Fact Checking the Fact Checked Challenged Clinton

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1. Carol Johnson

   September 25th, 2006 at 7:34 pm

   1

   HERE’S MORE FOR YOUR COLLECTION MAC:

   p.s. sorry it’s so long, but I didn’t want to leave out anything important.

   Clinton seemed particularly irked by Wallace’s reference to his decision to pull troops out of Somalia in 1993, a move Bin Laden later described as a sign of American weakness.

   Clinton argued that even though many Republicans demanded a withdrawal from Somalia the day after the downing of a Black Hawk helicopter, he kept a U.S. presence there for six more months to ensure an orderly transition to United Nations forces.

   “There is not a living soul in the world who thought Osama bin Laden had anything to do with ‘Black Hawk down’ or was paying any attention to it, or even knew Al Qaeda was a going concern in October ’93,” he said.

   http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:_U0YRqSdDycJ:www.echeat.com/essay.php%3Ft%3D28027+Somalia+Black+Hawk+bin+Laden&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=13

   A secret CIA file obtained by DEBKA reveals what no one in the White House, U.S. military or U.S. intelligence agencies understood at the time that the hard-core fighters of the Aidid militia were not Somali but members of bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, who were deployed in his Mogadishu bases.

   However, according to the data contained in that file, some person or persons in the office of U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali did know this and made sure to keep the information from the American government, according to the CIA file.

   The final battle that prompted President Clinton’s decision to pull his men out of Somalia bears the hallmarks of a secret ambush. The same hand that kept the Americans fighting in the dark also led them into a trap in Mogadishu, holding out the illusion that Aidid was within their grasp.

   On Oct. 2, 1993, a Somali informer who later turned out to be in bin Laden’s pay tipped off the Americans that a group of Aidid’s top lieutenants, possibly even the chief himself, had just entered a building opposite the main market of Mogadishu. Black Hawk choppers took off with 99 U.S. elite troops and equipped with reconnaissance and navigational equipment hooked to spy satellite and escorted by three observer helicopters and a high-flying OH-58. No one in the U.S. command imagined that their secret code words, including their secret signals to Washington, were in the hands of Aidid’s men and, as it transpired later, passed on to Bin Laden’s commanders.

   The jaws of the trap snapped as the men were fast-roped down to the roof of the target building, when hellish fire opened up from all the surrounding rooftops. Instead of a fast, in-and-out, 90-minute raid, the troops were pinned down in 14 hours of savage fighting, with both sides bringing in reinforcements. It was then that the Al Qaeda militants showed themselves as the fiercest combatants; Aidid was conspicuously absent.

   The U.S. lost 18 elite fighters and pilots that day, and 77 were wounded. The dead were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu past a cheering mob.

   Not a single one of the enemy’s men was captured. By March 31, 1994, the last American troop thankfully followed the U.N. contingent out of Somalia. But the sequel of this episode is illuminating.

   An intense investigation followed the Mogadishu debacle to discover how the enemy was so well informed of U.S. plans. There were signs that bin Laden’s men knew the secret U.S. codes and also the U.S. battle plan, enabling them to keep a jump head and lay traps. The investigation picked up the trail of leaked codes in Boutros-Ghali’s office in New York, following them to the U.N. command in Mogadishu and bin Laden’s aides.

   Barred access to U.N. command offices to collect proof of the conspiracy, they resorted to an alternative scheme. On Feb. 26, 1994, a CIA special unit was flown directly from the States to Mogadishu and took over the U.N. building. A search turned up the documents containing the most secret U.S. codes.

   Five days before the CIA break-in in Mogadishu, the FBI arrested senior CIA officer Aldrich Ames at his home in Arlington, Va., and charged him with spying for Moscow. A search of his home turned up evidence that Ames had been feeding secret U.S. codes to a recipient at U.N. headquarters in New York. Among them were the secret signals of the Mogadishu operation.

   After the CIA agents in Mogadishu reported their findings to the White House, they were told to destroy all the papers, making sure they had the originals.

   This was the first and only time the CIA got hold of evidence that its most secret codes were in the hands of the ex-Saudi terror master.

   Boutros-Ghali is a former Egyptian diplomat who served as U.N. secretary-general from 1992 through 1995. In the ’70s, he officiated as undersecretary for foreign affairs in his country’s government under President Anwar Sadat. Boutros-Ghali is currently secretary of the Francophone Group of Nations, which disseminates French culture and influence, especially in the Middle East and Africa. He is also an unofficial adviser on the Middle East to French President Jacque Chirac.

   Less known are his close ties with the Palestinians and long personal friendship with their leader, Yasser Arafat, from the ’60s, when Arafat made his debut on the international stage. Ghali still retains considerable influence in the plotting of Arafat’s strategy, DEBKA reports.

   LITTLE GREEN FOOTBALLS

   mohammed atef
   Here’s the story of the hate-filled life of Mohammed Atef, who masterminded operations against the US in Somalia and probably had a large role in planning the 9/11 attacks: Atef wrote the book on terror.
   Days after the U.S began its airstrikes on Afghanistan, Atef warned that U.S. troops would suffer the same fate in Afghanistan as they did in Somalia.

   “America will not realize its miscalculations until its soldiers are dragged in Afghanistan like they were in Somalia,” Atef was quoted as saying by the London-based Islamic Observation Center.
   I just finished rereading Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden, and with the perspective of the past 8 years it now seems clear that our withdrawal from Somalia had a tremendous influence on the thinking of extremists, who took it as a sign that the US had gotten old, slow, and weak.
   I don’t think Mohammed Atef was expecting the missile that slammed precisely into the meeting room where he was holding a council of war last Thursday night, but by then he must have been starting to realize what a huge mistake they had made‚Äîand what a terrible force had been awakened.

   THE DAILY CAMERA
   Atef wrote the book on terror, ran camps
   By Salah Nasrawi
   Associated Press

   CAIRO, Egypt ‚Äî Mohammed Atef, the key lieutenant to Osama bin Laden thought killed in Afghanistan, wrote al-Qaida’s terrorism manual and ran the organization’s training camps.
   Often seen at bin Laden’s left or right hand in photographs and video tapes taken in Afghanistan in the last three years, Atef ‚Äî an Egyptian ‚Äî was part of the terrorist leader’s Arab command.
   Atef, whose real name was Mohammed Sobhi Abu Sitta, also was related to bin Laden by marriage. Atef’s daughter wed bin Laden’s son in January.
   He is suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and the downing of a U.S. helicopter in Somalia in 1993.
   Intelligence reports accuse him of organizing the mob that dragged the body of one of the dead American servicemen through the streets of Mogadishu — which helped persuade Washington to withdraw U.S. troops from Somalia.
   Atef was born in Minoufia, about 55 miles north of Cairo. His year of birth, while not certain, was believed to have been 1944. According to some accounts he joined the Egyptian police force; others say he served two years of obligatory service in the Egyptian army.
   He joined Islamic Jihad, a militant group that assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981, but is not known to have played a leading role in the underground group.
   Atef came to prominence after he moved to Afghanistan in the mid-1980s when he met Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and bin Laden’s strategist. Al-Zawahri and bin Laden were then fighting alongside Afghan guerrillas against the Soviet occupation forces.
   After the 1989 Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Atef and bin Laden moved to Sudan where they organized al-Qaida cells in Africa, Egyptian security sources believe.
   Atef reportedly directed the training of al-Qaida terrorists and also supposedly wrote a 180-page training manual called “Military Studies in the Holy Struggle against Tyrants.”
   In the early 1990s, Atef was sent by bin Laden to Somalia to train Muslim guerrillas who were resisting U.S. troops in the United Nations’ Operation Restore Hope.
   His name next surfaced in the August 1998 when truck bombs blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania within minutes of each other.
   Three months later, the FBI accused Atef and other al-Qaida members of instigating the bombing and charged them with conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals.
   He was convicted in absentia in Egypt in 1999 on charges of plotting subversion and sentenced to seven years in prison for belonging to an outlawed group, Islamic Jihad, and training its members in exile in the use of explosives.
   Days after the U.S began its airstrikes on Afghanistan, Atef warned that U.S. troops would suffer the same fate in Afghanistan as they did in Somalia.
   “America will not realize its miscalculations until its soldiers are dragged in Afghanistan like they were in Somalia,” Atef was quoted as saying by the London-based Islamic Observation Center.
   November 17, 2001

   Carol

   P.S. My question to you is this…who in the White House ordered the destruction of the documents the CIA seized in Mogadishu? And why?