Giuliani's 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

Center for American Progress. Posted June 28, 2007.

Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna and Matt Corley contributed to this report.

During a speech Monday at Pat Robertson's Regent University, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani indirectly blamed President Clinton for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Echoing arguments offered frequently by Bush administration officials, Giuliani claimed that Clinton treated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing "as a criminal act instead of a terrorist attack," which "emboldened other strikes" on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and Tanzania, and later on the USS Cole. "The United States government, then President Clinton, did not respond," Giuliani said. "Bin Laden declared war on us. We didn't hear it." The claim that Clinton "did not respond" to global terrorism during his administration is demonstrably and flagrantly false. (Giuliani himself knows this. Just last year, before he became a presidential candidate, he said, "The idea of trying to cast blame on Clinton [for the 9/11 attacks] is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don't think he deserves it.") Giuliani's fundamentally misguided approach to counterterrorism is evidenced not only by his dishonest smears of President Clinton, but by his embrace of the same national security strategy as President Bush, under whom global terrorism is rising, Osama bin Laden is resurgent, the Middle East is deeper in violent unrest, and the U.S. military is in the midst of a readiness crisis.

CLINTON'S TERRORISM RECORD: The Clinton administration's efforts to "thwart international terrorism and bin Laden's network were historic, unprecedented and, sadly, not followed up on." Richard Clarke, who served as counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II, detailed Clinton's counterterrorism record after Vice President Cheney claimed in 2004 that the United States had "no great success in dealing with terrorists" during the 1990s: "It's possible that the vice president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn't know about the successes in the 1990s," Clarke said. "There were many. The Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States, through military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States, through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert action program against al-Qaida," including military strikes against al Qaeda targets. Giuliani claims Clinton "did not respond" to bin Laden. In fact, Roger Cressy, former National Security Council director for counterterrorism, has written, "Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al Qaeda."

TERRORISM AS A CRIMINAL ACT: Giuliani's criticism that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was considered "a criminal act instead of a terrorist attack" shows a deeply flawed understanding of counterterrorism. In fact, the United States "has long regarded [terrorist] acts as criminal," according to the 9/11 Commission Staff Report. This practice continues under Bush; last year, for example, Bush introduced a plan to "improve national legal and regulatory frameworks to ensure appropriate criminal and civil liability" for nuclear terrorists. However, it was under Clinton that terrorism was first treated as a national security threat. The 1993 World Trade Center attack, which occurred one month after Clinton took office, "called attention to a new kind of terrorist danger." Not until July 1995 did the U.S. intelligence community identify this "new terrorist phenomenon" characterized by "loose affiliations of Islamist extremists" who were "more fluid and multinational than the older organizations." Clinton had already taken action. A June 1995 Presidential Decision Directive issued by Clinton for the first time emphasized concern about terrorism "as a national security issue," not just a matter of law enforcement. Clinton's directive declared that the United States saw "terrorism as a potential threat to national security as well as a criminal act and will apply all appropriate means to combat it." By 1997, U.S. intelligence confirmed "the existence of al Qaeda as a worldwide terrorist organization," and for the last three years of his presidency, Clinton "raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave."

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