[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 66 (Tuesday, May 21, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4654-S4655]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               PRESIDENT BUSH'S KNOWLEDGE OF SEPTEMBER 11

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I take a moment to add my voice to those 
who were outraged and offended last week at these idle attempts by some 
Members of Congress to impugn the integrity of our President, George W. 
Bush. Sure, they all now will deny that was their intent because they 
have been home and they have heard from their people, and the people do 
not believe it. They know it is cheap politics.
  Let's not kid ourselves. The statements some of our colleagues made 
on this floor, in the other body, and in the press had one clear 
inference and insinuation: They were suggesting, even charging, that 
President Bush had prior knowledge about what was going to happen on 
September 11, that he could have done something to prevent the 
terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and he did not do 
anything about it.
  While they were making these accusations based on leaks from 
classified intelligence briefings, they were clearly questioning the 
competence, the truthfulness, and the integrity of our President. As 
Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday, these charges made through 
these kinds of statements were outrageous and beyond the pale. Anyone 
who has the slightest understanding of intelligence briefings knows 
that raw scraps of information, of which there are hundreds and 
thousands at any given time, cannot be equated with knowing the details 
of a specific plot.
  I have served on the Senate Intelligence Committee since 1994. We get 
briefings, and the briefings come in sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, 
sometimes monthly, where they have an assessment of accusations, a 
threat assessment, and there is kind of a summary page on top for 
people who do not want to wade through all of that material. In any 
given report, there are sometimes over a thousand threats, and the 
threats having to do with this never made it to the executive summary.
  While these people were making these accusations based on leaks about 
classified intelligence briefings, they were clearly questioning the 
competency of this President.
  I am heartened that the American people have so resoundingly 
repudiated the suggestion that President Bush is somehow culpable for 
what happened on September 11. Let's also be clear that any truly 
thorough investigation of what happened on September 11 must extend 
back into the actions and inactions of the previous administration and 
what it did and did not do in addressing terrorism on its watch.
  Today's editorial in the Washington Times spells out a few things we 
need to remember in order to put September 11 in context. In the 
February 1993 World Trade Center bombing, six people were killed, a 
thousand wounded; Ramsey Youseff, attack mastermind, connected to Iraq 
intelligence. In October 1993, during the Somalia firefight, we 
remember so well the 18 American Rangers who were killed in Mogadishu, 
their naked bodies dragged through the streets. Militia were trained at 
that time by the al-Qaida. We know that today.
  June 1996, Khobar Towers bombing: 19 U.S. soldiers killed in Saudi 
Arabia, al-Qaida terrorists among those involved. August of 1998, two 
U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa: 224 people were killed. Al-Qaida 
terrorists were involved again. Then-President Clinton launched 75 
cruise missiles at an empty Afghan camp and a Sudanese pharmaceutical 
factory.
  October 2000, the U.S.S. Cole bombing: 17 U.S. sailors were killed. 
Again, al-Qaida was involved. All evidence points to the fact that they 
were involved.
  In each case, the Clinton administration sought to avoid taking firm 
steps against Osama bin Laden and other terrorist groups that have 
targeted U.S. interests, U.S. soldiers, and U.S. citizens. Certainly, 
any investigation of failures in the war on terrorism will take these 
issues into careful consideration.
  As the Washington Times editorial says today:

       Given the abysmal performance of the Clinton administration 
     in combating terrorism during the 1990s, it would be a huge 
     mistake for Democrats to attempt to gain political mileage by 
     blaming September 11 on President Bush.

  I ask unanimous consent that the entire editorial be printed in the 
Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See Exhibit No. 1.)
  Mr. INHOFE. A few of the quotes that came from Senators, and I am

[[Page S4655]]

only going to quote four Members of Congress, one House Member and 
three Senators. Although I could quote about 10 of them, I think my 
point is made by these four. One Senator said:

       I am gravely concerned about the information provided us 
     just yesterday that the President received a warning in 
     August about the threat of hijackers by Osama bin Laden and 
     his organization. It clearly raises some very important 
     questions that have to be asked and have to be answered.

  Another Senator said:

       We have learned something today that raises a number of 
     serious questions. We have learned that President Bush had 
     been informed last year before September 11 of a possible 
     plot by those associated with Osama bin Laden to hijack a 
     U.S. airline.

  Another Senator:

       I don't know, again, what he knew and what the White House 
     knew and when they knew it and what they did about it . . .
       . . . but if prior information had been warnings were there 
     . . .

  Another Member on the floor said:

       Yet we have had the gnawing question: was there something 
     that could have been done to prevent the attacks on September 
     11?

  I am very proud of the Senator occupying the chair now because he 
refrained from trying to engage in this type of political activity.
  What do all four Members who made these statements on the floor of 
the House and Senate have in common? They are all four running for 
President of the United States. It is unconscionable that anyone would 
imply our God-fearing President, George W. Bush, might have known 
something about this and not done everything he could to prevent it. 
This is simply politics at its worst.

                               Exhibit 1

                        Demagoguing September 11

       Just a few days ago, Democrats on Capitol Hill seemed quite 
     eager to make political hay out of news reports suggesting 
     that President Bush might have known in advance about the 
     September 11 attacks. Prominent Democrats like Sens. Tom 
     Daschle, Hillary Rodham Clinton and House Minority Leader 
     Dick Gephardt have loudly demanded investigations into what 
     the administration knew about the possibility that terrorists 
     were preparing to attack the United States.
       By Sunday, however, some of the harshest Democratic critics 
     were clearly having second thoughts about such a brazen 
     attempt to use September 11 to score political points against 
     Mr. Bush. ``I never, ever thought that anybody, including the 
     president, did anything up to September 11 other than their 
     best,'' Mr. Gephardt said. This is a politically prudent move 
     on Mr. Gephardt's part. Given the abysmal performance of the 
     Clinton administration in combatting terrorism during the 
     1990s, it would be a huge mistake for Democrats to attempt to 
     gain political mileage by blaming September 11 on President 
     Bush.
       Time and time again, the Clinton White House tried to avoid 
     taking firm steps against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and 
     other terrorist groups that have targeted the United States. 
     As David Horowitz noted on The Washington Times' op-ed page 
     yesterday, the Clinton administration did nothing in response 
     to al Qaeda's February 1993 bombing of the World Trade 
     Center, in which six persons were killed and nearly 1,000 
     wounded. Moreover, President Clinton and his aides sought to 
     play down the fact that the mastermind of the attack was 
     Ramzi Youssef, an Iraqi intelligence agent. Journalist Andrew 
     Sullivan quotes Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos as saying 
     that the Clinton administration ignored the implications of 
     the WTC attack because ``it wasn't a successful bombing.''
       Nine months later in Somalia, Mohammed Farah Aideed's 
     militiamen, who were trained by al Qaeda, killed 18 American 
     soldiers and dragged their bodies through the streets of 
     Mogadishu. Mr. Clinton's response was to end the U.S.-led 
     humanitarian mission in Somalia and send veteran diplomat 
     Robert Oakley to negotiate surrender terms. In June 1996, 19 
     American servicemen were killed when al Qaeda joined forces 
     with the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah to bomb the 
     Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis 
     refused to cooperate with FBI agents sent to investigate the 
     matter, so Washington just forgot about it. Mr. Sullivan 
     notes that in October, a former Clinton administration 
     official told The Washington Post that, had Mr. Clinton made 
     a serious effort to rein in al Qaeda then, ``We probably 
     would have never seen a September 11.''
       In 1998, as Mr. Clinton was preparing to inform the nation 
     of his affair with Monica Lewinsky, al Qaeda killed 224 
     persons in bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. 
     So Mr. Clinton responded by firing 75 missiles at suspected 
     bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan (bin Laden escaped 
     unharmed) and to mistakenly destroy a ``nerve gas factory'' 
     in Khartoum which was actually making pharmaceutical 
     products. Two years later, the United States did nothing of 
     consequence in response to the bombing of the USS Cole in 
     Yemen, in which 17 Americans died. ``Clearly, not enough was 
     done'' to combat terrorism during the Clinton years, former 
     Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick acknowledged shortly 
     after the September 11 attacks. Mrs. Gorelick added that even 
     though President Clinton doubled the size of the FBI's 
     counterterrorism budget, the bureau was so slow to hire 
     agents that the money was never used.
       As for Mrs. Clinton, investigative journalist Steven 
     Emerson notes that she and her husband ``repeatedly wined and 
     dined at the White House'' members of the American Muslim 
     Council (AMC), including Abdulrahman Alamoudi, an apologist 
     for Hamas, which has repeatedly denied it is a terrorist 
     group. The AMC, Mr. Emerson adds, provided talking points for 
     Mrs. Clinton's syndicated newspaper column and speeches and 
     was even permitted to organize a reception for itself at the 
     White House. In short, the Democrats are in no position to 
     smear Mr. Bush on September 11 or terrorist in general.

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