[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 86 (Monday, June 21, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H4638-H4644]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        9/11 REPRESENTED A DRAMATIC FAILURE OF POLICY AND PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gerlach). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, the American people need to know that 
the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York and Washington D.C. was not 
predestined nor was it unavoidable. Unfortunately, the commission 
investigating 9/11 seems uncomfortable with fixing responsibility, 
branding such attempts at accountability as the blame game or pointing 
fingers, or so some of them said, early on in their hearings.
  So instead of looking for policies that were dead wrong or people who 
were incompetent, we have heard about all glitches in the system, about 
a lack of communication, a lack of a shared database. So expect 
recommendations from this commission and this task force to be 
consistent with this thinking. Changes will be suggested in flow 
charts, organizational restructuring, and, of course, you can expect 
them to recommend the creation of a new central authority and 
intelligence czar.
  Sorry. 9/11 represented a dramatic failure of policy and people. A 
number of insane policies led to the creation of the hostile radical 
Islamic movement we face today. Policies that enabled weird, 
feudalistic religious zealots to become a major threat to the Western 
world, and especially to the people of the United States.
  Yes, the origins of this frightening reality go back a ways. In the 
1980s, for example, the CIA permitted Pakistan to channel America's 
support to those Afghans who were fighting against the Soviet troops 
who were occupying their

[[Page H4639]]

country. Much of that support that we were giving the Afghan freedom 
fighters ended up in the hands of Pakistan's favorite Muslim fanatics 
Golbadin Hekmatyar, a fiend who, in his college days, threw acid in the 
face of young women who refused to cover themselves totally with a 
burka.
  During the war, I hiked into the Afghanistan, that is the war against 
the Soviet's occupation of Afghanistan, I hiked into Afghanistan with a 
small mujahadeen infantry unit. On our way to the south of Jalalabad, 
which was the last major battle in which Soviet troops fought in that 
war, we came across an encampment of Saudi volunteers. In stark 
contrast to the spartan living conditions of the Afghan fighters, this 
camp site was complete with large safari-style tents, cots and even 
SUVs. I was told not to speak English because the Saudi crazy man who 
led this bunch would rather kill Americans than Soviet troops. His 
name, you guessed it, was Osama bin Laden.
  So by the end of the 1980s the presence of a potentially dangerous 
whack element in Afghanistan was well known. And contrary to leftist 
cliches, the roots of our current terrorist problem lie not in the 
support that we gave the Afghan people in their gallant fight against 
Soviet occupation, but in America's willingness to let Pakistan 
distribute war supplies and our unconscionable decision after the 
retreat of the Soviet Army to walk away ourselves and to leave the poor 
and wounded Afghans to live in the rubble and suffering and to leave 
them there in their own history.
  Milton Bearden, a senior CIA officer who oversaw American support, 
has suggested that his job was beating the Soviets and that he should 
not have been expected to keep our weapons and our support out of the 
hands of those who might pose a long-term threat to the United States. 
Nonsense. Put this man, the head of the CIA operation overseeing our 
aid to the mujahadeen, put him, the CIA officer, Milton Bearden, on the 
list of people who helped bring about 9/11.
  I can assure you that complaints were made at the highest level about 
America's support ending up in the hands of these crazies. I personally 
made such protests while I was working in the Reagan White House.
  Furthermore, it was a policy decision that let Pakistan distribute 
our supplies and it was wrong. To fix responsibility on this one, I 
look to the list of senior foreign service officers at our embassy in 
Islamabad in the 1980s and 1990s. Up to this day, there are State 
Department geniuses who still tow the Pakistani line, who still seem 
unable to call Pakistan to task for its transgressions of omission and 
comission. These State Department pros who ran our policy from 
Islamabad, Pakistan, in the 1980s and 1990s, these are the ones who 
also helped give us 9/11. Look at the list of the people who worked 
there.
  Furthermore, it was a policy decision to walk away and abandon our 
Afghan allies even after psychopathic killers like Golbadin Hekmatyar 
rose up as the Soviets departed. President Bush, father of our current 
President, has to accept a lion's share of the blame for this cowardly, 
arrogant, and selfish policy. There would be no Marshall Plan for 
Afghanistan nor anything else because, like during the war itself, we 
left post-war reconstruction and assistance up to the Saudis and up to 
the Pakistanis, which was, again, another indefensible policy decision. 
These countries predictably had their own agenda which included the 
creation of a radical Islamic state in Afghanistan.

  The Saudis and the Pakistanis were not upset that the violent 
extremists were so well armed. The Saudis and the Pakistanis supported 
the arming of these violent extremists. Predictably, what followed was 
a period of havoc and bloodshed. Hekmatyar Golbadin peppered Kabul with 
American rockets that were stockpiled during the Soviet occupation. 
Well, thank you, Mr. Bearden.
  There was a way out of this, of course. We did not need to have our 
support going to the radicals who hate us and hate our way of life. 
Instead, there was the king of Afghanistan who had been exiled in Rome 
for many years he was able and willing to return. King Zahir Shah was, 
and is, the most beloved man in Afghanistan, a pro-Western force for 
stability, a moderate Muslim.
  Instead, our State Department opted to have the creation of a third 
force, this new force to be made up of religious fanatics educated in 
the madrases, the so-called schools that were in Pakistan, schools that 
were financed and built by the Saudis but taught nothing but hatred 
towards the west.
  I pleaded with Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki to at least give 
the old King Zahir Shah a chance to lead an interim government. No way. 
Again, our State Department let the Saudis and the Pakistanis take the 
lead rather than having us lead them. Rather than go with a pro-Western 
alternative we ended up supporting the Taliban, the creation of the 
Taliban as a means to bring stability to Afghanistan. And make no 
mistake about it, the Taliban's ascent to power as well as their 
ability to stay in power was a Clinton administration policy decision 
promoted by professionals in our State Department.
  Let me just note that I fought that every step of the way, trying to 
push to get the king of Afghanistan Zahir Shah recognized as a moderate 
alternative. Unfortunately, once the Taliban came to power, yes, I gave 
them the benefit of the doubt for about 2 weeks before it was quite 
evident that our worst fears would be recognized and would come to 
reality under the Taliban.
  Again, who to put on the list of those who blame for 9/11? The policy 
of the State Department and the Clinton administration in collusion 
with the Saudis and the Pakistanis to create and support the Taliban 
control of Afghanistan, there is a huge cause of 9/11. They obviously 
did not learn, the Saudis and the Pakistanis and our own people, did 
not learn a thing from the horror that they created by backing Islamic 
fanatics like Hekmatyar Golbadin, and instead, went with the Taliban 
over the moderate alternative of the king.
  Of course, our government's support for the Taliban was never 
publicly acknowledged. But for those of us engaged in that region, and 
there are darn few of us that were engaged in that region after the 
Soviets left, it was clear what our policy was.
  But what is more poignant is the Afghan system believed the Americans 
were behind the Taliban. Why should they not? Our aid was channeled 
disproportionately through the Taliban controlled areas. I remember 
trying to clear the way for a shipment, private shipment of 
humanitarian relief for a non-Taliban area in northern Afghanistan only 
to be blocked by assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth.
  If there was any doubt about my suspicions, they were laid to rest 
and my suspicions were confirmed in 1997 when high level executives 
from the Clinton administration saved the Taliban from total defeat and 
extinction. This is long after it was clear what type of regime the 
Taliban had, the Nazi-like fanatics that they were.
  What happened was this: In April of 1997 the Taliban launched a major 
offensive aimed at taking control over the northern third of 
Afghanistan, which to that point had remained free and under the 
control of regional leaders who were commonly referred to as warlords.

                              {time}  2245

  One of those regional leaders, General Malick, tricked the Taliban 
and managed to capture almost all of their frontline troops, along with 
most of their heavy weaponry. It was an utter disaster for the Taliban. 
The road to the capital, Kabul, was wide open. The Taliban were totally 
vulnerable and could have easily been wiped out.
  I sent a message to Commander Masood and to others that Kabul should 
be liberated and that the King should be brought back to oversee a 
transition government, which then would hopefully evolve into a 
democratically elected government, perhaps like what happened in Spain 
where the King returned and it evolved into a democratic government; 
but before the anti-Taliban forces could strike, Assistant Secretary of 
State Rick Indefurth and American U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson flew 
to northern Afghanistan and convinced the anti-Taliban leadership that 
this was not the time for an offensive. Instead, they insisted this was 
the time for a cease-fire and an arms embargo.

[[Page H4640]]

  This clearly was a statement of U.S. policy. Two top foreign policy 
leaders in the Clinton administration flew to northern Afghanistan to 
convince the anti-Taliban forces not to take advantage of their one 
opportunity to soundly defeat and, thus eliminate, this enemy.
  These Clinton appointees saved the Taliban; and let me underscore, by 
this time the evil nature of these Islamic Nazis was clearly evident. 
Right after the cease-fire and the release of prisoners brokered by 
these Clinton administration geniuses, the Pakistanis began a Berlin-
like airlift to resupply and re-equip the Taliban, obviously financed 
with Saudi money. If I knew of this massive resupply effort, certainly 
the Clinton administration officials who had set up this scenario knew 
about it.
  So why were the anti-Taliban leaders not notified of this situation? 
Why did we continue an arms embargo on the anti-Taliban forces, even as 
the Taliban were rearmed and resupplied? Well, the answer is it was 
U.S. policy.
  So add Clinton appointees Assistant Secretary of State Rick Indefurth 
and United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson on the 9/11 blame list, 
and I say that with great hesitation because Bill Richardson is a 
friend, and I enjoyed serving with him in this House; but this 
particular action did great damage to the United States of America's 
security and, as I say, led to 9/11.
  To be fair, they were obviously carrying out the policies that were 
made elsewhere and approved higher up in the administration, but how 
much higher can we go than the Assistant Secretary of State for the 
region and our United Nations ambassador? Well, I can tell my 
colleagues, it goes all the way up.
  Last year, the current foreign minister of Pakistan visited 
California. Furious by my repeated accusations that Pakistan was 
responsible for the Taliban, the current foreign minister of Pakistan 
blurted out, and this was a well-attended event, that America was part 
of the Taliban deal from the first day it was created. I have been 
trying to prove that. I have been trying to prove the Clinton 
administration was covertly supporting the Taliban for a long time. 
Now, at last, I had confirmation by a nationally and internationally 
respected leader.
  As a member of the Committee on International Relations, I have had 
the responsibility of overseeing such policy. During the last 2 years 
of the Clinton administration, I made numerous requests with the 
support of committee chairman Ben Gilman for Taliban-related documents. 
I wanted to find out what the genesis of our policy toward the Taliban 
was and try to expose exactly what our policy was. I asked for the 
cables, for talking points, meeting notes. This was part of my 
responsibility, as someone who is a senior member of the Committee on 
International Relations, to oversee the foreign policy of the United 
States.
  Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a commitment to me in an 
open congressional hearing to provide my office and Chairman Gilman 
with all the related documents concerning our policy toward the 
Taliban. Well, to make a long story short, years went by and we kept 
asking for them. We were stonewalled. They sent us meaningless 
documents that included innocuous news clippings. Well, this was about 
as arrogant as anything I had ever experienced as a Member of Congress, 
and it still is: unelected State Department careerists dismissing the 
request of elected officials for security-related information. One 
wonders if the current independent commission examining 9/11 has asked 
to see these documents.
  Is it not important for us to know if our government policy actually 
helped create the Taliban and protected the Taliban in power, even as 
they used Afghanistan as a terrorist base, which eventually was used as 
a staging area for an attack that cost the lives of 3,000 Americans on 
9/11? In some ways, it is hard to characterize the administration's 
support for the Taliban as covert. Anyone looking closely would have to 
assume that that is what it was; but over and over again we were told 
this was not the policy. Yet something stunk.
  Covert or overt, it was a disgraceful policy, and that policy led to 
9/11 by creating a base of operations for bin Laden and a training base 
and staging area for al Qaeda. By the way, what we know now is bin 
Laden is not just some voice in the wilderness. He is from an 
enormously wealthy Saudi family; and while our petroleum dollars flowed 
into Saudi Arabia over the years, by the hundreds of billions of 
dollars, the Saudi establishment not only turned a blind eye but also 
attempted to buy off this violent, anti-Western, Islamic fringe which 
included bin Laden. This fringe was in their country. They spent 
billions of our petrol dollars to try to buy off these radicals. So 
billions of our petrol dollars now have come back to bite us in a big 
way. It obviously continues to this very day.
  The first Gulf War in 1990 did nothing but expand bin Laden's hatred 
for us. Our presence in Saudi Arabia, he has piously proclaimed, is an 
insult to his faith. Well, considering that the mass slaughter of 
unarmed people is perfectly consistent with his faith, perhaps 
we should quit taking seriously all of this self-righteous, Islamic 
rhetoric used by bearded, psychopathic killers. Most people who believe 
in Islam are total opponents to this type of murderous behavior in the 
name of their religion. It is our job to reach out to those people, 
those Muslims, those moderate Muslims, who want to live in freedom and 
want everyone to respect each other's faith, to reach out to them and 
to make them part of our coalition, to make sure that the radical 
Islam, just like Communism and every other ism that attempted to murder 
tens of thousands and hundred of thousand get their way just as we have 
defeated them in the past.

  In the mid-1990s, bin Laden and his cohorts began to set up a 
terrorist underground army for a war that he intended to wage on 
America and on the Western democracies. In the mid-1990s, he operated 
not out of Afghanistan but out of Sudan. America's official position 
was that bin Laden was a terrorist, and he was on our Most Wanted List. 
In fact, CIA Director George Tenet declared him America's and the CIA's 
number one target.
  Inexplicably, while designated as such, the CIA's number one target, 
the self-aggrandizing monster organized, financed, and implemented 
attacks that caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and the death 
of thousands of innocent people, not just in the U.S. on 9/11 but 
worldwide over several years: the World Trade bombing back in 1993; the 
Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996; embassy attacks in Kenya 
and Tanzania in 1998; and then an attack on the USS Cole. All of these 
were all organized by bin Laden's monsters and bin Laden's 
conspirators, a man recognized as the number one target of the CIA. Yet 
with all of the CIA's money and power and technology and other assets, 
with a track record like that, knowing what they are capable of, the 
CIA could not thwart 9/11, nor did they warn us of 9/11.
  So, remember, 9/11 was a major operation, planned and carried out by 
the CIA's number one target, as well as the number one target, as well 
as hundreds of others, I might add, who had to be involved in this, 
with millions and millions of dollars being spent on communication over 
large areas. Yet we were not warned, and it was not thwarted. If this 
is not incompetence, then what is?
  Furthermore, there were mind-boggling missed opportunities to get bin 
Laden before 9/11. Either intentionally or as a matter of policy or 
through incompetence, bin Laden was never stopped, even though there 
were numerous opportunities to stop him. The Government of Sudan, for 
example, played close attention to bin Laden. That is why he was 
operating in that country in the early 1990s. I am told they actually 
cataloged the people to whom he spoke on the phone and the people who 
came to see him in person.
  The former ambassador for the Sudan to the United States, Mahdi 
Ibrahim Mohamed, told me personally that he had offered our government 
this terrorist catalog which would have been a silver bullet for the 
total destruction of bin Laden's terrorist network, al Qaeda. Vanity 
Fair reports that the Sudanese Government's offer to provide us this 
information was abruptly turned down by no one else other than 
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. That is right, the Secretary of 
State. Vanity Fair reports that she instructed that no one look at a 
copy of the material.
  It just reconfirms, I might add, what the Sudanese ambassador has 
told me

[[Page H4641]]

personally. So in bold print let us add to the list of those 
responsible for 9/11 the former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
  It should be noted that former President Clinton is denying that he 
turned down such an offer from the Sudan. Just even last night, I 
understand, he was being interviewed and denied that he had turned down 
this offer. Well, it is not unreasonable to assume that the wording of 
this denial has been crafted so we really do not know what is is, and, 
unfortunately, we have to look at the words very carefully to see if 
someone's trying to leave us with a false impression without actually 
telling a lie.
  While we are at it, let us add the name Dick Clarke, and look at Dick 
Clarke. Now, this is a man who got much attention for criticizing 
George W. Bush when he criticized him before the investigating panel. 
Clarke was a senior foreign policy official. While all that I have been 
describing to my colleagues, while all this was taking place, he was a 
senior policy person in the Clinton administration and even before. He 
either approved of what was happening, or he did nothing during this 
period. He either approved it, or he did nothing. Whichever, he is 
certainly on the 9/11 blame list and has no credibility in blaming 
President Bush who, as we know, was sworn in as President after the 9/
11 plot was well under way, and it was well under way and started and 
conceived of at a time when Dick Clarke was a senior official in the 
administration of this previous administration.
  So now we have him attacking our President? From the first attack on 
the World Trade Center in 1993 to the bombing of U.S. military barracks 
in Saudi Arabia, to the attack on the USS Cole and the destruction of 
our embassies in Africa, the response from the last administration was 
so tepid, so weak, that the perpetrators thought that we Americans are 
cowards.

                              {time}  2300

  That is why they went ahead with 9-11, which was aimed not just at 
killing 3,000 Americans. Let us remember this. It is God's gift to us 
that only 3,000 Americans died at the Pentagon and in those towers in 
New York. Tens of thousands of people could have died. This we have 
learned.
  And what we have learned is that that plan to kill tens of thousands 
of Americans moved forward because the response that we had, our 
government had to these attacks on us before, during the 1990s, made 
these terrorists think that we were weak and cowardly. And so those we 
have captured since have told us that it was the weakness of the 1990s 
that led to the attacks on us and led to the war that we are in today.
  By the way, after one attack it is reported that Richard Clarke, who 
was a White House official at that time, when they were looking for how 
to retaliate--it is reported that Richard Clarke insisted that the 
retaliation take the form of a bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in 
Sudan, an aspirin factory which had nothing to do with terrorism. Yet 
that was the target that he insisted that we use as a retaliation to 
the attack upon us.
  This while still helping the Taliban stay in power. Meaning the 
policy of the administration at the same time was letting the Taliban 
stay in power, even after we had been attacked. So here we are, we are 
attacked, but we still have not changed our policy of keeping the 
Taliban in power. We were still not working with those people who were 
anti-Taliban in Afghanistan. Something stinks about this whole 
situation.
  Then, in an even more personal incident about bin Laden, which again 
clarifies whether or not we were doing what we needed to do, in April 
and May of 1999 America had an incredible opportunity to capture bin 
Laden. I personally was involved in this one. It is, unfortunately, yet 
another example of incompetence of those we trusted to protect us from 
an attack like 9-11.
  In April 1999, a long-time friend, who had been deeply involved in 
the Afghan fight against Soviet occupation contacted me. My friend was, 
and is, an American. He has impeccable credentials, and he was widely 
known and admired among the Afghan people. My friend called to tip me 
that bin Laden was outside of Afghanistan and could be easily captured. 
I told him I would pass this on and pass on his name and phone numbers 
to the CIA.
  The very next day, I was at a CIA briefing and I passed on my 
friend's name and phone number; explained his credential and told them 
we could have bin Laden on a platter. A week passed, I called my 
friend, and the CIA had not contacted him after a week. So I went back 
to the agency. This time they were adamant they would contact my 
friend. There was still a chance to get bin Laden.
  Another week passed, and the CIA did not call my friend. So this time 
I went to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), chairman of the House 
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. When he heard my story, he 
immediately went into action and arranged a meeting for me the next 
day. That next day, at the appointed time, I went to a somewhat secret 
and heavily guarded part of this Capitol, where there in a secure room 
I met with not just the CIA but also a representative of the NSA and 
the FBI.
  There they were, the bin Laden task force. I complained about my 
friend's vital information being ignored, and they took notes and 
apologized for those dunderheads over at the CIA and promised to get it 
right this time. A week later my friend still had not been contacted.
  When I mentioned this to Chairman Goss, he was a appalled. The very 
next day, and I am sure it was based on him reading someone the riot 
act, a representative from an intelligence agency finally called my 
friend. The caller's tone of voice, my friend says, suggested that it 
was an obligatory inquiry.
  It did not make any difference, because then the trail was cold. It 
was all very strange and very disheartening to see that the CIA and our 
intelligence people, and this was back during the last administration, 
did not seem to want to know how to get bin Laden. Then we end up 
bombing an aspirin factory after he commits a terrorist act against us.
  Clearly, however, there was something dreadfully wrong at the CIA. 
And over at the FBI, it was just as bad, if not worse. It is widely 
known now that 2 months before the September 11 attacks, Phoenix FBI 
agent, Kenneth Williams, sent a memo to the FBI headquarters in 
Washington and New York warning that bin Laden disciples might be 
training at U.S. flight schools, and asking for a review to determine 
if this was happening in other parts of the country. The Williams memo 
was ignored by David Frasca, the supervisor special agent in 
Washington. David Frasca.
  One month before 9-11, Minnesota FBI agent Colleen Rowley asked FBI 
headquarters to issue a warrant allowing agents to search the computer 
of a would-be terrorist, part of a gang, for information regarding Mr. 
Massaoui, who we knew was linked to the terrorist groups in the United 
States. She wanted to make sure we could check his computer. The FBI 
ignored her warnings. The FBI actually prohibited her from telling 
anybody else.
  When she went to the CIA to try to warn them, she was rebuffed for 
her efforts. There was something terribly wrong with the culture of the 
FBI when they were upset that one of their people had gone to the CIA 
to warn them of a terrorist in the United States.
  Clinton appointee, Louis Freeh, headed the Bureau for almost 8 years. 
The new director, Robert Mueller, took over just 2 days before 9-11. 
The Bureau, obviously, needed a major overhaul, as became painfully 
evident shortly thereafter when the World Trade Towers crashed to the 
ground before a shocked Nation.
  The FBI, again like the CIA, had not done its job, for whatever 
reasons. The troubles in the FBI were not just an organizational 
mindset but also the restrictions and the mandates that were put upon 
the Bureau. So individuals there were at fault, the mindset was at 
fault, but there were also restrictions put on the Bureau, and 
restrictions that were put on many people who were responsible for 
protecting us from terrorism. This was put on them by the political 
powers of the 1990s.
  A case in point, Jamie Gorelick, who now passes judgment on the Bush 
administration as part of the 9-11 investigation. In the 1990s, 
Gorelick was a Clinton administration official who basically oversaw 
policies for our domestic terrorist law enforcement and intelligence 
operations.

[[Page H4642]]

                              {time}  2310

  In a memo she wrote, while a Clinton lawyer--in that memo it forbade 
any cooperation between intelligence organizations and law enforcement 
agencies. Now, get this. A lady now in the committee investigating 9/11 
wrote a memo, and that policy was put in place that prevented the 
cooperation between our intelligence organizations and law enforcement 
at a time when there were numerous, numerous terrorist attacks going on 
throughout the world and even after the terrorists had tried to bring 
down the World Trade Center in 1993.
  So right on the 9/11 investigating panel is an example of why we had 
9/11. Her presence on the investigating panel represents a massive 
conflict of interest. This is well known, and she should be removed.
  The panel is, again, demonstrating the same inflexibility and 
aversion to corrective action that it is now investigating. Gorelick's 
directives reflected a hindsight in the last administration, even in 
the middle of terrorism restricting our intelligence people, even in 
the middle of terrorism making sure cooperation could not happen. It 
was a hindsight reflected even by career high-level intelligence 
officials.
  The Defense Intelligence Agency, for example, is supposed to provide 
the Pentagon with the detailed information necessary for it to deal 
with any and every potential threat. With all that is spent on the DIA, 
the Pentagon, like the rest of the United States Government, I mean, 
think about it, all this money we spend; but yet, we were caught off 
guard and the Pentagon was caught off guard and unprepared for 9/11.
  The Pentagon's lack of information and analysis had disastrous 
effects. The counterattack strategy almost implemented after 9/11 would 
have been to send American military forces to Afghanistan from the 
southern part of Afghanistan. The goal for that plan was occupying a 
few major cities after sending in maybe 100,000, 150,000 American 
troops, but to capture a few cities like Jalalabad and Kabul, leaving 
the Taliban in charge of the countryside; and then we would negotiate 
with the Taliban and offer to withdraw our forces when they turned over 
bin Laden.
  The Taliban would have us, thousands, tens of thousands of our 
troops, surrounded in a few cities in Afghanistan on the other side of 
the world; but the Taliban would be left in power even if they did not 
give us bin Laden, which of course they would never have given us bin 
Laden. That is as insane a policy as you can imagine, but that was a 
plan that was being seriously proposed. That would be the plan that 
would rely on our troops being supplied out of the bases on the western 
Pakistani frontier, which we now know is an anti-American stronghold.
  Now, an alternative plan, based on cooperation with the battle-tested 
troops of the Northern Alliance, took a long time to develop, because 
the Pentagon did not know who the players were, much less what the 
anti-Taliban forces in the north could do. So it almost had disastrous 
consequences, that we did not know exactly what the strength of the 
anti-Taliban forces was.
  My staff ended up providing the Pentagon with the names and strength 
assessment and the satellite telephone numbers, cell phone numbers of 
significant Afghan leaders who opposed the Taliban. That the Pentagon 
was unprepared was no surprise to me, however.
  In early 1999, a DIA, that is, Defense Intelligence Agency, analyst 
came to me for help. She was in the process of being fired, and her 
story tells us volumes of why 9/11 caught America off guard and ill-
prepared. Julie Sirrs was one of a small number of Afghan analysts. She 
took her job seriously, as she should have. She in fact visited 
Afghanistan, but only in those areas controlled by the Taliban. After 
returning, she realized that this was a one-dimensional view of 
Afghanistan and there were gaping holes in the DOD's understanding of 
the situation.
  She requested to officially go back to northern Afghanistan, 
especially to the areas controlled by anti-Taliban Commander Masood, 
and she was turned down. She was denied the permission to go there, but 
realizing the danger posed by this lack of information, Julie Sirrs 
took the initiative and took her vacation, paid her own way, organized 
her own trip to the Panjeer Valley, which was the bastion of Commander 
Masood, the last Afghan holdout who was resisting the Taliban.
  I had met with Masood in one of his mountain strongholds 2 years 
before. I had dinner with him and strategized with him. He was a 
friend. He was a hero. He was courageous. But he was not perfect. There 
is no doubt. All Afghans have made mistakes over their many years of 
conflict, but he was a wonderful man and a person who would have done 
great things as a friend of the United States.
  But what I did was somewhat risky, to go into the mountains and see 
him, but what Julie Sirrs did was far more dangerous. What Julie Sirrs 
did was heroic.
  When she got to the Panjir Valley, she found her assumptions were 
right. Something vital to America's security was happening, something 
she was not really able to discover when she visited the Taliban-
controlled areas before. Commander Masood told her that he was facing a 
new enemy in Afghanistan. Masood's militia was finding itself in fire 
fights with some kind of fundamentalist foreign legion. Apparently, bin 
Laden, who was making Afghanistan into his base of operations, was 
importing Islamic radicals from all over the world, training them as 
terrorists and killers and then sending them up against Masood's troops 
for combat experience.
  Masood offered to let Julie or other Americans interrogate the 
foreign prisoners he had captured. This again was an intelligence 
bonanza, but a missed opportunity. Julie Sirrs was uncovering the 
creation and organization and training of bin Laden's terrorist army, 
al Qaeda. She only had a short time, but she collected enough 
information for a preliminary report, and she headed home.
  The minute she got back, she found herself under severe restrictions 
at the Defense Intelligence Agency and restricted to whom she could 
brief or show any of her reports. So her report was kept close hold 
rather than distributed as it should have been, a report that indicated 
that a terrorist army was being formed in Afghanistan that could and 
was threatening the United States of America. The commanding officer of 
the DIA labeled her as insubordinate, he fired her; and when she fought 
her dismissal, he set out to destroy her.

  Amidst the fight to save her job, the DIA commanding officer told her 
what really upset him most was her contact with Masood, who, according 
to the DIA general, was one of the bad guys. This general was sending 
his people to be briefed by the Taliban, but any contact with Masood 
was a cause for dismissal. This was a mind set during the Clinton 
administration. It was a mind set of the man who headed the Defense 
Intelligence Agency. Something is terribly wrong with this picture. The 
vitriol and the attack against Sirrs was shockingly harsh. Patently 
false charges were brought up against her to overwhelm her defense and 
intimidate her and force her to go quietly, which she did not do.
  She was charged, for example, with lying, even though an agency lie 
detector test, which I have looked at, proved that she was telling the 
truth. She was charged with misusing equipment, having borrowed an 
office camera to take with her to Afghanistan. The charge was nonsense. 
Even her superiors agreed it was a reasonable thing to do; yet they 
pushed that as if she was stealing, even though she brought the camera 
back right after the trip with pictures so people would understand what 
was going on in Afghanistan.
  The attacks on this sincere and responsible intelligence analyst were 
arrogant, nasty, malevolent, and loathsome. The brutal treatment of 
Sirrs sent a negative message to anyone and everyone in the DIA who had 
any idea of taking the initiative or thinking creatively. Julie came to 
me because she had no one else to whom she could turn. I was the one 
elected official with experience in Afghanistan. I requested a meeting 
with the general in charge of the DIA and right off the bat he insisted 
to me when he came to my office that she was insubordinate. I told him 
from my view she was a hero, risking her life and her job, spending her 
own money, all to get information that she believed was necessary for 
our country to be prepared in case something happened in Afghanistan.

[[Page H4643]]

  After hearing each other out, I recommended to the general that we 
compromise. He could give her back her job, and she would end up 
neither a hero nor a scofflaw and I would back off and he could use 
political pressure from me as an excuse to bring her back. After the 
general left my office, he not only reaffirmed the firing of Julie 
Sirrs but he later stripped her of her security clearance as well, thus 
eliminating her ability to earn a living as an intelligence analyst. He 
demonstrated how he could destroy anyone who would deviate from his 
program or the mind-set of the day or defy his directives. 
Insubordination was the ultimate challenge to his authority; and in 
reaffirming his authority, he said it was more important to reaffirm 
that authority than was the security of the United States of America.
  A few months later, the general retired. All of this would be a 
regrettable, but forgotten, incident, except for the resulting 9/11 
tragedy, except for how terribly unprepared the Pentagon was for the 
war in Afghanistan. It is my sad duty tonight to inform my colleagues 
that the general to whom I am referring is Lieutenant General Patrick 
Hughes, who is today one of the top officials running the Department of 
Homeland Security. I am certain that over his long and distinguished 
career he made many contributions, but his indefensible conduct in the 
Sirrs case cast serious doubt over his judgment. I have notified 
Secretary Ridge on this side of General Hughes's character and 
recommended that he should not hold the high-level position that he 
holds in the Department of Homeland Security.
  When George W. Bush took office in January 2000, the 9/11 terrorist 
operation, as I said, unbeknownst to any of us in government or in the 
outside, was already under way; but the threat posed by the radical 
anti-Western Islamic regime in Afghanistan was well known. An 
aggressive new policy to counteract this threat was needed. After Bush 
came in, we expected some changes. But having worked in the Reagan 
White House, I understood that it took time for a new President to 
appoint staff and set new policy and to begin to take control of 
government.
  Nevertheless, during that brief interlude, and it was brief, between 
Bush's inauguration and 9/11, I met with the new national security 
staff on 3 occasions, including one meeting with Condoleezza Rice to 
discuss Afghanistan. There were, in fact, signs noted in an overview 
story in The Washington Post about a month ago that some steps were 
being made to break away from the previous administration's Afghan 
policy. And the previous administration's Afghan policy was a pro-
Taliban policy, a policy of not supporting the opposition to the 
Taliban, even as Afghanistan became the base of operations for bin 
Laden, who was conducting terrorist activities against us.
  One thing was certain to me at that time. George W. Bush, unlike his 
predecessor, would have a bold and unmistakable response to bin Laden's 
terrorist attacks.

                              {time}  2320

  As I stated earlier, we know now that those who planned and financed 
the 9/11 attack did not believe the United States would act forcefully 
and as unrelentingly as we have. This calculation resulted from the 
tepid American response to earlier al Qaeda attacks from Africa to New 
York City. But here again was an example of a rotten policy where we 
let these terrorist attacks happen and did not retaliate with our full 
strength that led to 9/11.
  And, yes, had we retaliated more aggressively, had we retaliated more 
aggressively when our embassies were blown up in Kenya and Tanzania, 
the terrorists we have captured now tell us had we done that, had we 
responded more aggressively, they would have had second thoughts about 
taking this plan to fly their planes into the buildings in New York, 
they would have had second thoughts and might have pulled back.
  I took pride in those days as being one Member of Congress, and this 
was before 9/11, who maintained an interest in Afghanistan, which I saw 
even then as a major national security threat to our country. It was an 
American calamity waiting to happen.
  Then just a few days before 9/11, the news came that Commander Masood 
had been murdered in Afghanistan. I felt as if I had lost a close 
friend. And as I mourned his loss, I struggled to fully understand the 
significance of his death. Then it dawned on me. It dawned on me why 
Masood had been assassinated. America was going to be attacked. It 
would be so monstrous that bin Laden's gang in Afghanistan wanted to 
cut us off from a means of counterattacking them in their base of 
operations in Afghanistan. We would have turned to Masood if we were 
attacked. That is what we would have done, and they were cutting us off 
from turning to Masood, but now Masood was dead.
  Perhaps his death was a signal to set the planned attack on our 
country in motion. So on September 10, after I had figured that out a 
few days before 9/11, on September 10 I tried to alert anyone and 
everyone who would listen to me. I tried to give my warnings of an 
imminent terrorist attack. A few people listened as a courtesy, but for 
most people their eyes simply glazed over as I tried to warn them. The 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) stood behind me in an 
elevator and overheard me lamenting that something horrible was about 
to happen and that I could not get anyone to take my warnings 
seriously. It was like being in the Twilight Zone, I said. And as I got 
off the elevator, he lightheartedly patted me on the back and with a 
smile told me not to be so melodramatic and certainly not to be so 
apocryphal.
  Undeterred, I called the White House and asked for an emergency 
appointment with Condoleezza Rice in order to warn of an impending 
terrorist attack, a major attack. Her office apologized that she was 
incredibly busy that day but she respected my opinion and would see me 
the next day at 3:00 p.m. The next day was 9/11. The planes began 
flying into the buildings at 8:48 a.m.
  I tell this story for one reason. We must ask how is it that one 
Member of Congress, with the help of one staff member, was able to 
analyze the situation and determine that the terrorists based in 
Afghanistan were about to launch a major terrorist attack on the United 
States when the CIA and others failed to do so? We spent billions of 
dollars on our intelligence apparatus. With one staff member, I was 
able to figure it out. Why were they not?
  Yes, George Tenet should have resigned a long time ago, and he is 
certainly at the top of the list of those who should be held 
accountable for 9/11, for not thwarting the attack or not even warning 
us of the attack that was coming.
  On 9/11 there was another incident that underscored this about the 
CIA. Shortly after the attack, I called King Zhir Shah in Rome. He was 
now America's greatest asset for any action that would be taken against 
the terrorist forces in Afghanistan. Masood was dead, but the Afghan 
people would rally behind the king. Well, if I could figure that out, 
that the king of Afghanistan exiled in Rome was our greatest asset in 
this war that we were in because thousands of our people had just been 
killed before our eyes, the Taliban certainly could have figured that 
out.
  So I was shocked to find out that King Zhir Shah in his villa in Rome 
had no protection. He was totally vulnerable. So I told the king to 
stay put and went to work. Among others I called the CIA and managed to 
speak directly to one of Tenet's top lieutenants. I explained the 
situation, and he acknowledged the importance of the king, assuring me 
that he would take care of it.
  A few hours later, I happened to talk to this gentleman again, and I 
will never forget the response, his response, when I asked if the king 
was under protection at that moment. This was 5 hours later. ``You 
don't expect us to act that fast, do you?''
  Just like the FBI, there was something wrong with the mindset at the 
CIA. Yes, we expect them--our people in the CIA--to act at a time when 
we have long-distance telephone calls and digital communication to act 
that fast at a time when thousands of Americans are losing their lives 
and we had no idea how many more would be losing their lives. And that 
mindset of ``you did not expect us to act that fast,'' that blame must 
be placed on George Tenet. So his name is to be on that list and 
underlined.
  By the way, late in the day on 9-11, the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr.

[[Page H4644]]

Greenwood) came running up to me when he saw me and said, ``How did you 
know? How did you know?'' Well, the question is why did any of us not 
know? Why did we not know? Why did those whom we have hired to protect 
us not know?
  It is time for those who made possible the rise of the Taliban, the 
rise of bin Laden, and, yes, the tragedy of 9-11 to be held personally 
accountable and for us to understand the policies and the people that 
caused 9-11. It was not something that was ordained by God to happen. 
It could have been stopped had we been responsible and had people done 
their job.
  The list stretches over both Republican and Democratic 
administrations. Through the failures of the CIA under Ronald Reagan 
when the CIA fellow in Islamabad channeled our money to fanatics when 
there were other people fighting the communists, the Soviets, who would 
have been happy to get those supplies. We could have built their 
strength up. So from that failure to the blunders of the State 
Department under George Bush to the incompetence and disingenuous 
posturing of the diplomats under Bill Clinton, accountability requires 
that their names be given.
  Retired General Patrick Hughes, who as head of the Defense 
Intelligence Agency, fired Julie Sirrs and today holds a high position 
in the Department of Homeland Security. He must accept responsibility 
for something he did that was just demonstrably wrong. Former 
ambassador and now Governor Bill Richardson, a man who was our 
ambassador to the United Nations, a good person, a good human being 
whom I personally like, he, under orders from who knows who, saved the 
Taliban from defeat when they were vulnerable. He personally did, along 
with Former Assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth.
  Had the Taliban been defeated as they were in a position of being 
defeated, 9-11 just would not have happened. There would not have been 
a staging area for bin Laden to operate out of, and, as I say, the 
former CIA Officer Milton Bearden, who armed the most fanatic of the 
Afghan forces who struggled against the Soviet occupation.
  The former CIA Director George Tenet, whose culpability I have 
mentioned several times, he resigned. He should have done so long ago. 
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, she was the point person 
for the policy of covert support for the Taliban, and she was the one 
who detailed the opportunity for us to receive information from Sudan 
that would have permitted us to eliminate bin Laden's terrorist 
network. Of course it was not the policy. She was doing something that 
was consistent with the policy of that administration.

                              {time}  2330

  Then, of course, Dick Clarke, who has criticized this President for 
the few months he had in power before 9/11, was, along with a few 
others, in a high level position to argue against, if not to change, 
the grotesquely mistaken policies of the eighties and nineties, but he 
failed to do so. In fact, we know a few of the things that he did were 
exactly in the wrong direction.
  If another 9/11 is to be avoided, we need accountability. We do not 
need the rearranging of a bureaucratic organizational chart. There is 
nothing wrong with our system that brought on 9/11, and there is 
nothing wrong with our system which will not be corrected by having 
different policies in place and different people in positions of 
authority.
  Let us now, if nothing else, be honest with each other. We have Ms. 
Gorelick, who is on the panel investigating 9/11, when she herself 
issued mandates that undercut our ability to fight terrorism back in 
the 1990s. Let us be honest with each other. Let us have an honest 
accounting. We can start right there by relieving that person from her 
responsibilities and looking at that role that she played that undercut 
the ability of our departments and agencies to do their job.
  So, let us be honest with one another, have an honest accounting, and 
then let us join together and let us commit ourselves to defeating this 
murderous enemy, this enemy that would destroy our way of life, who 
hates everything that America stands for, and let us defeat this enemy 
so completely that no one will ever again miscalculate about the power 
of the American people or the courage of the American people.
  Today, we have a chance to make a better world for tomorrow. We saw 
where people and policies of a decade ago have left us in this turmoil 
and this bloodshed that we face today. But if we have courage, and our 
President has this courage, and he is unrelenting, and if we get behind 
him, and if the American people are unified in our commitment, this 
threat, just like the threat of Nazism and Japanese militarism in the 
1940s and 1930s, we defeated that threat to mankind, and then we 
defeated the threat of communism.
  But if we are honest with ourselves and we move forward, correcting 
our mistakes, and there will always be mistakes, there were mistakes in 
World War II, there were mistakes in the war against communism, but if 
we correct our mistakes and insist that people be held accountable, we 
will build a future for our children that is secure, and we will build 
a country that can live in peace and prosperity and in friendship with 
others.
  More than that, we will live in friendship with all people, 
especially those moderate Muslims who do not share in the hatred and 
are appalled by the hatred of bin Laden towards the West. Let us build 
a world where Christians and Muslims can respect each other's faith. 
But we need to take the leadership. We cannot depend on the Saudis or 
the Pakistanis or anyone else to provide the leadership. It is up to 
the people of the United States and our leaders here to lead the way, 
and I have every confidence that our President will do and is doing 
just that.

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