|
|
124 of 138 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Large implications, September 24, 2002
If you've read Steven Emerson's <i>American Jihad</i>, Ellen Harris' <i>Guarding the Secrets</i>, Robert Baer's <i>See No Evil</i> and keep current with the work of the Middle East Media Research Institute and <i>Middle East Quarterly</i>, Ledeen's book won't provide many revelations. You'll know that Sunni and Shi'ite Islamists work together in a worldwide terror network, Wahhabi Saudis finance radical Muslim groups worldwide, Iran's mullahs have long linked with Yassir Arafat, and terrorist Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other radical leaders operate openly in mosques and schools throughout the U.S. And that FBI doctrine called "criminal predicate" requires evidence of plans or criminal action before agents can aggressively pursue terrorists.But Ledeen's new information is a bombshell: In 1996, the Clinton administration rejected not one, but three, Sudanese offers to watch bin Laden, provide his connections to Hizbollah and Hamas--or turn him over to U.S. authorities. In 1997, the U.S. again refused the Sudan's offer to nail bin Laden, even preventing transfer of crucial data to Britain. Only in the late 2001 did the U.S. get the information. He ties together many crucial strands of evidence--including damning new ones--into a coherent piece. Ledeen shows that the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on America were the result of bureaucracy gone to seed. The Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations all lost the will to pursue basic security measures in the U.S. and internationally. Many reasons dictated that the U.S. get serious about terrorism after the Ayatollah Khomeini's violent overthrow of Iran's Shah in 1979. But Ledeen notes that things got especially dicey under Clinton's watch. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed, a plot was uncovered to bomb the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, Oklahoma City was bombed, explosives were stopped en route to Los Angeles before the millennium, two embassies were bombed in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole was bombed in Aden. Ledeen shows, however, that Clinton sat on his hands. Advice from Treasury Secretary Rubin, George Stephanopoulos, Madeline Albright and others scuttled several anti-terror measures--such as shutting bank accounts of terrorist front organizations, giving terrorist watch lists to airline security men, or linking visa expirations to the duration of drivers' licenses. Rather, Clinton fell prey to the false notion that terrorism could be controlled via peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the Clinton administration "inverted the real problem," Ledeen rightly concludes. For the conflict has full support from "the terror masters in Syria, Iran, and Iraq" and is "generously funded by Saudi Arabia." The terrorist war against Israel, Ledeen shows, is a war against an American presence in the Middle East. "Peace could not be achieved without dealing with Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia," he notes. Straining "to avoid conflict" with these terrorist states at all costs, Ledeen reports, Clinton inadvisably shuttered the 1995 investigation of Islamic terrorist charities, which would have exposed the full extent of Saudi complicity in global money laundering. In northern Virginia alone, the investigation had already "turned up more than $1 billion in Saudi contributions to four interlinked Islamic 'foundations, institutes, and charities'." Closing them then, former federal prosecutor John Loftus charges, would have prevented millions of dollars from funding hundreds of suicide terror attacks. In March 2002, George W. Bush shut down the same charities that were investigated in 1995. The U.S. had tied itself in a tight knot, writes Ledeen. The FBI could not keep newspaper clippings or files on suspected and known terrorists. The CIA was prohibited by Executive Order #11905 from talking to them. After 1976, CIA agents were not allowed even to associate with assassins--which meant it could not recruit terrorists, whose primary business was, after all, assassination. William Casey's CIA successfully skirted that executive order, Ledeen reports, under the direction of Middle East case officer Duane Clarridge, whose men caused the implosion of Abu Nidal's terrorist ring. But Casey died and Clarridge was purged in the Iran-Contra scandal. The CIA grew so bureaucratic, Ledeen reports, that the Tower Commission (headed by former Senators John Tower and Edmund Muskie and General Brent Scowcroft) reported the name of a valuable Iranian mole--who was predictably murdered shortly thereafter. Worse, a closed 1979 Congressional hearing caused the CIA to dangerously downgrade the PLO from a "terrorist" to "moderate" organization. Nevermind, Ledeen notes, that Yassir Arafat's PLO worked "hand in glove with Islamic radicals like the Muslim Brotherhood" (of which he and his father were both members), radicals in Egypt and Syria, and terrorist groups like Germany's Baader-Meinhof and Italy's Red Brigades. It had secretly figured "in Ayatollah Khomeini's seizure of power in Iran." Arafat trained the hardcore Iranian Revolutionary Guards, created the Abu Nidal group, which carried out his terror instructions, and made global terrorism a force to reckon with. He was (and is) key to the formation and function of the international terror network. Ledeen suggests that Soviet CIA and FBI moles Aldrich Ames, Harold Nicholson and Robert Hanssen successfully deflected implicating the Soviets in international terrorism. In 1985, he writes, the CIA turned down KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin's offered treasure trove of data. He had hand-copied thousands of KGB documents--including names of thousands of Soviet agents working as Western politicians, journalists, moviemakers, military officers and diplomats--and Soviet connections to global terrorist leaders. This gave Al Qaeda a gestation period free from scrutiny, Ledeen reports, and cost the CIA several opportunities to meet with Ahmad Shah Massoud in northern Afghanistan. In Iraq, Ledeen writes, "one could fill a small volume with accounts of failed [CIA] coup attempts." The U.S. can defeat Islamist terrorists, Ledeen concludes in a closing 60-page chapter, by establishing Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress in Iraq's "no fly zone" and recognizing it as Iraq's legitimate government. It should target Syria, implicated in both the 1983 Hizbollah bombing of the Beirut embassy and recent support of Al Qaeda. And it should reassess the relationship with the Saudi Wahhabi royal family, who are "underwriting the terror masters" everywhere. The implications are huge. Alyssa A. Lappen
|
by Michael A. Ledeen
by Michael A. Ledeen
by George Crile
See all Editorial Reviews
