This should have been a stink bomb of a story for this administration. It isn't going to be, probably. And it's worth a second look at the full, much longer AP original to try and figure out why. So, at the risk of being accused of "fisking":
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Officials: U.S. Slow on Bin Laden Drones
By TED BRIDIS and JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When President Bush took office in January 2001, the White House was told that Predator drones had recently spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times and officials were urged to arm the unmanned planes with missiles to kill the al-Qaida leader. But the administration failed to get drones back into the Afghan skies until after the Sept. 11 attacks later that year, current and former U.S. officials say.
(edit)
The disappearance in 2001 of U.S. Predators from the skies over Afghanistan is discussed in classified sections of Congress' report into pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures and is expected to be examined by an independent commission appointed by the president and Congress, officials said.
Not holding your breath? Me neither. For all the usual reasons, but especially because the AP buried what should have been the lead of their own story.
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Nearly a dozen current and former senior U.S. officials described to AP the extensive discussions in 2000 and 2001 inside the Clinton and Bush administrations about using an armed Predator to kill bin Laden. Most spoke only on condition of anonymity, citing the classified nature of the information. Two former national security aides also cite some of the discussion inside the Bush White House in a recent book they published on terrorism.
The officials said that within days of President Bush taking office in January 2001, his top terrorism expert on the National Security Council, Richard Clarke, urged National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to resume the drone flights to track down bin Laden, citing the successes of late 2000.
The drones were one component of a broader plan that Clarke, a career government employee, had devised in the final days of the Clinton administration to go after al-Qaida after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Clinton officials decided just before Christmas 2000 to forward the plan to the incoming Bush administration rather than implement it during Clinton's final days, the officials said.
Okay, you got that? Bush administration briefed by top terrorism guy, from previous administration, a career govt. employee, in January, 01.
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After Clarke's briefing in January, the drone plan was discussed again in late April by national security deputies and the test on the mock-up of bin Laden's home was conducted in July. A Bush administration official said Rice was generally supportive of the idea as part of a broader strategy.
At a White House meeting of Bush's national security principals on Sept. 4, 2001, senior officials discussed several ideas, including use of the drones, as they finalized a plan to accelerate efforts to go after al-Qaida amid signs of a growing threat of a domestic attack.
Among those present were Rice, CIA Director George Tenet, soon-to-be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Clarke, then Bush's anti-terrorism chief inside the White House.
You got that? When the Bush administration took office in January of 2001, it proceeded as if nothing done to counter the threat of Al Quada by the previous administration was worth consideration. It proceeded to ignore it, all of it, including the warnings from Clinton Security Advisors that Al Quada was an imminent threat. Unless you think that "broader strategy" Ms. Rice was insisting the Predator drones be part of refers to anything Clinton, rather than whatever plan emerged, eventually, from the Vice President's brand spanking new terrorism commission.
The story manages to avoid making that point clearly; the reporters are more interested in the drama of that lost moment in which Osama might have been struck down. And that’s the story Channel 4000 culls from the original, the story that CNN and MSNBC are already going with.
I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, not the way most people conceive of that word.
The story of exactly how far along the Clinton administration was, as it left office, in thwarting Osama Bin Laden and what decisions were made by whom in the Bush administration to ignore the Clinton efforts, or to pretend there hadn't been any, hasn't been told because it doesn't fit into the narrative the Washington press corps has signed off on; a "bought off" probably belongs in there somewhere.
Does anyone reading this really think that were Tim Russert to be presented with a memo signed by persons of such stature, say, as General Clark, Secretary of State Albright, Gary Hart, President Carter, or (fill in the blank), suggesting what questions this story of the predator drones journalists should want to ask representatives of the administration, that Russert would pay the least bit of attention?
Do you sometimes have the feeling that anyone who gets regular airtime takes a knightly vow never to notice, see, understand, and God forbid, mention that this administration doesn't know what the hell it's doing. Granted, it helps that what the administration does know, par all previously imagined excellence - is how to look as if it does, and as if what it's actually doing has some connection to what it claims it's doing.
What we do about this I don't yet have a ready answer to.
Knowledge of the task is a first step. Recognition precedes action. But we sure as hell need to hurry up and damn well figure it out.