"How Clinton and Gore Turned a Blind Eye to Terrorism", Part 4 of 4

Executive Summary

Book: "Let Freedom Ring"
Chapter: "Civilization in the Balance"
Section: "How Clinton and Gore Turned a Blind Eye to Terrorism"

Accusation 1: Liberals resisted investigating the intelligence failures leading up to 9/11 because they knew it would expose dereliction of duty on the part of Clinton and Gore.

Here's an excerpt:

"[L]iberal Democrats...showed little interest in an investigation of the roots of this massive intelligence failure. (It was only after they smelled political advantage that they began to jump on the bandwagon.)...What might [Democrats]... fear that the American people might learn?...Maybe this: that the Clinton-Gore administration - starting with the president and the vice president themselves - had turned a blind eye to the growing threat posed to Americans by global terrorist networks. And it cost us. Big time." ("Let Freedom Ring" page 13-14)

Reality: A quick check of the New York Times uncovered an article which showed that rather than Democrats, it was the Republicans who initially resisted an investigation.

Accusation 2: A New York Times article details Clinton's failings in dealing with terrorism.

Reality: This is true. But it also detailed his successes and efforts to combat the growing terror threat. Whether Clinton did enough or not can be debated, but saying that he turned a blind eye to terrorism when they had done such things as authorize the killing of bin Laden and other al-Qaeda chiefs is inaccurate. The article also goes on to detail the Bush administration's failings, as well, saying at one point that "until Sept. 11, the people at the top levels of the Bush administration may, if anything, have been less preoccupied by terrorism than the Clinton aides."

Hannity cherry-picked the article for quotes that supported his pre-ordained conclusion.

Accusation 3: Dick Morris says Clinton didn't make terrorism a priority.

Reality: Dick Morris is described by Hannity as "[s]mart, clever, and now a Fox News consultant." Other people aren't so charitable.

Joe Conason of Salon and The New York Observer calls Morris "the political consultant and commentator who has ceaselessly prostituted himself to Fox News and other right-wing outlets for several years now."

Slate editor Jacob Weisberg refers to Morris as a "'trained seal'--a glib source who can be counted on to deliver an apposite quote to substantiate the thesis of any story."

More to the point, Weisberg goes on to say that "Morris' views are almost always totally worthless, because he obviously will say anything, to anybody."

Morris' lack of credibility is made worse by the fact that it was only after 9/11 that he started claiming to have warned Clinton about terrorism during his time at the White House (pretty much setting himself up as the lone voice of reason). Before 9/11, it was something he scarcely mentioned.

Hannity insinuates that Morris is one of several past Clinton advisors to have come forward with criticisms of how terrorism was handled. If that is truly the case, he should have quoted someone else.


Conclusion

The whole idea that liberals and Democrats resisted a 9/11 investigation is shown to be the opposite of what happened. The attempt to prove that Clinton turned a blind eye to terror falls flat, too, because there are examples given in the very sources Hannity cites that describe his and Gore's efforts to fight terrorism.

Hannity's assertions are false.

"How Clinton and Gore Turned a Blind Eye to Terrorism", Part 3 of 4

After citing some quotes (out of context) from a New York Times article, Hannity continues along the line of argument that Clinton's advisors have started admitting that the Administration neglected the terror issue. After mentioning Stephanopolous, Hannity continues on to Dick Morris.

Here's an excerpt. Exhibit 2:

As time passes, other Clinton-Gore advisers and supporters are going on the record to describe just how uninterested the president and vice president really were in defending American citizens from the terrorist threat.

Dick Morris, for example. Smart, clever, and now a Fox News consultant, Morris has known Bill and Hillary Clinton for more than two decades. He worked with them during their political days in Arkansas. More recently, he was the chief political strategist for the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign in 1996. That put him at the epicenter of the Clintons' political lives. It now makes him a window into the soul of the Clintons for conservatives like me who otherwise wouldn't have gotten within a hundred miles of that White House inner sanctum.

In interviews over the past year on Hannity & Colmes and elsewhere, Morris has shed light on some very disturbing aspects of the Clinton-Gore approach to terrorism. It hasn't been pretty. But it has been instructive....What conclusion does the man who was once President Clinton's chief political strategist draw after observing these facts?

"Everything was more important [to Clinton] than fighting terrorism," says Morris. "Political correctness, civil liberties concerns, fear of offending the administration's supporters, Janet Reno's objections, considerations of cost, worries about racial profiling and, in the second term, surviving impeachment, all came before fighting terrorism." ("Let Freedom Ring" pages 14-16)

Hannity relies heavily on one source, Dick Morris, to prove his point about Clinton. Since the stuff that is described in today's excerpt is Morris' recollections of conversations he had with Clinton and others in the administration, I'm not sure if there will be any written record of it. So it comes down to the question: Is Morris credible? Let's take a look:

1.) Interestingly enough, Dick Morris was also quoted in the New York Times article "Planning for Terror But Failing to Act" we just looked at in Part 2 of this section's critique. Here's the quote:

In July 1996, shortly after Mr. bin Laden left Sudan, Mr. Clinton met at the White House with Dick Morris, his political adviser, to hone themes for his re-election campaign.

The previous month, a suicide bomber had detonated a truck bomb at a military barracks in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen. Days later, T.W.A. Flight 800 had exploded off Long Island, leaving 230 people dead in a crash that was immediately viewed as terrorism.

Mr. Morris said he had devised an attack advertisement of the sort that Senator Bob Dole, the Republican candidate, might use against Mr. Clinton and had shown it to a sampling of voters. Seven percent of those who saw it said they would switch from Mr. Clinton to Mr. Dole.

"Out of control. Two airline disasters. One linked to terrorism," the advertisement said. "F.A.A. asleep at the switch. Terror in Saudi Arabia." Mr. Morris said he told Mr. Clinton that he could neutralize such a line of attack by adopting tougher policies on terrorism and airport security. He said his polls had found support for tightening security and confronting terrorists. Voters favored military action against suspected terrorist installations in other countries. They backed a federal takeover of airport screening and even supported deployment of the military inside the United States to fight terrorism.

Mr. Morris said he tried and failed to persuade the president to undertake a broader war on terrorism.

The Times did try to get a response from Clinton with regard to Morris' allegations:

Mr. Clinton declined repeated requests for an interview, but a spokeswoman, Julia Payne, said: "Terrorism was always a top priority in the Clinton administration. The president chose to get his foreign policy advice from the likes of Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright and not Dick Morris."

Ouch.

Shortly after the New York Times article was published, columnist Joe Conason of Salon and The New York Observer wrote a piece in response titled "Media Blame Game Requires a Mirror" where at one point he criticizes the New York Times article as "an article that highlighted several paragraphs of preening recollection from Dick Morris."

Conason goes on to say that:

The indefatigable consultant evidently convinced the Times reporters that, based on polling done in 1996, he strenuously urged his Presidential client to federalize airport security and prosecute a "broader war on terrorism." Mr. Morris didn't reveal this prescient proposal anywhere in the 340-plus pages of Behind the Oval Office, his memoir of his years advising Mr. Clinton, which scarcely mentions terrorism at all.

If Mr. Morris did foresee the horrors to come five years ago, he was quite alone in his clairvoyance. More likely he is rewriting history to denigrate his old boss and inflate himself, an important duty of his current career. In truth, he has been heavily preoccupied during the past several years by smut and petty scandal, not by the looming "terrorist threat." And in those obsessions, he wasn't alone at all.

The fact that Morris only recently started telling this tale is an excellent point. In today's excerpt, Hannity says that Morris has been giving "interviews over the past year...on some very disturbing aspects of the Clinton-Gore approach to terrorism." Why was it only during "the past year", after 9/11, that this was something he mentioned?

2.) Has Morris been known to change his story before? Yes. Here's one example: Joe Conason quotes from Morris' 2003 article in the National Review where he claims that, in 1990, Bill Clinton tackled him and cocked back his fist to punch him (before Hillary Clinton interceded). Then Conason goes back to Morris' 1997 book where he says that "it's time to put the exaggerations to rest. By 1994, the story [about the Clinton run-in] had been transformed to the point that Clinton was supposed to have punched me." So, in 1997 at least, the idea of Clinton punching him was an "exaggeration."

Again, the 1997 version:

"Clinton charged up behind me as I stalked toward the door, grabbed me from behind, and wrapped his arms around me to stop me from leaving. I slipped to the floor. Hillary helped me to my feet....I relate the Arkansas incident here not because it seems relevant to his ability to serve in office but because it did affect our relationship and because it's time to put the exaggerations to rest. By 1994, the story had been transformed to the point that Clinton was supposed to have punched me."

and 2003:

"Bill ran after me, tackled me, threw me to the floor of the kitchen in the mansion and cocked his fist back to punch me. You [Hillary] grabbed his arm and, yelling at him to stop and get control of himself, pulled him off me."

3.) Are there those who question Dick Morris' credibility? Slate editor Jacob Weisberg says that:

Morris serves reporters by playing what they call a "trained seal"--a glib source who can be counted on to deliver an apposite quote to substantiate the thesis of any story. In a Washington Post story about how John Hilley, an administration official, was crucial to the budget deal, Morris offers: "Without him, there never would have been a budget deal. Literally." In an AP story about Al Gore's weaknesses as a successor to Bill Clinton: "He does the steps, but he doesn't hear the music." Part of Morris' appeal for journalists is that he is willing to teach it round or teach it flat to suit the needs of their stories. He will defend Clinton as a political genius and a man of integrity. But if the reporter wants him to say that Clinton signaled Janet Reno not to appoint an independent counsel, as the editors of National Review clearly did last April, he's happy to oblige. "Definitely, I think that happened," he told them. In a New York Times story about Clinton's disloyalty to subordinates, Morris offers: "There is a certain empirical truth to what [James] McDougal is saying. Just look at the carcasses." Never mind that Clinton was unaccountably loyal to Morris himself after his self-induced downfall.

...Morris' views are almost always totally worthless [my emphasis], because he obviously will say anything, to anybody. Though he used to pride himself on never being quoted in the press, he now scurries to return calls from the St. Louis Post Dispatch and Investor's Business Daily. Morris gets much more out of the transaction, in terms of selling copies of his book and putting ignominy behind him, than the readers of the papers that quote him do.

And if you don't think that's harsh, in a Slate book review scathingly titled "Lying All the Way to the Bank--Dick Morris' ridiculous memoirs" Weisberg also points out several inconsistencies in Morris' stories from when he was serving at the White House.

4.) Hannity refers to Morris as "smart" and "clever" (which he, no doubt, is). That reminded me of a line from the second Joe Conason article I cited here where Conason said that:

Conservatives can be quite gullible on the subject of the Clintons, as long as you're telling them the kind of nasty gossip they want to hear. Among the most tireless exploiters of this Clinton-hating credulity is Dick Morris, the political consultant and commentator who has ceaselessly prostituted himself to Fox News and other right-wing outlets for several years now.

5.) Today's excerpt started off with Hannity claiming:

As time passes, other Clinton-Gore advisers and supporters are going on the record to describe just how uninterested the president and vice president really were in defending American citizens from the terrorist threat.

Who are these people? Can he find anyone else besides Dick Morris? I didn't see anything out on the internet, though admittedly that's hardly the last word. While watching the 9/11 Commission's hearings recently, I don't remember any of Clinton's senior advisors peeling away during testimony and criticizing their former boss.

6.) A final strike against Morris is that he came to the Clinton Administration after the 1994 mid-term elections and was forced to resign in 1996 for, among other things, allowing his $200/hr. prostitute to listen in on his phone conversations with Clinton. The point being, he was only officially part of what Hannity calls the "inner sanctum" for two years at most in an eight-year administration and he left during the year that the CIA was really starting to get a handle on al Qaeda's scope for the first time. He was long gone when many of Clinton's anti-terror moves occurred (e.g., approving lethal force against bin Laden and dozens of others).

* * *

Surely Hannity must have known about Morris' reputation when he used him as a source (not about the prostitute but his credibility). If he was but one of several "Clinton-Gore advisers and supporters" who are criticizing the former president's anti-terror efforts, I think Hannity would have been better off using someone else.

"How Clinton and Gore Turned a Blind Eye to Terrorism", Part 2 of 4

So far, we've looked at Hannity's contention that the Democrats were afraid an inquiry into 9/11 would lead to details of Clinton's failures in fighting terrorism coming to light and that they "showed little interest in an investigation" until "they smelled political advantage". That charge proved to be without merit.

Now we're going to start looking at the other charge Hannity levels in this section: Clinton refused to see the terrorist threat for what it was and this helped make the 9/11 attacks possible. Like the section's title, Hannity going to show "How Clinton and Gore Turned a Blind Eye to Terrorism".

Let's review Hannity's evidence. Here's "Exhibit 1":

On December 20, 2001, New York Times reporters Judith Miller, Jeff Gerth, and Don Van Natta, Jr., wrote a 7,237-word story titled "Planning for Terror But Failing to Act." The story detailed how the Clinton-Gore administration did little or nothing to crack down on terrorism in the wake of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

The Times story revealed that "in 1996, a State Department dossier spelled out Mr. bin Laden's operation and his anti-American intentions. But Clinton chose not to act." The Times reported that "in 2000, after an Algerian was caught coming into the country with explosives, a secret White House review recommended a crackdown on 'potential sleeper cells in the United States.' That review warned that 'the threat of attack remains high' and laid out a plan for fighting terrorism. But most of that plan remained undone."

The Times even quoted former Clinton senior advisor George Stephanopolous admitting that the Clinton-Gore administration never gave much attention to protecting the American people from bin Laden and his ilk, despite the growing number of deaths of innocent Americans at the hands of al Qaeda operatives.

"It wasn't the kind of thing where you walked into a staff meeting and people asked, what are we doing today in the war against terrorism?" said Stephanopolous.

To which I ask: Why not?

Why were issues like gays in the military and global warming and promoting race-based set-asides more important to the Clinton-Gore administration that waging a war against terrorism? ("Let Freedom Ring" pages 13-14)

I'm assuming Hannity made a point of mentioning that the article was 7,237 words in order to leave the reader with the impression that there were lots of examples of Clinton's negligence in it. To find out, I read the New York Times article for myself. Let's take a look at some of what it said:

1.) Here's an interesting quote from the article:

[U]ntil Sept. 11, the people at the top levels of the Bush administration may, if anything, have been less preoccupied by terrorism than the Clinton aides.

Hmm. That sounds a lot like the Bush Administration wasn't making terrorism its top priority either, rather it was even lower on the list than it had been with the Clinton Administration. By the way, that quote came from the section titled "The New Team, Seeing the Threat But Moving Slowly". Here's the quote in context:

As he prepared to leave office last January, [Clinton's National Security Advisor, Sandy] Berger met with his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and gave her a warning.

According to both of them, he said that terrorism -- and particularly Mr. bin Laden's brand of it -- would consume far more of her time than she had ever imagined.

A month later, with the administration still getting organized, Mr. Tenet, whom President Bush had asked to stay on at the C.I.A., warned the Senate Intelligence Committee that Mr. bin Laden and Al Qaeda remained "the most immediate and serious threat" to security. But until Sept. 11, the people at the top levels of the Bush administration may, if anything, have been less preoccupied by terrorism than the Clinton aides.

So the article isn't just about Clinton. It covers Bush, too. Hannity never mentions that.

2.) Probably worse than neglecting to mention the fact that Bush is also the subject of the article, is the fact that there is an entire section titled "The Battle Intensifies, Struggling to Track 'Enemy No. 1'" (that being bin Laden) that never gets mentioned either. Why is that so bad? Read some of it for yourself:

In the years after the [African] embassy bombings, the Clinton administration significantly stepped up its efforts to destroy Al Qaeda, tracking its finances, plotting military strikes to wipe out its leadership and prosecuting its members for the bombings and other crimes. "From August 1998, bin Laden was Enemy No. 1," [National Security Advisor] Mr. Berger said.

The campaign had the support of President Clinton and his senior aides. But former administration officials acknowledge that it never became the government's top priority.

When it came to Pakistan, for example, American diplomats continued to weigh the war on terrorism against other pressing issues, including the need to enlist Islamabad's help in averting a nuclear exchange with India.

Similarly, a proposal to vastly enhance the Treasury Department's ability to track global flows of terrorist money languished until after Sept. 11. And American officials were reluctant to press the oil-rich Saudis to crack down on charities linked to radical causes.

Still, the fight against Al Qaeda gained new, high-level attention after the embassy attacks, present and former officials say. Between 1998 and 2000, the "Small Group" of the Cabinet-rank principals involved in national security met almost every week on terrorism, and the Counterterrorism Security Group, led by Mr. [Richard] Clarke, met two or three times a week, officials said.

The United States disrupted some Qaeda cells, and persuaded friendly intelligence services to arrange the arrest and transfer of Al Qaeda members without formal extradition or legal proceedings. Dozens were quietly sent to Egypt and other countries to stand trial.

President Clinton also ordered a more aggressive program of covert action, signing an intelligence order that allowed him to use lethal force against Mr. bin Laden. Later, this was expanded to include as many as a dozen of his top lieutenants, officials said.

On at least four occasions, Mr. Clinton sent the C.I.A. a secret "memorandum of notification," authorizing the government to kill or capture Mr. bin Laden and, later, other senior operatives. The C.I.A. then briefed members of Congress about those plans.

The C.I.A. redoubled its efforts to track Mr. bin Laden's movements, stationing submarines in the Indian Ocean to await the president's launch order. To hit Mr. bin Laden, the military said it needed to know where he would be 6 to 10 hours later -- enough time to review the decision in Washington and program the cruise missiles.

That search proved frustrating. Officials said the C.I.A. did have some spies within Afghanistan. On at least three occasions between 1998 and 2000, the C.I.A. told the White House it had learned where Mr. bin Laden was and where he might soon be.

Each time, Mr. Clinton approved the strike. Each time, George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, called the president to say that the information was not reliable enough to be used in an attack, a former senior Clinton administration official said.

...Officials said the White House pushed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop plans for a commando raid to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden. But the chairman, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, and other senior Pentagon officers told Mr. Clinton's top national security aides that they would need to know Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts 12 to 24 hours in advance.

Pentagon planners also considered a White House request to send a hunter team of commandos, small enough to avoid detection, the officer said. General Shelton discounted this option as naïve, the officer said.

White House officials were frustrated that the Pentagon could not produce plans that involved a modest number of troops. Military planners insisted that an attack on Al Qaeda required thousands of troops invading Afghanistan. "When you said this is what it would take, no one was interested," a senior officer said.

A former administration official recently defended the decision not to employ a commando strike. "It would have been an assault without the kind of war we've seen over the last three months to support it," the official said. "And it would have been very unlikely to succeed."

Clinton administration officials also began trying to choke off Al Qaeda's financial network. Shortly after the embassy bombings, the United States began threatening states and financial institutions with sanctions if they failed to cut off assistance to those who did business with Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In 1999 and early 2000, some $255 million of Taliban-controlled assets was blocked in United States accounts, according to William F. Wechsler, a former White House official.

Mr. Wechsler said the search for Al Qaeda's assets was often stymied by poor cooperation from Middle Eastern and South Asian states.

The United States, too, he added, had problems. "Few intelligence officials who understand the nuances of the global banking system" were fluent in Arabic. While the C.I.A. had done a "reasonably good job" analyzing Al Qaeda, he wrote, it was "poor" at developing sources within Mr. bin Laden's financial network. The F.B.I., he argued, had similar shortcomings.

Senior officials were frustrated by the C.I.A.'s inability to find hard facts about Al Qaeda's financial operations.

Intelligence officials said the C.I.A. had amassed considerable detail about the group's finances, and that information was used in the broad efforts to freeze its accounts after Sept. 11.

Sounds like Clinton was taking the terror threat pretty seriously. Whether he was doing enough or not I'll leave for others to decide, but he was most definitely not turning a blind eye to the problem. If Hannity read the article, surely he must have realized this.

3.) Here's another interesting quote from the article:

When it came to terrorism, Clinton administration officials continued the policy of their predecessors, who had viewed it primarily as a crime to be solved and prosecuted by law enforcement agencies.

Those "predecessors" would be Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan. So the policy of treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem did not originate with Clinton. That's significant because it has become a talking point for many in the GOP.

4.) In today's excerpt, Hannity says:

The Times story revealed that "in 1996, a State Department dossier spelled out Mr. bin Laden's operation and his anti-American intentions. But Clinton chose not to act."

But, when I read the article, here's what I found:

In 1996, a State Department dossier spelled out Mr. bin Laden's operation and his anti-American intentions. And President Bill Clinton's own pollster[(I'm assuming this was Dick Morris)] told him the public would rally behind a war on terrorism. But none was declared.

That's a misquote.

5.) Hannity concludes today's excerpt with the question "Why were issues like gays in the military and global warming and promoting race-based set-asides more important to the Clinton-Gore administration that waging a war against terrorism?"

Hannity was most likely just finishing with a rhetorical flourish but, as luck would have it, the priorities of the Clinton-Gore administration are, in fact, listed in the Times article. So let's have a look and see what they were:

Leon E. Panetta, the former congressman who was budget director and later chief of staff during Mr. Clinton's first term, said senior aides viewed terrorism as just one of many pressing global problems.

"Clinton was aware of the threat and sometimes he would mention it," Mr. Panetta said. But the "big issues" in the president's first term, he said, were "Russia, Eastern bloc, Middle East peace, human rights, rogue nations and then terrorism."

While gays in the military could be construed as a human rights issue, I think Panetta was talking about countries' treatment of their citizenry. Global warming was definitely never mentioned. So terrorism was higher on the list.

6.) Hannity said:

The Times even quoted former Clinton senior advisor George Stephanopolous admitting that the Clinton-Gore administration never gave much attention to protecting the American people from bin Laden and his ilk, despite the growing number of deaths of innocent Americans at the hands of al Qaeda operatives.

"It wasn't the kind of thing where you walked into a staff meeting and people asked, what are we doing today in the war against terrorism?" said Stephanopolous.

To which I ask: Why not?

Now doesn't that leave you with the impression that Stephanopolous was talking about terrorism in general? Here's the Stephanopolous quote again, only this time it's in context, as it appeared in the New York Times article:

Looking back, George Stephanopoulos, the president's adviser for policy and strategy in his first term, said he believed the 1993 [World Trade Center] attack did not gain more attention because, in the end, it "wasn't a successful bombing."

He added: "It wasn't the kind of thing where you walked into a staff meeting and people asked, what are we doing today in the war against terrorism?"

Two years later, however, terrorism moved to the forefront of the national agenda when a truck bomb tore into the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people.

So Stephanopolous was actually talking about was one incident (albeit a significant one) and explaining the administration's reaction to it. It hardly justifies Hannity's line that Stephanopolous was "admitting that the Clinton-Gore administration never gave much attention to protecting the American people from bin Laden and his ilk."

* * *

Hannity was very selective in his use of quotes in this article and, I feel, distorts the overall point its authors were trying to make.

Let's play the same game. I'll take today's excerpt and substitute in different quotes from the same article Hannity cited, change the names from Clinton to Bush officials and "prove" the opposite argument; that Bush turned a blind eye to terrorism before 9/11. Here's the re-worded excerpt:

On December 20, 2001, New York Times reporters Judith Miller, Jeff Gerth, and Don Van Natta, Jr., wrote a 7,237-word story titled "Planning for Terror But Failing to Act." The story detailed how the Bush-Cheney administration did little or nothing to crack down on terrorism despite warnings from the outgoing Clinton Administration.

The Times story revealed that "Mr. Bush's principals did not formally meet to discuss terrorism in late spring when intercepts from Afghanistan warned that Al Qaeda was planning to attack an American target in late June or perhaps over the July 4 holiday." The Times reported that "They did not meet even after intelligence analysts overheard conversations from a Qaeda cell in Milan suggesting that Mr. bin Laden's agents might be plotting to kill Mr. Bush at the European summit meeting in Genoa, Italy, in late July."

The Times even quoted former Bush director of counterterrorism Richard Clarke admitting that the Bush-Cheney administration never gave much attention to protecting the American people from bin Laden and his ilk, despite the growing number of deaths of innocent Americans at the hands of al Qaeda operatives.

"Democracies don't prepare well for things that have never happened before", said Clarke.

To which I ask: Why not?

Why were issues like faith-based initiatives and privatizing Social Security more important to the Bush-Cheney administration that waging a war against terrorism?

Hopefully, this little exercise shows that cherry-picking an article for quotes that back your pre-ordained conclusion, to the exclusion of any contrary information, is intellectually dishonest. Today's excerpt is a complete sham.

So far, Hannity has not only failed to prove the idea that the Clinton Administration turned a blind eye to terrorism, his own source material has provided the information to prove the opposite. But Hannity has one more arrow in his quiver. He continues along the line of argument that Clinton's advisors have admitted to the Administration neglecting the terror issue. After mentioning Stephanopolous, Hannity continues on to Dick Morris. We'll take a look at "Exhibit 2" next time.

"How Clinton and Gore Turned a Blind Eye to Terrorism", Part 1 of 4

"How Clinton and Gore Turned a Blind Eye to Terrorism" is a pretty accusingly titled section.

Here's the first excerpt:

In the weeks and months following September 11, Americans began asking hard questions. Wasn't there any way these attacks could have been prevented? Why didn't the CIA know what was coming? How could we spend billions of dollars on intelligence and have such a massive failure?

After all, the rising threat of global terrorism - particularly the threat of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network - had been clear to U.S. policy-makers for years from the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa, to the suicide attack on the USS Cole in the fall of 2000.

From the beginning, President Bush expressed the outrage of the American people. He immediately took charge; there was no mistaking who was commander in chief. He made it clear that his first priority would be to hunt down the evildoers and bring them to justice. He and his team also made it clear that determining the causes of America's security failures and finding and remedying its weak points would be central to their mission. Other Republicans concurred.

"I absolutely believe that we have to go back and see what happened," said Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, on NBC's Meet the Press just one month after the attacks. He stressed the importance of determining what went wrong "so that we will not make the mistakes again that we made before and can reorganize our intelligence services."

Curiously, however, liberal Democrats - many of whom historically criticized, attacked, and sought to defund the CIA - at first showed little interest in an investigation of the roots of this massive intelligence failure. (It was only after they smelled political advantage that they began to jump on the bandwagon.)

"We don't need a witch hunt now, or certainly not next year in an election year," Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the New York Times.

A witch hunt? That's pretty strong language. What might Representative Harman fear that the American people might learn - especially "in an election year"?

Maybe this: that the Clinton-Gore administration - starting with the president and vice president themselves - had turned a blind eye to the growing threat posed to Americans by global terrorist networks. And it cost us. Big time. ("Let Freedom Ring" pages 12-13)

Wow! So Hannity is contending that (1) Clinton refused to see the terrorist threat for what it was and this helped make the 9/11 attacks possible (2) Congressional Democrats realized this and sought to keep it quiet. Those are some pretty serious charges. Let's see if they hold up to scrutiny.

I'm going to work backwards and look first at the contention that the Democrats opposed an investigation into the causes of 9/11.

1.) Were Rep. Harman and other Democrats afraid that the an inquiry was going to go back and dig up some dirt on Clinton? If that were the case then they would fight any attempt to look back and investigate anything preceding 9/11, right? Maybe they would try to weaken any proposed commission or give it a mandate to only investigate intel after 9/11. Yet, the opposite was true.

An article in the New York Times entitled "House Votes for More Spy Aid and to Pull in Reins on Inquiry"* said that:

House members of both parties described an urgent need to change the culture of agencies that grew out of the long struggle with the Soviet Union.

"A community built on cold war priorities was ill prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century," said Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California. "On Sept. 11 everything and everyone changed."

But just days after the intelligence committee included in the bill an independent commission with subpoena powers that would be empowered to investigate the government's inability to forecast or prevent the attacks, Republicans moved to scale back the commission's powers and mission. Many said that as the nation braced for a long struggle against terrorism it was not a time to cast blame.

[Republican Porter] Goss [of Florida] proposed an amendment, which passed by voice vote, to strip the commission of subpoena powers and the right to grant immunity, and change its focus to an examination of structural impediments to the collection, analysis and sharing of intelligence information....Mr. Goss said that by looking forward to how procedures could be changed, the commission would "focus on the future" and "get away from the blame game." His amendment prompted the first partisan exchanges of the debate.

Democrats, who offered their own amendment, continued to push for a commission that would examine the events leading up to Sept. 11 and the failure to stop the attacks. They also objected to restricting membership to people with backgrounds in the government agencies under scrutiny.

"It is not about finger-pointing," said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the senior Democrat on the intelligence committee. "Unless we know how we got to where we are now, it seems it will be more difficult to prevent these acts of terrorism."

But the Democrats did not push the dispute to a recorded vote.

Why the Democrats didn't "push the dispute to a recorded vote", I don't know. What I do know, however, is that it sounds an awful lot like it was Porter Goss and the Republicans, at least in the House, who were fighting the idea of looking for answers back before 9/11. Attempts to take away the commission's subpoena powers were also a GOP initiative.

On the Senate side, Democrat Joe Lieberman said an inquiry "ought to tell the president and us to the best of their ability what went wrong, so we can make sure it never happens again." So the idea that Democrats were trying to squelch an investigation looks to be a false charge.

2.) Interestingly enough, both the Jane Harman and John McCain quotes Hannity cites come from the same New York Times article, "Lawmakers Seek Inquiry into Intelligence Failures"**. Hannity cut out the middle of the McCain quote. It's the part where he says that the purpose of an inquiry is "not in order to hang somebody at the yardarm or to disgrace anyone". That sounds vaguely like the sentiments expressed by Harman: a desire to avoid a "witch hunt".

Here's the "witch hunt" quote in context:

[Democratic Senator Joe] Lieberman said Sunday that members of Congress should not be the ones to carry out any inquiry. "It ought to be citizens," he said. "A lot of their meetings ought to be in private. But then they ought to tell the president and us to the best of their ability what went wrong, so we can make sure it never happens again."

McCain proposed that former Sens. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) and Gary Hart (D-Colo.) could run an inquiry. The two headed an earlier commission on national security that had warned that the nation was ill-prepared to face the terrorist threat of the new century.

Many lawmakers on the intelligence committee, however, argue that this is precisely their role and their duty. "Farming this out to other groups, I think, is inappropriate," Harman said. "I think we should do it in private and public."

Aware of how explosive the subject could become, she added, "We don't need a witch hunt now, or certainly not next year in an election year."

I think her point was the same as McCain's: In the wake of 9/11, looking for someone to make a scapegoat out of would be counterproductive to the mission at hand (i.e., getting the intel community on the right track). And when she said "[w]e don't need a witch hunt now", the "now" she was referring to was just over a month after September 11th, with the rubble still smouldering and the memory of the attacks fresh in everyone's heads. Definitely not a time for partisanship. I'm assuming that a desire to avoid "finger-pointing" is one reason why she is suggesting that some meetings be held in private. I also think that when taken in context, it's obvious that Harman was not objecting to an investigation, merely arguing over what form the investigation should take.

The insinuation that she fears what an investigation would turn up and therefore labels it a "witch hunt" in order to pre-emptively discredit it's findings was a distortion of the quote's true meaning.

3.) How does Hannity's assertion that Bush "and his team also made it clear that determining the causes of America's security failures and finding and remedying its weak points would be central to their mission" hold up to scrutiny? Not well.

First, there was going to be a joint House-Senate committee investigation. According to the CNN article "Bush asks Daschle to limit Sept. 11 probes":

President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN.

The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation.

He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry that some lawmakers have proposed, the sources said.

Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request.

"The vice president expressed the concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the effort in the war on terrorism," Daschle told reporters....Although the president and vice president told Daschle they were worried a wide-reaching inquiry could distract from the government's war on terrorism, privately Democrats questioned why the White House feared a broader investigation to determine possible culpability.

This request to Daschle is also mentioned by John Dean in his book "Worse than Watergate". Here's a passage where Dean offers his ideas as to why the Administration wanted to limit the investigations:

Given the dimensions of the government's failure, it was inevitable that several congressional committees, in both the House and Senate, quickly expressed plans to investigate. But this was exactly what Cheney wanted to avoid. With the Democrats in control of the Senate and the Republicans in control of the House, the White House had only partial control over Congress. Working behind the scenes, however, Cheney was able to do what a White House does when it does not want to be investigated - stop the process by jamming the gears of government.

Both Bush and Cheney spoke with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in late January 2002 about the probes. The Washington Post reported that the "president said the inquiry should be limited to the House and Senate intelligence committees, whose proceedings are generally secret" and that Cheney told Daschle, "A review of what happened on September 11 would take the resources and personnel away from the effort in the war on terrorism." It was not a viable excuse to forestall an investigation. When they failed to block the congressional inquiry, Bush and Cheney next used their political influence to control it.

Cheney employed well-proven tactics....First Daschle and then the House Republican leadership agreed (out of concern for "national security") to permit only the intelligence committees to investigate 9/11. Then to further limit those inquiries and prevent separate investigations by the House and Senate intelligence committees, an "unprecedented" (only because Democrats controlled one house of Congress, Republicans the other) joint committee was formed by combining the two committees. With thirty-seven members constituting the joint inquiry, the impact of the investigation was immediately weakened. Cheney understood that all members of such a high-profile undertaking would jealously seek to be involved, which dilutes the effort. For example, the time allotted to any single member for questioning witnesses must be limited, so everyone gets his turn, and the staff cannot assist three dozen plus members as it can a few. And reaching agreement on anything is difficult with such expanded membership, not to mention mixing the House and Senate together. In short, such large joint committees are remarkably cumbersome and poor at investigations, and for that reason they are rarely used....Finally, since all the information was controlled by the executive branch (i.e., the White House) and much of it subject to national security classification, Bush and Cheney could - and did - control what would be provided to the joint inquiry. The committee would get only what Bush and Cheney wanted it to get.

...The White House took an unprecedented stance in refusing to permit either Don Rumsfeld, as secretary of defense, or Colin Powell, as secretary of state, from testifying about matters relating to pre-9/11 counterterrorism activities. ("Worse than Watergate, pages 111 - 113)

The results from the joint committee***:

One panelist, Tim Roemer, a Democrat who just retired from Congress, complained in a statement he issued last month as a member of the House-Senate panel that the congressional probe suffered because such officials as Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Condoleezza Rice "were not questioned directly about issues related to the Sept. 11 attacks."...Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, a key architect of the legislation forming the commission, said the Bush Administration "slow-walked and stonewalled" the House-Senate inquiry.

A New York Times article on the congressional committee titled "White House Drags Its Feet On Testifying At 9/11 Panel"* seems to back up McCain's comments. In this case Sen. Richard Shelby, another Republican committee member, is quoted:

But Senator Shelby also warned that the committee was running out of time to finish its job, and indicated that he believes Bush administration officials have delayed cooperating fully, knowing it has a deadline to meet.

"We were told that there would be cooperation in this investigation, and I question that," he said. He added that he believes that the joint panel may run out of time, and that an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks may be needed to fill in the gaps.

Next up, the independent 9/11 Commission. To again quote John Dean:

Because of the lack of White House cooperation with the joint inquiry, the families of 9/11 victims began lobbying Congress to create an independent commission, with subpoena power, to investigate 9/11, even before the congressional effort had been completed. Bush and Cheney, of course, objected. ("Worse than Watergate, page 113)

The Administration's treatment of the independent commission is described in "Administration Faces Subpoenas From 9/11 Panel"****:

The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks [Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey,] said that the White House was continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he was prepared to subpoena the documents if they were not turned over within weeks....

Mr. Kean's comments on Friday came as another member of the commission, Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, became the first panel member to say publicly that the commission could not complete its work by its May 2004 deadline and the first to accuse the White House of withholding classified information from the panel for purely political reasons.

"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here," he said in an interview in Washington. "It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents - it's disgusting." [NOTE: This sounds very similar to Sen. Shelby's comments above regarding the congressional committee.]

He said that the White House and President Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted."

Interviews with several other members of the commission show that Mr. Kean's concerns are widely shared on the panel, and that the concern is bipartisan.

Slade Gorton, a Republican member of the panel who served in the Senate from Washington from 1982 to 2000, said that he was startled by the "indifference" of some executive branch agencies in making material available to the commission. "This lack of cooperation, if it extends anywhere else, is going to make it very difficult" for the commission to finish its work by next May, he said.

Timothy J. Roemer, president of the Center for National Policy in Washington and a former Democratic member of the House from Indiana, said that "our May deadline may, in fact, be jeopardized - many of us are frustrated that we're still dealing with questions about document access when we should be sinking our teeth into hearings and to making recommendations for the future."

Congress would need to approve an extension if the panel requested one, a potentially difficult proposition given the reluctance of the White House and many senior Republican lawmakers to see the commission created in the first place.

"If the families of the victims weighed in - and heavily, as they did before - then we'd have a chance of succeeding," said Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was an important sponsor of the legislation creating the commission. He said that, given the "obfuscation" of the administration in meeting document requests, he was ready to pursue an extension "if the commission feels it can't get its work done."

Sadly, I could go on. Remember how hard it was to get Condi Rice to testify under oath after Richard Clark's testimony? They claim they have their reasons (national security, for example), but the result, nevertheless, is that the Bush Administration's actions (or lack of action) have hampered efforts by the 9/11 commission to "determin[e] the causes of America's security failures and [find] and [remedy] its weak points" and this runs counter to Hannity's claim. Hannity, once again, is wrong.

4.) When Hannity said "[o]ther Republicans concurred" with Bush, did he mean that they concurred with Bush on just an investigation or was he also including the previous statement about hunting down the guilty parties, too? Hannity said that Bush "made it clear that his first priority would be to hunt down the evildoers and bring them to justice". Was there an insinuation that the Democrats didn't concur? Just in case there was, here's a rebuttal:

In a statement on September 12, 2001, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat and a liberal, said that "[t]he world should know that the members of both parties, in both houses, stand united in this: the full resources of our government will be brought to bear ...in hunting down those responsible, and those who may have aided or harbored them."

What about a commitment to defending America? Were the Democrats on board? In the October 22 article Hannity cited, in addition to the "witch hunt" remark, Jane Harman is also quoted as saying: "Protecting against the next waves [of terror attacks] is job No. 1, job No. 2 and job No. 3." So, it wasn't just the GOP that concurred with the president.

* * *

I think that at this point it's pretty clear that Hannity's assertions about liberal Democrats, as a rule, being against investigating the intelligence community until it was politically advantageous (whenever that would have been) are false.

We're working backwards, so the next assertion to tackle is if Clinton refused to recognize terrorism for what it was (and thus effectively helped bring about 9/11). We'll look at that next time.


*This is a "pay-per-view" article on the New York Times' web site.

**This is a free version of the New York Times article that appears on the Chicago Tribunes web site.

***This is a free version of a Time article that appears on the "SkyScraperSafety" web site.

****This is a free version of the New York Times article that appears on the "GlobalIssues.org" web site.

"Political Expediency"

Let's "Hannalyze" the section called "Political Expediency" from Chapter 8 ("I'm Pro-Choice") of "Let Freedom Ring".

Hannity starts off the section by saying:

A good rule of thumb to help determine the relative righteousness of one side in a debate over the other is to check their respect for openness and truth. If one side is less than forthcoming about its positions or tries to disguise it in euphemistic language, you ought to be suspicious about the virtue of their cause. Truth has nothing to hide. Let me illustrate the point with a little quiz. The answers might surprise you.

Okay, my take on this section is that he's going to show how people "hem and haw" around when they have an indefensible position. This chapter is on abortion, so I'm assuming the indefensible position to be discussed is the "pro-choice" position. But is it?

Hannity goes on to ask the first multiple choice question of his quiz:

Who said, "I am opposed to abortion and to government funding of abortions"?

a. Pat Robertson

b. Jerry Falwell

c. Bill Clinton

Of course, the answer turns out to be Bill Clinton. However, Hannity doesn't give an example of Clinton being less than forthcoming on the issue or using "euphemistic language" to explain his position, which he had just said was what we should look for to determine the "relative righteousness of one side". Hannity merely states that Clinton was once "pro-life" and is now so "pro-choice" that he vetoed a ban on partial birth abortions.

So Clinton flip-flopped. If memory serves, Jimmy Carter did, too. Hannity blames this on political expediency: Democrats with presidential aspirations changing positions to appeal to the party base.

Republicans have done it, too, though. Let me illustrate the point with a little quiz of my own. The answers might surprise you.

Which president, while still a governor signed the "Therapeutic Abortion Act of 1967", decriminalizing abortion in their state years before Roe v. Wade?

a. Bill Clinton

b. Jimmy Carter

c. Ronald Reagan

If you guessed C-Ronald Reagan, you'd be right. An article appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times recently described the bill Reagan signed as "allowing abortion in cases of rape and incest or to protect the mother's mental and physical health". It became law in California years ahead of Roe v. Wade. This is not to say that Reagan was enthusiastic about it. An article by Tom Curry on MSNBC.com said that "Reagan agonized over the measure, fearing that doctors would exploit a mental heath loophole to approve many abortions. But in the end he signed it."

Of course, back in those days, abortion wasn't the polarizing political issue that it has become. Fred Barnes said in a 2003 opinion piece that:

Even here [in the U.S.], full-throated conservative opposition to abortion is a relatively recent phenomenon....The most telling example of conservative indifference to the abortion issue [in decades past] occurred in California. At the time, Mr. Reagan was troubled by the passionate lobbying against the bill by Cardinal Francis McIntyre. But on the advice of two of his most conservatives advisers, Ed Meese and Lyn Nofziger, Mr. Reagan signed anyway. He persuaded himself that the measure would have little impact. Instead, it prompted a surge in abortions.

Apparently (when not looking through an ideological filter like a conservative would do today) Reagan, while not comfortable with what he saw as a "mental health loophole" in the bill, must have seen some merit in the other reasons justifying a "therapeutic abortion" (rape, incest or to protect the physical health of the mother) or he wouldn't have signed it. Again, whatever Reagan's reasons for signing the bill, whatever gave him doubts, he nevertheless did sign it. While some politicians talk about "a woman's right to choose", Reagan actually signed a bill into law that "prompted a surge in abortions" and later when running for president billed himself as "pro-life". At the end of this section, Hannity derides politicians who became "pro-choice" when they decided to run for president. But one statement stands out. Hannity says that he realizes "that at times politicians feel they have to adjust or change their positions to be successful. But it's completely reprehensible for them to do so with respect to a fundamental moral issue." However, didn't Reagan do an about-face in this case, or at least "adjust" his position as Hannity put it?

Hannity continues with his quiz:

Who once voted for civil rights legislation defining an unborn baby from the moment of conception as "a person"?

a. Jesse Helms

b. Henry Hyde

c. Al Gore

Of course, the answer is Al Gore. In this case, Hannity quotes a Michael Kramer article* in the March 7, 1988 edition of U.S. News and World Report where Gore's advisors admitted to trying to obfuscate Gore's long "pro-life" voting record (a position unpopular with the national party's base). Their strategy? "In effect, what we have to do is deny, deny, deny."

Again, jumping to the end of the section, Hannity sums thing up by saying that Gore and others in the Democratic Party either "never believed in their earlier stated moral position, or their lust for high office overpowered their moral convictions. In either case, their conduct is deceitful."

Okay, my turn again.

Who once said they opposed a pro-life amendment to the Constitution and favored leaving the abortion question up to a woman and her doctor?

a. Tom Daschle

b. Edward Kennedy

c. George W. Bush

Yep, it was Dubya who said it while running for Congress back in 1978. Here's the quote in context from an article by David Corn:

In 1978, Bush, a 31-year-old oilman, was seeking the Republican nomination in Texas' 19th Congressional District, which included Midland, Odessa and Lubbock. He was locked in a fierce battle with Jim Reese, a veteran campaigner and Reagan Republican. Days before the June 3 primary runoff, Bush was interviewed by a reporter for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Reese had attacked Bush for being cozy with liberal Rockefeller Republicans. In response, Bush listed conservative positions he held. "I'm not for the extension of the time to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment," he told the paper. "I feel the ERA is unnecessary. I'm not for the federal funding of abortions. I've done nothing to promote homosexuality in our society." But he went on to explain his view on abortion. The Avalanche-Journal reported: "Bush said he opposes the pro-life amendment favored by Reese and favors leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question. 'That does not mean I'm for abortion,' he said."

So, Bush opposed the main goal of the antiabortion movement, a constitutional amendment banning abortion, which the GOP had endorsed. Moreover, he echoed the language of abortion-rights supporters: Abortion is a matter best left to a woman and her doctor.

Now, let's go back to the main premise of this section where Hannity says that "[i]f one side is less than forthcoming about its positions or tries to disguise it in euphemistic language, you ought to be suspicious about the virtue of their cause." Hannity had said that a "good rule of thumb to help determine the relative righteousness of one side in a debate over the other is to check their respect for openness and truth", so let's see what the Bush campaign's response was when confronted by Corn:

On the day the story [of Bush's abortion statements from the 1978 campaign] was to go to press, I called the Bush press office at 8:00 a.m, Austin time. I explained to a press aide that I had unearthed this article and needed a reply from the campaign by noon. Someone will get back to you, she told me. Fifteen minutes later, she called and asked me to fax her the Lubbock newspaper article. I did so, and less than a hour later, the Bush campaign telephoned with a response.

"We consider this a misinterpretation," spokesman Dan Bartlett said. "He is prolife. He was always opposed to abortion." You're saying, I remarked, that the reporter got it wrong? "We're saying this is a misinterpretation," he repeated. He also pointed out that the relevant passage had not been a direct quote -- as if that diminished the article's accuracy.

I was disappointed. The campaign had resorted to the oldest dodge: the candidate was misquoted. But note the careful use of the word "misinterpretation." Clearly, someone at Bush HQ had decided this was the best noun to use. After all, it was less confrontational or incendiary than "damn foolish, idiotic mistake" -- which was actually what the campaign was accusing the reporter of committing. And note who was challenging the account. Bartlett did not note that the Bush press office had contacted Bush and that Bush categorically denied having expressed these pro-choice positions in 1978. Bartlett had used the royal "we." In doing so, he had distanced Bush from this reaction. It was not Bush who was calling the reporter incompetent. Instead, "we" were "considering" the 22-year-old newspaper account a "misinterpretation." Given the quickness of the response, I doubted that the press team had checked with the boss, who was then in Kennebunkport, before crafting this line.

Hmm. So, does this somehow reflect on the "relative righteousness" and "virtue" of Bush's side of the abortion debate? When both sides are using "euphemistic language" to explain their flip-flops, then doesn't Hannity's whole premise come into question?

Hannity insinuates that it's only the "pro-choice" candidates that need to bob and weave if they had changed their view from a "pro-life" stance. He even says on page 184 of "Let Freedom Ring" that: "I'm convinced that somewhere in the recesses of their souls,...pro-abortion leaders know that abortion is morally wrong, which is why they refuse to deal squarely with the issue." But the fact that the Bush camp dances around policy changes, too, just shows that "Political Expediency" is a two-way street. It's not so much that the Gore and Bush campaigns dodged out of a guilty conscience over abortion so much as an effort to disguise moves meant to appeal to their party's base.

*NOTE: I couldn't find an online copy of the Michael Kramer 1988 U.S. News article, so I have linked to an archived Salon.com article that has an extended quote from it.

**For those of you out there thinking that Bush may have had a change of heart on abortion after being born again. Here's another quote from the second David Corn article I quoted from in this section:

Bush could, as Gore eventually did, maintain that he experienced a change of heart. In fact, Bush has claimed he under went a religious awakening in the mid-1980s. So he possessed an easy way out: a new relationship with Jesus, a new position on abortion. Hard to argue wth that. But some die-hard anti-abortion activists have been wary of Bush, because he has refused to commit to appointing anti-abortion judges and to selecting an anti-abortion running mate. (They have a point. If you believe abortion is murder, then you ought to name judges who will curtail such wrongdoing -- and you damn well ought to be certain your number-two is not a supporter of a murderous practice.) Among these hardliners, news that Bush had once been pro-choice might reignite suspicions. And Bush's campaign had derided Gore for pulling a switch. Could Bush now confess to having done the same?

So it seems that Bush is suspected by many on the Christian Right of being a "closet pro-choicer"!

"The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy", Part 6 of 6

Executive Summary

Book: "Let Freedom Ring"
Chapter: "The Left vs. The CIA"
Section: "The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy"

Accusation 1: Liberals don't like the CIA

Hannity starts off the section with this:

"For decades, liberals and conservatives have been deeply divided over the importance of and the need for the CIA. Conservatives have long fought to strengthen and expand our intelligence services. Liberals have long sought to attack and undermine America's intelligence community." ("Let Freedom Ring" page 28-29)

Reality: There are many instances where the Right has attempted to undermine and discredit the CIA when it suited them. The Team B experiment in the 1970's was one such occasion. More recently, the neocons created the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon in order to bypass the CIA with regard to intel on Iraq.

There are also many instances where liberals have strengthened and expanded our intelligence services. One example is that the CIA was established by a liberal: Harry Truman.

So Hannity opens the section with a tremendous overgeneralization.

Accusation 2: Liberals want to dismantle the CIA just when we need it most.

Reality: Ted Gup, author of a book honoring CIA operatives who had fallen in the line of duty, wrote an article where he expressed his concern that today's CIA may not be up to the job of shaking off its Cold War mentality and might need to be replaced by a new agency in order for the U.S. to effectively fight terrorism.

Hannity distorts the article's meaning and mischaracterizes it as an attack on intelligence (if not the nation as a whole) and a call to dismantle the CIA and apparently replace it with nothing, effectively blinding the U.S. with regard to intel.

Accusation 3: Liberals have a visceral contempt for the CIA.

Reality: Two journalists apparently disagree with each other in magazine articles written seven years apart. The disagreement? Whether human intelligence (spies) or technical intelligence (satellites, phone taps, etc.) is the best way to gather information. This is offered as proof of liberal incoherence.

One article was essentially criticizing an economic espionage program the CIA was running (which turns out to have been opposed by many conservatives, as well). The fact that the author apparently feels that we have too many spies is supposedly evidence of a visceral contempt by liberals against the CIA.

But the worst thing in the section was a pretty obvious act of deception. The very same Ted Gup article that Hannity had just attacked for supposedly calling for the elimination of the CIA, is now being cited as a complaint that we need more spies! Hannity apparently tries to cover his tracks by referring to Gup's article as "an article...in its [Mother Jones'] January/February 2002 issue" instead of "the same article by Ted Gup I just cited in the previous paragraph as an example of a call for getting rid of our most important intelligence organization."

Accusation 4: Liberals mocked a prescient CIA's warnings about catastrophic terrorism (read: 9/11) and anthrax attacks on Washington.

Reality: Actually, the article Hannity cites defines "catastrophic terrorism" as an attack with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons causing mass casualties. An attack of the 9/11 variety, while massive, would fall under the "conventional terrorism" label.

The anthrax issue wasn't even brought up by the CIA, but rather then-Defense Secretary William Cohen. Author Peter Pringle was stating that Cohen exaggerated when describing the potency of weaponized anthrax while testifying before a Senate committee (NOTE: Pringle did NOT say that such an attack couldn't happen).

Probably the greatest irony of this particular section is that most of the politicos criticized in the Pringle article for overstating the threat of catastrophic terrorism were members of the Clinton Administration (including Clinton himself), whom Hannity had accused earlier in his book of turning a "blind eye" to the terror threat. Hannity even starts off his attack on the Pringle article by defending former CIA Director John Deutch while failing to note that he served under Clinton.

Accusation 5: Liberals attacked demands to strengthen intel after 9/11.

Reality: Author David Corn is accused of hostility toward the CIA and failing to see the need for a strong intel community; unmoved even after the murder of thousands on 9/11. Yet, Corn's article is simply cautioning the country to carefully consider the actions we take in response to 9/11 (this was confirmed by Corn via e-mail).

Conclusion

Hannity was setting out to provide examples that illustrate a vast conspiracy against the CIA in this section. I didn't see any evidence to support this. Having different views on how best to gather info (e.g., humint vs. techint) or use the intel community in the War on Terror doesn't make someone an opponent of the CIA or intelligence in general.

"The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy", Part 5 of 6

The final example Hannity cites in this section of "Let Freedom Ring" is an article written by David Corn shortly after 9/11.

Here's the excerpt:

In an October 1, 2001 essay, David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation and a Fox News contributor, attacked Republicans, conservatives, and "the national security cadre" for raising questions "of how best to bolster the military and intelligence establishment." He criticized former secretary of state James Baker "for blaming the Church Committee, the Senate panel that investigated CIA misdeeds in the 1970's for what happened: 'We went on a real witch hunt with our CIA...the Church Committee. We unilaterally disarmed in terms of intelligence.'" Corn also couldn't resist taking a shot at former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who "assailed rules on intelligence gathering that limit CIA interaction with known terrorists, and he asserted that the intelligence budget (about $30 billion) was 'too small.'"

Is it really all that surprising that a leading leftist like Corn would vilify the CIA and those who have tried to strengthen it? Of course not. Corn has never been a fan of the CIA. In 1994 he wrote a book entitled Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades, which the New York Times described as "a scorchingly critical account" of the career of a major agency figure.

What was surprising and disappointing-to me, at least-was that Corn's ideological disdain for the CIA runs so deep that even the murder of three thousand Americans didn't persuade him of our need for a strong intelligence agency. But frankly I shouldn't be surprised. This is part of the liberals' pattern of hamstringing various reform measures (such as efforts to bolster the CIA or reduce marginal tax rates to stimulate the economy), then blaming the other side for the inevitable consequences (security failures and recession, respectively). ("Let Freedom Ring" page 31-32)

Pretty harsh words. I read Corn's column to see what a "leading leftist" with an "ideological disdain for the CIA" would write in an essay for a "leading left-wing magazine" that's "long been a foe of the CIA" in order to "vilify" the Agency. Being the "leading leftist" of the "leading left-wing magazine" would put David Corn towards the outer reaches of the political spectrum, I would think, so this is probably some pretty hardcore stuff that he wrote. Let's have a look:

1.) Corn is first accused of having "attacked Republicans, conservatives, and 'the national security cadre" for raising questions "of how best to bolster the military and intelligence establishment.'"

Here's the quote in context:

The issue for [the national security hawks] is not what causes such unimaginable actions [as 9/11]. On Day One did you hear anyone--in an attempt to understand, not justify, the horror--ask, Why would someone want to commit this evil act? Or note that in this globalized age, US policy--its actions and inactions overseas (justified or not)--can easily lead to consequences at home? No, the national security cadre, out in force, mainly raised questions of how best to bolster the military and intelligence establishment.

Corn is essentially saying that if we hope to defeat the terrorists, wouldn't it be wise to determine the root causes of the 9/11 attacks?

The oft-quoted general, Sun Tzu, once said:

If you know yourself and know your enemy, you will not fear a 100 battles. If you know yourself, but do not know your enemy, for each battle you win, you'll have a defeat. If you do not know yourself and do not know your enemy, you'll never win a battle.

Simply saying you enemy attacked you because they are "evil" is just that: simple. Attacking blindly or, worse yet, based on false assumptions about the enemy could be inviting disaster.

2.) As far as criticizing Baker and Gingrich, Corn was simply describing their media offensive (Baker blamed intel failures on the Church Committee and Gingrich cited inadequate funding).

He goes on to describe how not everyone in the "national security cadre" was so quick to defend the CIA:

Some hawks and others [criticized] US intelligence for failing to detect the [9/11] plot. [One such hawk was] Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism expert at the Congressional Research Service, [who] said, "How nothing could have been picked up is beyond me--way beyond me. There's a major, major intelligence failure, specially since the [previous] Trade Center bombing produced such an investigation of the networks and so much monitoring."

Corn continues by saying "[n]o doubt, there will be official inquiries [into intelligence failures]. But the knee-jerk goal for most of the inquirers will be additional funds for the intelligence community and the Pentagon. The spies will defend their actions and plead, if only our hands were not tied, if only we had more money." Some will no doubt see that as an attack on the intel hawks and the CIA, but consider this: why is it that when schools are failing, increasing their funding is derided by some as "rewarding failure" and "throwing money at the problem", yet when it comes to intelligence, it is seen as the only rational solution and questioning it is to attack it?

Hannity himself says on page 144 of "Let Freedom Ring" that:

[The] gains in student achievement we'd made in the 1950s and early 1960s...had long since been squandered by an educational bureacracy that no longer placed an emphasis on high standards and world-class achievement....Liberals say we're not spending enough money to solve the problem. But that's simply not true. We've invested hundreds of billions of dollars in "reforming" our public schools over the past two decades, and we're spending more today than at any time in our history....The question isn't whether we're spending enough money. We are. The question is whether we're seeing dramatically improved results as a result of our investment. The painful truth is, we aren't. In fact, the results have been disastrous.

Hannity says repeatedly in Chapter 7, "Setting Parents Free", that he considers children's educations vital to our country's survival (just like intel, I would assume). So questioning the strategy of simply increasing spending on education or intelligence doesn't make you an opponent of either. Just as asking the question, "how did we get to this point?" doesn't make you an apologist.

So when Hannity says, "Is it really all that surprising that a leading leftist like Corn would vilify the CIA and those who have tried to strengthen it? Of course not." It's pretty obvious that he either missed the point or didn't read the article. Corn may simply have a different idea of the best strategy for strengthening our intelligence.

3.) Besides questioning the hawks' strategy, Corn also points out that some of the tactics that they put forward may not be as effective as they might think.

Corn says:

[In additon to calls for more money,] the operating assumptions at work deserve close assessment. Human intelligence [(advocated by John McCain, Orrin Hatch and Bob Graham in Corn's column)] against closed societies and secret outfits has long been a difficult, almost impossible, endeavor. Hurling money at it is likely no solution [my emphasis]. During the Vietnam War, when resources were unlimited, the CIA failed spectacularly at humint, essentially never penetrating the inner sanctums of the enemy. Its record of infiltrating the Soviet government was unimpressive (and the same goes for China, Cuba and other targets). As for lifting existing restrictions [on whom the CIA can recruit as informants], imagine the dilemmas posed if the CIA actually managed to recruit and pay murderous members of terrorist groups. What would the reaction be, if one of the September 11 conspirators turns out to have had a US intelligence connection?

Is this what Hannity means by vilifying the CIA? "Vilify" is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as "To make vicious and defamatory statements about." If anything, statements by Hannity such as "Corn's ideological disdain for the CIA runs so deep that even the murder of three thousand Americans didn't persuade him of our need for a strong intelligence agency" sound more vilifying than Corn's "the operating assumptions at work deserve close assessment".

Bottom line again, most everyone wants strong intelligence and agree that 9/11 underscored that need. We all have the same goal, just different ideas of how to get there.

4.) Hannity says that "Corn has never been a fan of the CIA. In 1994 he wrote a book entitled Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades, which the New York Times described as 'a scorchingly critical account' of the career of a major agency figure."

In Corn's bio on The Nation's web site, the quote goes:

The Washington Monthly called Blond Ghost "an amazing compendium of CIA fact and lore." The Washington Post noted that this biography "deserves a space on that small shelf of worthwhile books about the agency." The New York Times termed it "a scorchingly critical account of an enigmatic figure who for two decades ran some of the agency's most important, and most controversial, covert operations."

Which "controversial, covert operations" did this "major agency figure" Ted Shackley run? In an article Corn wrote about Shackley for TomPaine.com he said that:

In the 1950s, he served in Berlin, a center for espionage, running agents across the Iron Curtain. Agency efforts at that time were generally abysmal; most agents the CIA sent to spy on East European were captured or turned into double agents. In the early 1960s, he was in charge of the CIA's massive station in Miami, which failed to penetrate Fidel Castro?s government but conducted sabotage operations against Cuba and occasionally supported cockamamie assassination efforts (some using mob connections) against Castro.

Shackley went on to become chief of station in Laos and managed a secret war in which U.S.-encouraged tribal forces fought against the North Vietnamese. The tribes ended up decimated -- in part because Shackley and others pushed them to do what was best for the U.S. military not themselves. Then Shackley was chief of station in Vietnam, where the agency never succeeded in collecting much valuable intelligence on the Viet Cong and where it was involved in the controversial Phoenix program, a supposed intelligence-gathering operation in which U.S.-assisted South Vietnamese units sometimes assassinated rather than apprehended their targets.

After years in the field, Shackley rose through the ranks at headquarters, leading the Western Hemisphere division (and overseeing the CIA's operations in Chile to overthrow Salvador Allende, the democratically-elected president) and then heading the East Asia division, which miscalled the fall of Saigon. In 1976, when George Bush the elder was CIA director, Shackley was named the second in command of the CIA's clandestine service. And he was a contender for higher posts in the CIA -- perhaps the director's chair -- until his hard-to-explain relationship with Edwin Wilson, a CIA-operative-turned-rogue-arms dealer -- who illegally peddled weapons to Libyan dictator Moammar Qadaffi -- hit the headlines.

In the mid-1980s, Shackley played a cameo role in the Iran-contra affair. He engaged in back-channel talks with a disreputable Iranian wheeler-dealer who suggested U.S. hostages held in Iran might be released in return for cash or weapons. Shackley indirectly passed this information to a little-known White House aide named Oliver North.

Who were Corn's sources for this "scorchingly critical account"? According to Publishers Weekly, the book is "[b]ased on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews with former CIA officers". It is these same CIA officers that provided Corn with a glimpse into what the Washington Monthly called "an amazing compendium of CIA fact and lore". Back to the TomPaine.com article:

When I was interviewing CIA veterans for my book, I asked them about Shackley's rise and the internal culture of the agency. Several said that what counted was not always results but whether it appeared that an officer was doing all he could. After all, the missions at hand were often nearly impossible. Penetrate the VC? Infiltrate Castro's circle or the Kremlin or the inner sanctum of Beijing? If no one could do that, Shackley could not be held accountable for falling short as well.

Accountability has not been a dominant value within the CIA over the years. That was evident in the case of Aldrich Ames, the CIA mole who left clues right and left that he was working for the Soviets yet escaped detection for years. It is somewhat understandable that members of a covert community tend to be protective of one another. But the absence of strict accountability in this ends-justifies-the-means bureaucracy is cause for concern. Especially now that intelligence agencies -- with their information -- gathering responsibilities -- are the first line of defense against Al Qaeda and Osama wannabes.

When the congressional intelligence committees released their final 9/11 report..., Senator Richard Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate panel, issued a dissent. It was more critical [my emphasis] than the majority report. He noted, for example, the CIA's "chronic failure, before 9/11, to share with other agencies the names of known Al Qaeda terrorists who it knew to be in the country allowed at least two such terrorists the opportunity to live, move and prepare for the attacks without hindrance.... Sadly, the CIA seems to have concluded that the maintenance of its information monopoly was more important than stopping terrorists."

But Shelby was angrier about the lack of accountability within the intelligence establishment. "It is disappointing to me," he wrote, that the majority report "has not seen fit to identify any of the individuals whose decisions left us so unprepared." He added, "Wise presidents dispose of their faltering generals under fire." Yet Bush has embraced Tenet and the CIA rather than hold anyone responsible for the pre-9/11 intelligence screw-ups -- and the intelligence committees, with the exception of Shelby, have not protested.

With remarks like "the CIA seems to have concluded that the maintenance of its information monopoly was more important than stopping terrorists", Shelby sounds more "scorchingly critical" of the CIA in general than Corn's account of one operative. And Shelby's a Republican. Furthermore, institutional issues like lack of accountability, as well as a resistance to sharing information with other agencies are not the product of underfunding and won't be fixed by a bigger budget.

4.) Corn warned against some people taking advantage of 9/11 to advance SDI:

Do not be surprised if the national security establishment even tries to accelerate its push for Star Wars II before the debris is cleared. The event tragically demonstrated the limits of a national missile defense system. (And consider how much worse the day would have been had the evildoers smuggled a pound of uranium onto any of the hijacked flights.) But the loudest theme in American politics--perhaps the only audible theme--in the time ahead will be the quest for security.

I did a quick search on Google and came up with lots of examples of just such a thing. One such article was by neo-con Kenneth Adelman and dated 10/24/2001. Adelman says that "President Bush, showing real leadership and foresight, preaches how missile defense is essential to winning America’s war against terrorism."

He goes on to say that:

[O]pponents of missile defense have been wrong in one sense, but they have been quite right in another. They were wrong that America's today foes couldn't match the degree of evil of Hitler, Stalin, or Mao Tse-Tung. September 11 showed what evil rogue leaders can do. Nonetheless, these critics were right to point out that our foes can use other terrorist methods - in this case, turning American airliners into guided missiles.

But next time it could be actual missiles falling on American or European cities. Imagine how much easier it would be for America's attackers to buy a long-range missile or two from North Korea or Iraq, arm it with nuclear or chemical weapons fire it at America`s still defenseless shores.

Why make it easy for America's enemies? Why not shield America and its allies from one of the easiest means of inflicting the greatest horror?

Is this really the best way "to bolster the military and intelligence establishment" to fight terrorism?

5.) Corn's last point was that since our leaders were urging us to show our resolve after 9/11 by continuing with our lives as normal (which he called a "nostrum"), then likewise, they need to try and go on governing without allowing 9/11 to affect debates on the issues of the day.

Unfortunately, that's not the way it works. Though we try to go back to normal, acts of extremism aren't easily put aside and "extremism begets extremism."

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I recently sent an e-mail to David Corn and asked him to read today's excerpt from "Let Freedom Ring" and get his opinion. Here's the complete text of his response:

Mitch Krannert: I [read your article] and didn't see it as an attack on the CIA or intelligence at all. Rather, I saw it as a call for the country to carefully consider its response to 9/11 and not simply accept the assertions of the intel hawks.

David Corn: I think you have it right. I'd be happy if anyone who read that portion of Sean's book would read the original piece. To any sentient person, it would be obvious that I was not attacking the need for strong and effective intelligence. I was merely noting that the simplistic nostrums of the hawks deserved examination and scrutiny.."

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That was the last of this section's examples of supposed liberal hostility towards the CIA. Next time, we'll wrap it up for this section with some conclusions.

Later,

Mitch