Aide:
By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer
March 24,
2004
WASHINGTON - Bill
Clinton (news
- web
sites) gave the CIA (news
- web
sites) "every inch of authorization that it asked for" to carry
out plans to kill Osama bin Laden (news
- web
sites), the former president's national security adviser testified
Wednesday, bluntly disputing claims that the spy agency lacked the authority it
needed.
"If there was any confusion down the ranks, it was never
communicated to me nor to the president and if any additional authority had
been requested I am convinced it would have been given immediately," Sandy
Berger said in nationally televised testimony before a bipartisan panel probing
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the worst in the nation's history.
Berger testified a few hours after the panel released a report
that said CIA officials, Director George Tenet among them, did not believe they
had the authority to assassinate the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network.
A subsequent decision to rely on local Afghan forces sharply reduced the
chances of his bin Laden's capture, the commission said.
Tenet, who preceded Berger in the witness chair, was not pressed
on the issue.
The CIA director, whose tenure has spanned both the
At the same time, he said unambiguously the nation should be
prepared for another attack.
"It's coming. They are still going to try and do it, and we
need to sort of -- men and women here who have lost their families have to know
that we've got to do a hell of a lot better," he said, in remarks that
elicited applause from members of the victims' families seated in the audience.
The hearings were remarkable by any account.
Secretaries of state and defense from the two administrations
testified on Tuesday, followed on a second day of hearings by senior officials
who served alongside them in a budding era of terrorism that finally struck
home two and a half years ago.
Less than eight months before a presidential election, political
jockeying was evident during the day.
Two Democrats on the
panel, former Sen. Bob Kerrey, and Richard Ben Veniste,
publicly lamented the refusal of the Bush administration to allow national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news
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sites) to testify in public.
For their part, some Republicans sought to pre-empt testimony
expected later in the day from Richard Clarke, a former top counter-terrorism
adviser and author of a new book sharply critical of President Bush (news
- web
sites).
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20040324/ap_on_re_us/sept_11_commission_18