Clinton's Secret Wars: The Evolution of a Commander in Chief - Hardcover

Sale, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031237366X ISBN 13: 9780312373665

Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

A popular yet polarizing force long after leaving office, Bill Clinton is still criticized by right-wingers as a president who was weak in his foreign policy. Veteran reporter Richard Sale takes us beneath partisan rhetoric and documents the learning curve of our nation’s 42nd President, showing his evolution as a strong leader on the world stage.

Using confidential sources in the administration itself, Sale reports on Clinton’s covert ops in such arenas as the Balkans and Middle East, revealing a leader who spearheaded the fight against Slobodan Milosevic, bombed Saddam Hussein, targeted Osama bin Laden, and prevented al-Qaeda from establishing a stronghold in the incendiary Balkans region. Ultimately, and revealingly, Clinton emerges at the end of his term in office as a tough-as-nails commander in chief in the same vein as Ronald Reagan. This “fly on the wall” look at a generation-defining leader provides an invaluable window into the presidency of Bill Clinton in the world arena.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

RICHARD SALE is an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist who has written for The Washington Post and San Francisco Examiner. Most recently, he served as a special correspondent for UPI for 5 years. He is the author of Traitors and The Blackstone Rangers. He is currently Intelligence Correspondent for Middle East Times. He lives in Stamford, Connecticut.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Clinton's Secret Wars

PART ONE

THE TRANSFORMATIONAL PRESIDENT

1

THE DILEMMAS OF LEADERSHIP

Summer daylight was fading outside the long, tall windows of the Lincoln Bedroom. Present were senior policymakers, gathered in the residence rather than the West Wing, because the residence has a side door through which cabinet members could enter without being spotted by the press. The mood in the room was gloomy and subdued.1 The White House serving staff was usually clad in their formal whites at such occasions, but this evening they had on somber, close-fitting black jackets. Their faces were grave. They moved silently among the senior officials, stopping now and then to bend a bit at the waist to politely extend silver trays full of tiny canapés, shrimp, and saucers of cocktail sauce. Few of the tense, unsmiling guests took anything to eat. Cocktails with gin, whiskey, or vodka were available but those who had a drink stuck to Diet Coke or club soda with cubes of ice. The air was tense. This meeting was not social, but top secret, and its agenda was a grim one.

President Bill Clinton was about to perform his first major act as the country's commander in chief: he was about to launch air strikes against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. It would be the first use of military force in Clinton's presidency.

It had begun with special assistant to the president Richard Clarke, a man of boundless energy who had a high forehead, thinning red hair, and hard, intense eyes. Every day those eyes fell on hundreds of intelligence reports, embassy messages, and translations from foreign media, forwarded to him from the White House Situation Room. It was on a Sunday in Junethat he spotted an item that froze his blood: an Arab-language newspaper in London was reporting that Kuwaiti police had foiled an assassination attempt by Iraq on the former U.S. president.2

Two months before, in April, former President George H. W. Bush had returned in a triumphant visit to Kuwait, the country where less than two years before, U.S.-led forces had routed formidable masses of Iraqi troops, sending them fleeing north in headlong panic. Bush had arrived in Kuwait City to receive an award from the Kuwaiti royal family and his reception had been hearty, tumultuous, and grateful. As far as anyone knew, the trip had gone off without incident.

Clarke was perplexed. He had been given no intelligence of the assassination attempt from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or even the Department of State. Clarke immediately picked up a secure phone and called the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, Ryan Crocker. Clarke asked Crocker if he had seen the item. Crocker said he hadn't and then chattered effusively about the exhilarating time Bush had had in Kuwait. And then suddenly a great light broke over Crocker. Surely, he asked, surely Clarke wasn't suggesting that he ask the Kuwaitis about the report of the plot? Clarke knew that under new rules a National Security Council staffer wasn't allowed to ask a U.S. ambassador to do anything, and after chatting a bit more, they ended the conversation.

But Crocker would hear a message even when it hadn't been said. On Monday, a sealed envelope lay on Clarke's desk. It was so sensitive that it could not be sent electronically from the Situation Room. Crocker had come through. There was no doubt--the Kuwaitis had foiled a scheme by Iraq to kill the former president. Clarke quickly called National Security Advisor Tony Lake, a brilliant, mild, bespectacled man who looked like a college professor. "Saddam tried to kill Bush," Clarke said.

Crocker had startled the Kuwaitis by saying that the United States already knew of the plot. He startled them even more when he demanded that the United States be given access to the prisoners. There were sixteen in all, but only two were Iraqis. Saddam's plan was chillingly savage. The Iraqis had been recruited in Basra and given a Toyota Land Cruiser, then driven into Kuwait thanks to a whiskey-smuggling ring. The Land Cruiser had been fitted to a bomb, and then the vehicle was to be driven to a place near the university in Kuwait City.3 The bomb would be exploded when Bush's motorcade went past. It had enough explosive power to level four city blocks. It probably would have worked, except for bad luck. The jittery driver of the Land Cruiser had gotten mixed up in a traffic accident, and Kuwaiti police discovered the bomb and began to make arrests.

Soon, teams from the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service were on their way to Kuwait. Clinton quickly demanded two parallel investigations, one by law enforcement, the other by U.S. intelligence. The U.S. team members were far from displaying the slightest trace of enthusiasm. Everyone knew Saddam capable of any kind of human meanness, a creature capable of killing the man who had humiliated him before all of the world, yet, in a surprising display of inertia, the team members felt they were wasting time on a wild-goose chase. Iraq's secret police operated with the greatest stealth and cunning. How likely was it, the U.S. investigators scoffed, that a Toyota Land Cruiser could be impudently driven all the way in over the Kuwait-Iraq border, packed full of explosives, and allowed parking in an area close enough to the route of President Bush's motorcade? Such a plan was clearly preposterous. It was true the Kuwaiti officials had confessions from the suspects, but who would put any faith in those, especially since they were likely the result of torture or coercion?

But as the U.S. operatives, known as spooks, began interviewing suspects, their attitude drastically altered. They were both amazed and disconcerted by the degree of technical detail the suspects divulged about the makings of the bomb. Finally, after hours of careful interviews, the U.S. forensic experts were led in to see the bomb itself. They went over it with great care, like doctors examining a patient, until they had no more doubts. The bomb's construction bore the same distinctive signature of other Iraqi murder bombs they'd seen. As Secretary of State Warren Christopher said, "It was the forensic equivalent of a DNA match."4

On June 23, National Security Advisor Lake, whose appearance belied his energy and depth of insight, had his usual Wednesday lunch with Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, a loquacious, disorganized former congressman, along with Secretary of State Christopher, laconic by temperament. Lake called Clarke. Clarke and one person from the State Department and Department of Defense were to develop a plan, a checklist for targets of retaliation.

The pressing question was what course of action should the United States take now that it had solid proof of a direct link to Iraq? A focused, frowning Clinton had to decide. Should the United States wait for the verdict of the Kuwaiti courts? Beyond any other consideration, a message of unmistakeable menace had to be sent to Saddam. Would the death of the suspects by hanging be enough to send a deterring message to Saddam? Air strikes would. But should the United States do it unilaterally or obtain prior approval from the U.N. Security Council?

Secretary of State Christopher came to play a prominent part in theoutcome. The decision was made to strike unilaterally. As Christopher put the case, "A plot to kill a former president was an attack on our nation." Working from a target list developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA, Christopher argued that, out of concern for legal grounds, the strike should be limited to hitting one facility, the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, in the Al Mansur district of Baghdad--a building that sat amid other tempting targets like the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martin's Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 031237366X
• ISBN 13: 9780312373665
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 491
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar