connect the dots.

But this report suggests something equally troubling:

AFTER 9/11 the immediate terrorist threat was not being competently managed by a White House that has repeatedly cited 9/11 and tried to link it to the war in Iraq. It has talked 9/11 but, if this report is correct, failed to follow through on an operation DIRECTLY related to the people behind 9/11. MORE:

Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.

The decision to halt the planned “snatch and grab” operation frustrated some top intelligence officials and members of the military’s secret Special Operations units, who say the United States missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda.

Will this be spun as these intelligence officials being a) inventions of the New York Times writer (after working in the news media I and numerous others can assure readers: the vast majority of reporters and editors do not make up sources and quotes or they would have been fired a long time ago), b) RINOS, c) Democrats, d) disgruntled employees?

Or, is it indicative of the fact that — as in the case of Iraq where many military officials over the past few months (who have suddenly gone into retirement) have come out against the war — civilian leadership is overruling the experts who have the judgment to help formulate competent policies? AND:

Their frustration has only grown over the past two years, they said, as Al Qaeda has improved its abilities to plan global attacks and build new training compounds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which have become virtual havens for the terrorist network.

In recent months, the White House has become increasingly irritated with Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for his inaction on the growing threat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

About a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials were interviewed for this article, all of whom requested anonymity because the planned 2005 mission remained classified.

Spokesmen for the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and the White House declined to comment. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed about the planned operation.

The officials acknowledge that they are not certain that Mr. Zawahri attended the 2005 meeting in North Waziristan, a mountainous province just miles from the Afghan border. But they said that the United States had communications intercepts that tipped them off to the meeting, and that intelligence officials had unusually high confidence that Mr. Zawahri was there.

There’s much more. But, essentially, Pakistan is an absolutely crucial U.S. ally of the U.S. in South Asia and in the global war on terror. General Musharraf’s always-beset government is caught in a kind of geopolitical pincer, caught between the needs and demands of the U.S. on one side and its dissidents and its large Islamic population on the other. The betting was that Musharraf would never have approved the action so the U.S. would have to act unilaterally, the Times reports.

Some outside experts said American counterterrorism operations had been hamstrung because of concerns about General Musharraf’s shaky government.

“The reluctance to take risk or jeopardize our political relationship with Musharraf may well account for the fact that five and half years after 9/11 we are still trying to run bin Laden and Zawahri to ground,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.

Those political considerations have created resentment among some members of the military’s Special Operations forces.

But the bottom line is this:

(1) The Bush administration and its supporters threw away a chance to foster national unity over terrorism policy by the “But under Clinton…” mantra and (continued) suggestions that the Democrats are soft on terrorism. The ABC special took it a notch higher by presenting a scene that reportedly had little basis in reality but is a script writer’s speculation actually naming a Clinton official doing something that he and others said he never did.

(2) It turns out a plug WAS pulled on a potentially crucial operation, frustrating the people who are intelligence experts….pulled by a high administration official — but of the Bush administration.

(3) The way American politics operates, this Mission Aborted will be defended, or the report will become the focus of discrediting attempts. Democrats will also jump all over it, implying that the Clinton administration didn’t stub its toe on the terrorist threat.

In reality, administrations of both parties failed to connect the dots before 911.

The Bush administration had one eye on the dots — but another eye in Iraq.

And, in the end, the bad guys got to take a hike.

On the Bush administration’s watch.

UPDATE: State of the Day sees it the same way.