The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

352 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
their allies in the West.
American embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania were
bombed that summer. Next
came the millennium plot,
inadvertently foiled at Port
Angeles. The deadly attack
in the fall of 2000 on the
USS Cole, a Navy destroyer
deployed to Yemen, was a
full-fledged al-Qaida operation
that galvanized bin
Laden’s recruitment efforts.
With multiple wakeup
calls, why didn’t the
Bush Administration have
a more aggressive counter-
terrorism strategy?
“ . . . You say nothing
was done. A great deal was
done,” Rumsfeld insisted.
“The Cole Commission
did a good job. They made
a whole series of recommendations
and the De-
Gorton and Bob Kerrey listen to testimony from
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at
a 9/11 Commission hearing on April 8, 2004, in
Washington, D.C. AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
partment of Defense implemented those recommendations. In my view,
that is not nothing. . . . And the other thing that was happening is that
the policy was being developed to deal with al-Qaida and the country that
was harboring them. . . .”
Gorton said the commission’s understanding was that the policy had
three parts. “First, there would be one more diplomatic attempt with the
Taliban to see if they would give up Osama bin Laden. Second, we would
begin to arm the Northern Alliance and various tribes in Afghanistan to
stir up trouble there and hope that perhaps they could capture Osama bin
Laden. And third, if those didn’t work, there would be a military response
that would be substantial, much more than . . . lobbing cruise missiles
into the desert. But as we understand it, this was seen as a three-year
program, if we had to go to the third stage. My question is, Given World
Trade Center one, given the embassy bombings, given the millennium
plot, given the Cole, given the declaration of war by Osama bin Laden,