TChris wrote yesterday about the Department of Homeland Security's budget crunch. Here are some more details, from the Wall Street Journal(paid subscription required):

The year-old Department of Homeland Security is declaring a hiring freeze at two of its front-line units because of a potential $1.2 billion budget shortfall.
A third front-line unit, the Citizenship and Immigration Service, also has a hiring freeze in effect because of an unrelated shortfall in fee assessments.

The timing of the news couldn't be worse for the Bush administration. Speaking this week before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, known as the 9/11 commission, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke raised serious questions about the administration's security efforts against al Qaeda prior to Sept. 11, 2001. Meanwhile, Democrats have been criticizing the department, which was created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, for failing to have a comprehensive staffing strategy to secure the borders.

Democrats charge that the Homeland Security department shifted hundreds of agents from the southern border -- considered especially vulnerable to a terrorist attack -- to the U.S.-Canada border in order to meet new requirements set by the Patriot Act and the Border Security Act....The worst border problems in the country at the moment are in Arizona. Robert C. Bonner, the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, last month described the border security situation in Arizona, as a "complete mess."

by TChris

The Department of Homeland Security seems to have misplaced $1.2 billion. It may have overspent its budget, or it may be having difficulty integrating the accounting systems of the various agencies that were brought together when the Department was formed last year.

Until the Department accounts for the discrepancy, it will stop hiring new employees in two divisions: Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

by TChris

In an attempt to blunt critics who say that the Bush administration has been less than fully cooperative with the commission investigating the administration's response to terrorism prior to 9/11, the White House has agreed to make national security advisor Condoleezza Rice available to answer more questions. However, her return appearance is subject to two stipulations: she will only answer questions in private, and she will not answer questions under oath.

The insistence on a private appearance, arguably justified by the need for secrecy with regard to some aspects of national security, is undercut by Rice's frequent appearances on news shows to spin the administration's viewpoint. More troubling, however, is the administration's refusal to let Rice testify under oath. Does the White House think that lying is so ingrained in Rice's job description that she shouldn't be subject to a criminal penalty for lying to the Commission? Does she plan to answer questions with her fingers crossed behind her back?

We caught some but not all of the hearings today. We've read hundreds of comments posted here and elsewhere about them. Kevin Drum, formerly Calpundit, now writing for Washington Monthly's Political Animal, says:

Terrorists hijacked a bunch of planes and killed 3000 people on 9/11. In retrospect, of course we didn't do enough before then to stop al-Qaeda, and it's hardly shameful to say so. But none of these guys have the self-respect to admit it. I'm all for point scoring, but I just don't think all this blather about whether we took al-Qaeda seriously before 9/11 is meaningful.... It's what happened after 9/11 that should be getting more attention.

Kevin also notes that so far, the only one to apologize for the pre-9/11 failures has been Richard Clarke. Good points. But we remain troubled by the allegations that Bush was told of an Al-Qaeda threat and didn't deal with it, preferring instead to concentrate on Iraq. A President who disregards the advice of his top counterterrorism official is not a wise leader in our book.

We saw an old friend on the panel today, former Watergate special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste. We hadn't realized he was on the Commission, and now that we do know, we have a lot more faith in it. We liked that he and Bob Kerrey both knocked the Administration for not allowing Condolezza Rice to testify.

Our last open thread on the topic is getting too long, feel free to continue it here.

[Comments now closed]

Richard Clarke will testify today before the Commission on 9/11 . Here's an open thread to discuss it.

Clarke, who is to testify today before the independent commission looking into the attacks, said in a telephone interview that CIA Director George J. Tenet used his morning briefings to warn Bush "over and over" beginning in June 2001 that al Qaeda would "almost certainly" stage a major attack. Clarke said the CIA believed it was "most likely" to occur overseas. "Virtually every day, George Tenet said to him: There's an impending al Qaeda attack," Clarke said. "You know the old Shakespearean line -- I think they doth protest too much. They're guilty of not having done enough."

[Ed. title corrected, thanks to a commenter who pointed out that today's testimony was not before a House Panel but before the independent 9/11 commission. ]

Here's what the House Panel investigating the 9/11 attacks finds:

The Clinton and Bush administrations' failure to pursue military action against al-Qaida operatives allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists to elude capture despite warning signs years before the attacks, a federal panel said Tuesday.

The Clinton administration had early indications of terrorist links to Osama bin Laden and future Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as early as 1995, but let years pass as it pursued criminal indictments and diplomatic solutions to subduing them abroad, it found.

Bush officials, meanwhile, failed to act immediately on increasing intelligence chatter and urgent warnings in early 2001 by its counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, to take out al-Qaida targets, according to preliminary findings by the commission reviewing the attacks.

It's a big story for today. Here's an open thread to discuss it.

Matt Yglesias, writing for American Prospect, explains why President Bush could have done more to stop al-Qaeda and terrorism but didn't.

Differences aside, it's possible to detect a coherent story here: Bush inherited a set of policies that he knew to be inadequate, and he wanted to do more; unfortunately, there wasn't time to put a "more comprehensive policy" into place, and the country paid the price. It's a coherent story, but it's one that's contradicted by the facts.

Here are some excerpts from Richard Clarke's book in which he describes various White House officials. Here's what he says about Attorney General John Ashcroft:

Clarke criticizes Ashcroft over his response to the 2001 attacks, especially over handling of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant. "The attorney general, rather than bringing us together, managed to persuade much of the country that the needed reforms of the Patriot Act were actually the beginning of fascism." Clarke says an unidentified staffer asked him after meeting with Ashcroft early in 2001, "He can't really be that slow, can he?" Clarke's response: "He did lose a Senate re-election to a dead man."

Against All Enemies
by Richard Clarke

Update: Avedon Carol does a terrific job putting the Clarke pieces together.

[comments now closed]

by TChris

Four days ago, it appeared that Pakistani troops had surrounded the number two Al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri. (TalkLeft provided information about al-Zawahri here.)

Since then, Pakistani officials have declined to say that al-Zawahri is being protected by Al Qaeda militants in the heavy fighting, but have speculated that the intensity of the fighting means that the militants are protecting a "high value target." Now, as the fighting wanes, the hope of capturing that unidentified target may be fading. News sources report that key figures in the battle may have escaped through hidden tunnels.

by TChris

Is President Bush foregoing pragmatic solutions to terrorism, instead locking the country into an unending and unwinnable conflict that creates more enemies than it can destroy? Robert Parry asks why the alternative strategy -- "to reduce tensions, resolve political differences and gradually ease the hardliners to the sidelines" -- has been so little debated. While many of the President's supporters contemptuously label pragmatic solutions as "appeasement" or warn that "the terrorists win" if western nations recognize and address legitimate grievances that breed terrorism, Parry argues that Bush's approach is almost certain to fail, with drastic consequences.

Taken in its totality, Bush’s vision carries logical consequences of the gravest order: Military strategy will overwhelm diplomacy; root causes of Middle Eastern terrorism, such as the plight of the Palestinians, will go unattended so as not to “appease” the terrorists; civil liberties at home and abroad will be set aside in the name of security; Bush’s allies, no matter how brutal and autocratic, will be hailed for their moral virtues; critics of Bush, including longtime Western allies such as France, Germany and now Spain, will be derided as “soft on terror”; lying, spin and intimidation will be the currency of the U.S. public debate.

Parry argues that the consequences of Bush's approach will lead to a long-term victory for terrorists -- "one that is looming if the United States can’t figure out how to have a realistic and honest debate about terrorism."

On '60 Minutes' tonight: Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism coordinator, whose book Against All Enemies : Inside the White House's War on Terror--What Really Happened is being released tomorrow. Background is here and here.

Reactions? Here's an open thread to discuss it.

by TChris

Former White House counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke reveals in a new book that Donald Rumsfeld advocated bombing Iraq the day after the attack on the World Trade Center. Never mind the absence of any connection between Iraq and the World Trade Center attack. Never mind that counterterrorism experts reminded Rumseld that Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, not Iraq.

Clarke, who is expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, said Rumsfeld complained in the meeting that "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq."

Well, if that's where the "good" targets are, who cares whether they're the right targets?

Clarke also accuses the Bush administration of turning a blind eye to terrorism during the first months of Bush's presidency. As TalkLeft reported yesterday, his accusation is supported by testimony soon to be provided by President Clinton's Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and national security adviser, who repeatedly warned the incoming Bush team (including Condoleezza Rice) that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the country. An administration fixated on Saddam Hussein and tax cutting paid scant attention to the Al Qaeda warnings.