Letters to the Editor

• How Democrats Govern (hint: like Republicans)

  [Read the article: More fallout from the Comey revelations]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  from pages 143-145 of
  "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" by Richard A. Clarke

  Snatches, or more properly "extraordinary renditions," were operations to apprehend terrorists abroad, usually without the knowledge of and almost always without public acknowledgement of the host government. One terrorist snatch had been conducted in the Reagan administration. Fawaz Yunis, who had participated in a hijacking of a Jordanian aircraft in 1985 in which three Americans were killed, was lured to a boat off the Lebanese shore and then grabbed by FBI agents and Navy SEALs. By the mid-1990s these snatches were becoming routine CSG activity. Sometimes FBI arrest teams, sometimes CIA personnel, had been regularly dragging terrorists back to stand trial in the United States or flying them to incarceration in other countries. All but one of the World Trade Center attackers from 1993 had been found and brought to New York. Nonetheless, the proposed snatch in Khartoum went nowhere. Several meetings were held in the White House West Wing with Berger demanding the snatch. The Joint Staff had an answer that they used whenever asked to do something that they did not want to do:

  • it would take a very large force;
  • the operation was risky and might fail, with U.S. forces caught and killed, embarrassing the President;
  • their "professional military opinion" was not to do it;
  • but, of course, they would do it if they received orders to do so in writing from the President of the United States;
  • and, by the way, military lawyers said it would be a violation of international law.

  Fletcher School professor Richard Schultz came to similar conclusions about how the U.S. military would refuse to fight terrorism prior to September 11. His study is summarized in the article "Show Stoppers" in the January 21, 2004 Weekly Standard.

  The first time I had proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass." We tried, but failed. We learned that often things change by the time you can get a snatch team in place. Sometimes intelligence is wrong. Some governments cooperate with the terrorists. It was worth trying, however, because often enough we succeeded.

  But in the 1993 discussion of Sudan, Berger turned to George Tenet, asking if CIA could snatch the man in the Khartoum hotel room. Tenet responded that they had no capability to do that in that hostile environment, nor could they find a friendly intelligence service that could (or would) do it.

  Mike Sheehan, the Army Special Forces colonel who had worked with me on terrorism, Somalia, and Haiti, offered to go to Khartoum and do the snatch himself. He was only half joking. "This guy doesn't even have bodyguards. Hit him over the head and throw him in a Chevy Suburban." To the complete frustration of Berger, Albright, and me, the CIA finally admitted it could do nothing to effect a snatch in Khartoum. DOD was only able to generate options, once again, that looked like going to war with Sudan. Two years later Sheehan was visiting the headquarters of the Joint Special Operations Command (which includes Delta Force) at Fort Bragg. He struck up a conversation with two fellow Green Berets. They told each other stories about operations they had done and about "the ones that got away," missions planned but not carried out. The two told Sheehan about the plan they had to snatch an al Qaeda leader in a Khartoum hotel. "Woulda been so sweet. Six guys. Two cars. In an out. Easy egress across the border and fly out, low-risk."

  "Really?" Sheehan asked, pretending not to know about the proposed snatch. "What happened? Why didn't you get to do it?"

  "Fuckin' White House," the Green Beret said in disgust. "Clinton said no."

  "How do you know that?" Mike innocently inquired.

  "Pentagon told us all about it."

  Whether it was catching war criminals in Yugoslavia or terrorists in Africa and the Middle East, it was the same story. The White House wanted action. The senior military did not and made it almost impossible for the President to overcome their objections. When in 1993 the White House had leaned on the military to snatch Aideed in Somalia, they had bobbled the operation and blamed the White House in off-the-record conversations with reporters and Congressmen. What White House advisor would want a repeat of that? Often though, we learned, senior military officers let the word spread down the ranks that the politicians in the White House were the ones reluctant to act. The fact is, President Clinton approved every snatch that he was asked to review. Every snatch CIA, Justice, or Defense proposed during my tenure as CSG chairman, from 1992 to 2001, was approved.

  - - Richard A. Clarke

  * * * * *

  To which I would only add that, according to credible sources, the number of covert snatches executed during the 1980s was far greater than the one snatch mentioned by Mr. Clarke.

  * * * * *

  Anyway, the point is, Clinton (both Clintons, I'm sure) and Gore and Bush and Cheney -- they all favor extraordinary rendition. So would all the current presidential candidates, except for -- maybe -- the "crazy" ones like Ron Paul and Mike Gravel. The best you can hope for is that, if you get swept up because of a Tuttle/Buttle error, you might get released.

  Permalink Friday, May 18, 2007 09:08 PM