Clarke,Richard

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Richard Clarke, head of the CSG and Cyber Security Task Force knew about all the warnings to FBI and CIA and the plans of a war against the Taliban. From a GROUND ZERO Forum aticle, originally released at Scoop: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0208/S00068.htm#g

"Something spectacular is going to happen." July 5th, 2001 Richard Clarke in a White House meeting http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/may/timeline/ If anyone knew most about warnings and war plans at the same time, it was Richard Clarke. Richard Clarke was connected with ONeill,John, who died in the World Trade Center. This is what the New Yorker wrote about their relationship: "On a Sunday morning in February, 1995, Clarke went to his office to review intelligence cables that had come in over the weekend. One of the cables reported, that Ramzi Yousef, the suspected mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing, two years earlier, had been spotted in Pakistan. Clarke immediately called the F.B.I. A man whose voice was unfamiliar to him answered the phone. "O'Neill," he growled. "Who are you?" Clarke said. "I'm John O'Neill," the man replied. "Who the hell are you?" O'Neill had just been appointed chief of the F.B.I.'s counter-terrorism section, in Washington. He was forty-two years old, and had been transferred from the bureau's Chicago office. After driving all night, he had gone directly to headquarters that Sunday morning without dropping off his bags. When he heard Clarke's report about Yousef, O'Neill entered the F.B.I.'s Strategic Information Operations Center (SIOC) and telephoned Thomas Pickard (->), the head of the bureau's National Security Division in New York. Pickard then called Mary Jo White, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who had indicted Yousef in the bombing case. One of O'Neill's new responsibilities was to put together a team to bring the suspect home. It was composed of agents who were working on the case, a State Department representative, a medical doctor, a hostage-rescue team. In Washington, O'Neill became part of a close-knit group of counter-terrorism experts which formed around Richard Clarke. The members of this inner circle, which was known as the Counter-terrorism Security Group (C.S.G.), were drawn mainly from the C.I.A., the National Security Council, and the upper tiers of the Defense Department, the Justice Department, and the State Department. They met every week in the White House Situation Room. "John could lead a discussion at that level," R. P. Eddy, who was an N.S.C. director at the time, told me. "He was not just the guy you turned to for a situation report. He was the guy who would say the thing that everybody in the room wishes he had said." http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020114fa_FACT1 During 2001 Richard Clarke worked almost 24/7 in the CSG and was exposed to a great deal of information about a possible terrorist threat. On April 20, when the group transmitted a 12-page discussion draft for the first time to their superiors, they were proposing a plan of "significant action to permanently erode what is now a robust terrorist organization." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A8802-2002Jan19 Intelligence had been streaming in concerning a likely Al Qaeda attack. "It all came together in the third week in June," Clarke said. "The C.I.A.'s view was that a major terrorist attack was coming in the next several weeks." As MSNBC confirmed, on May 23rd 2002 Richard Clarke reacted first: "...As a precaution, however, the National Security Council's counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, advised the FAA to issue a warning about the hijacking threat, which resulted in the June 22 warning, officials said...."

On June 29, 2002 U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan William B. Milam, who heard about all the warnings of a, "major attack on U.S. interests", tried to get in touch with the Taliban Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef in Pakistan. Richard Clarke heard about this planned meeting by telephone, "conveyed the same message to intermediaries in the United Arab Emirates". http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A8802-2002Jan19 "On July 5th, 2001 Richard Clarke convened a White House meeting of the Counterterrorism Security Group; then met with Rice and Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card; then met again with CSG plus, Federal Aviation Administration, FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service. Clarke told them: "something spectacular is going to happen." http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/may/timeline/ (National Press Review)

From then on Richard Clarke met daily with his team. Clarke supervised the cyberspace security and was already counterterrorism coordinator for President Clinton. He coordinated the unmanned Predator test flights, which had been later used in Afghanistan. Instead of conflicting reports, USA TODAY found out, that "officials ...have said unarmed Predators flew reconnaissance missions over Afghanistan before 2001" http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2002/06/21/predator-practice.htm This means, a war against the Taliban was long in the planning. Clarke confirmed, that a "mud complex was built in the deserts of the United States to simulate bin Laden's headquarters, and then struck by a Hellfire missile fired by a Predator...." Clarke is member of the Homeland Security Council and the Critical Infrastructure Protection http://www.state.gov/g/stas/8580.htm http://www.state.gov/g/stas/8580.htmhttp://www.state.gov/g/stas/8580.htm And Clarke was a warhawk as well. "...In October 1998, Richard Clarke continued the policy of US officials announcing confusing assessments, even including nuclear weapons in one single tally. In his remarks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he observed that, "Twenty-two countries, however, do possess them, if you consider biological weapons, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons to be weapons of mass destruction." http://www.fas.org/bwc/papers/dartmthb.htm After Clarke's White House meeting on July 5th, 2002 he was updated about every new involvement: July 6 - The Counterterrorism Security Group meets again in the White House; learns that targets for attack are located in Paris, Rome and Turkey. July 10 - Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth Williams sends electronic memo to FBI headquarters, urging investigation of possible terrorists connected to bin Laden enrolled in American flight schools. July 18 - FAA warns airlines to exercise the highest level of caution. Mid-July CIA disrupts attacks in Paris, Rome and Turkey. July 20-23 - High Alert when President Bush attends G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy.

July 31 - The FAA issues another warning to airlines: terrorists are planning and training for hijackings. Aug. 6 - CIA's Tenet briefs President Bush in Crawford, Texas, on a generalized terror threat, including Osama bin Laden and hijackings. Aug. 17 - The INS detains Moussaoui,HabibZacarias for suspicious activity at a Minnesota flight school. Sept. 4 - Robert Mueller becomes FBI director. A week before the Sept. 11 attack, FBI investigators told the Federal Aviation Administration that student-pilot Moussaoui,HabibZacarias had been arrested and was under investigation as a potential terrorist with a particular interest in flying Boeing 747s. But the agency decided against warning U.S. airlines to increase security. http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/754681.asp?0bl=-0 Clarke always had the same information as the FBI and CIA, however, MSNBC claimed: "...The FBI didn't inform Mr. Clarke or other White House officials about the Moussaoui arrest prior to Sept. 11, officials said..." http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/754681.asp?0bl=-0

At the same time CFR members George Shultz and Gary Hart received a warning and Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco. http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/5/28/231650 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/14/MN92245.DTL&type=printable During the last weeks before Sep. 11th, the CIA received still more warnings from the intelligence services of Italy, France, Jordan, Egypt, Russia, Germany, UK, Morocco, and Israel. The latter warned them twice. The only secret service which didn't warn the US, was Pakistan's ISI, even with all their good connections to the Taliban and therefore information about Bin Laden. But their chief General Massoud visited Washington between Sep. 4th and Sep. 15th. Nothing is known about this meeting, but he met Richard Clarke's friend Richard Armitage and Woolsey,James of the CIA. From all these reports it is pretty obvious that some high ranking officials in Pentagon and CIA allowed the attack to happen to justify war against the Taliban..." NOTE: On January 31st, 2002, Richard Clarke resigned as the director of Cyber Security. He dismissed reports that his bureaucratic opponents had blocked him from being offered a senior post in the new Department of Homeland Security. Clarke left with criticism: "When we sacrifice our civil liberties and privacy rights, the terrorists win because they have gotten us to change the nature of our country" Source: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_1682.shtml