To Bomb Sudan Plant, or Not: A Year Later, Debates Rankle
By James Risen
Washington -- In the 14 months since President Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, his aides have steadfastly defended the decision. Clinton, they say, acted on evidence that left no doubt that the factory was involved with chemical weapons and linked to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile they blame for blowing up two American embassies in East Africa.
But an examination of the decision, based on interviews by The New York Times with key participants, shows that it was far more difficult than the Administration has acknowledged and that the voices of dissent were numerous.
Officials throughout the Government raised doubts up to the eve of the attack about whether the United States had sufficient information linking the factory to either chemical weapons or to bin Laden, according to participants in the discussions. They said senior diplomatic and intelligence officials argued strenuously over whether any target in Sudan should be attacked.
Aides passed on their doubts to the Secretary of State, officials said. But the national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, who played a pivotal role in approving the strike, said in an interview that he was not aware of any questions about the strength of the evidence before the attack.
In the aftermath, some senior officials moved to suppress internal dissent, officials said. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and a senior deputy, they said, encouraged State Department intelligence analysts to kill a report being drafted that said the bombing was not justified.
The new accounts provide the clearest explanation to date of the reasoning behind one of the most debated military actions undertaken by the Administration.
Some officials said they were told that the President and his aides approved the operation -- code-named Infinite Reach -- to show that the United States could hit back against an adversary who had bombed American embassies simultaneously in two countries.
And, some officials said, the President's chief advisers concluded that the risks of hitting the wrong target were far outweighed by the possibility that the plant was making chemical weapons for a terrorist eager to use them.
Like many decisions of this kind, the decision to bomb the plant was made under intense pressure and a sense of urgency created by intelligence showing that bin Laden was contemplating another lethal attack against the United States. "We would have been derelict in our duty not to have proceeded," Berger said.
Current and former American officials agreed to discuss the operation because, more than a year later, they continue to be plagued by doubts about whether it was justified.
They said they are still troubled by the lack of a full airing of what they view as gaps in the evidence linking the plant, called Al Shifa, to bin Laden. And they complain that the decision-making process was so secretive that Al Shifa was not vetted by many Government experts on chemical weapons sites or terrorism.
The officials brought to light several previously unknown aspects of the strike.
For example, at the pivotal meeting reviewing the targets, the Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet, was said to have cautioned Clinton's top advisers that while he believed that the evidence connecting bin Laden to the factory was strong, it was less than iron clad.
He warned that the link between bin Laden and the factory could be "drawn only indirectly and by inference," according to notes taken by a participant. The plant's involvement with chemical weapons, Tenet told his colleagues, was more certain, confirmed by a soil sample from near the site that contained an ingredient of nerve gas.
Berger said he does not recall that Tenet raised any such doubts at the meeting. "I would say the director was very clear in his judgment that the plant was associated with chemical weapons," Berger said. "No one in the discussion questioned whether Al Shifa was an appropriate target."
Just a few hours before the attack, officials said, President Clinton called off a planned attack on a second target in Sudan, a tannery, after senior military officers raised questions about the risks of civilian casualties and the evidence connecting it to bin Laden. The last-minute campaign was led by Gen. Harry H. Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who enlisted other senior officers in an effort to reverse the recommendation of Clinton's civilian advisers.
On Aug. 20, 1998, American missiles hit two countries, demolishing Al Shifa and several of bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Within days, Western engineers who had worked at the Sudan factory were asserting that it was, as Sudan claimed, a working pharmaceutical plant. Reporters visiting the ruined building saw bottles of medicine but no signs of security precautions and no obvious signs of a chemical weapons manufacturing operation.
After the Attack: Albright and Top Aide Killed Critical Report
In the days after the strike, as criticism mounted, the Administration closed ranks, publicly asserting that the intelligence was persuasive. But the doubts persisted, particularly at the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
The bureau had written a report for Secretary Albright before the attack questioning the evidence linking Al Shifa to bin Laden. Now, the analysts renewed their doubts and told Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley that the C.I.A.'s evidence on which the attack was based was inadequate.
Ms. Oakley asked them to double-check; perhaps there was some intelligence they had not yet seen. The answer came back quickly: There was no additional evidence.
Ms. Oakley called a meeting of key aides and a consensus emerged: Contrary to what the Administration was saying, the case tying Al Shifa to bin Laden or to chemical weapons was weak. Ms. Oakley told her aides to draft a report reflecting their skepticism, a significant step because there was a chance its findings might leak out.
Ms. Oakley told Under Secretary of State Thomas R. Pickering that her aides were preparing a report that would sharply question the bombing.
Officials said Pickering asked whether the report contained any information omitted from the State Department's previous study. Ms. Oakley said no. In that case, Pickering said, there was no reason to raise the issue again.
"After the Al Shifa strike," Pickering said in an interview, Ms. Oakley told him her staff "was working on a draft, and we both agreed that there was nothing new in what it had to say."
"She and I discussed the idea of pursuing it further," he added, "and I said I didn't see the value in pursuing it further, and she agreed."
But other officials say that while she accepted the order to kill the report, Ms. Oakley, who retired from the State Department last month after 42 years, privately expressed frustration and concern. Other officials in the intelligence bureau have also expressed concern. Ms. Oakley declined to be quoted in this article.
"It was after the strike and I didn't see the point," Pickering said. "There was not an effort to shut off a new inquiry."
Ms. Oakley passed on Pickering's order to her analysts.
A couple of days later, Secretary Albright asked Ms. Oakley about the report and Ms. Oakley replied that there was not going to be any report, according to people familiar with the conversation.
Dr. Albright does not recall the details of her conversation with Ms. Oakley, but does remember that she was "not interested in having that debate rehashed," said James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman.
Pickering said the report was being drafted solely for the use of himself and the Secretary, both of whom were already aware of the intelligence bureau's qualms.
A reconstruction of events shows that Ms. Oakley was hardly the only senior official to question the intelligence tying together Sudan, bin Laden and chemical weapons.
Before the Attack: Suspicions Dating to the Gulf War
Washington's suspicions about Sudan's links to chemical weapons date back to the aftermath of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. The C.I.A. received reports that Iraqi chemical weapons experts had visited Khartoum, prompting suspicions that Iraq was shifting some of its production of chemical weapons to Sudan.
At about the same time, bin Laden moved to Sudan after his exile from Saudi Arabia and began to invest heavily in commercial enterprises, often through joint ventures with the Government, while using Sudan as a base for his loosely knit international terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, American intelligence officials said.
The C.I.A. received intelligence reports indicating that in 1995, bin Laden won tentative approval from Sudanese leaders to begin developing chemical weapons for use against American troops in Saudi Arabia. But in 1996 the Sudanese, responding to pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia, forced bin Laden to leave, prompting him and many of his supporters to retreat to Afghanistan.
By then the United States had pulled its embassy staff out of Sudan and had closed down the C.I.A.'s Khartoum station, citing terrorist threats. The pull-out left the United States with only a limited capacity to understand events in Sudan.
American suspicions about the Al Shifa plant arose in the summer of 1997 when, intelligence officials said, an informant reported that two sites in Khartoum might be involved in chemical weapons production. The informant also mentioned a third site -- Al Shifa -- on which he had less information, but which was suspicious because it had high fences and stringent security.
In December 1997 an agent working for the C.I.A. collected a soil sample about 60 feet from Al Shifa, directly across an access road from the main entrance, according to American officials. The sample was taken from land that does not appear to have been owned by Al Shifa.
The soil was found to contain about 2.5 times the normal trace amounts of Empta, a chemical used in the production of VX nerve gas, a senior American official said.
This report prompted a heated debate among American analysts about the plant's possible links to weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.
On July 24, 1998, the C.I.A. issued its first intelligence report on Al Shifa, based on the soil sample, spy satellite photographs and other intelligence. The report highlighted apparent links between Al Shifa and bin Laden, including indirect financial connections through the Military Industrial Corporation, a Government-controlled company.
But the C.I.A. analysts also suggested that additional information would be needed. One key paragraph, titled "Next Steps," called for more soil samples and additional satellite photographs. The report also raised a new question by noting that there were no longer signs of heavy security around Al Shifa.
On Aug. 4, 1998, the C.I.A. weighed in with a more ominous report that assessed the possible connection between Sudan, Osama bin Laden and his efforts to obtain chemical weapons. It mentioned Al Shifa, but the report's highlight was new intelligence indicating that bin Laden, who had announced a renewed "holy war" against the United States, had acquired chemical or nuclear materials and "might be ready" to conduct a chemical attack.
At the State Department, intelligence analysts responded with skepticism. In an Aug. 6 memorandum for senior State policy makers, Ms. Oakley's analysts argued that even with the new intelligence, the evidence linking Al Shifa to bin Laden and chemical weapons was weak.
The next day, the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, killing more than 200 people, and the United States soon concluded that bin Laden was behind both attacks.
President Clinton and a small group of his most senior advisors -- including Berger, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, Dr. Albright, Pickering and General Shelton -- quickly decided to retaliate.
On Aug. 8, the President's advisers ordered the Pentagon Joint Staff and the C.I.A. to draw up a list of sites connected to bin Laden and his organization that could be bombed.
Planning the Attack: Urgency Propelled Military Analysis
A group of officials, including the Counterterrorism Center at the C.I.A., prepared a list of about 20 possible targets in three countries -- Afghanistan, Sudan and another nation that officials declined to identify. It spelled out the evidence linking each target to bin Laden's organization and weighed the risks, including "collateral damage," the military term for accidentally hitting civilians. The plant at Al Shifa was on the list.
On Aug. 11, senior American intelligence officials met to discuss Al Shifa and debate whether additional soil samples were needed from the plant. On Aug. 12, after the list was winnowed down, President Clinton and key national security officials were briefed for the first time on the possible targets by General Shelton.
The next day, the C.I.A. received a report that changed the nature of the debate and the pace of planning for retaliation: New intelligence showed that bin Laden and his key lieutenants would be meeting on Aug. 20 at Khost, Afghanistan. Reports also indicated that bin Laden might be planning further attacks, possibly with chemical weapons. The Afghan camps were already among the top priority targets proposed.
Some officials said the White House seemed determined to hit bin Laden in more than one place. Richard A. Clarke, a senior National Security Council official who played a pivotal role in planning the operation on behalf of the President, later explained to a colleague that bin Laden had shown "global reach" by attacking American embassies simultaneously in two countries. The United States, he said, had to respond by attacking his network beyond its haven in Afghanistan.
In an interview, Clarke said it was the President and his principal foreign policy advisers who "obviously decided to attack in more than one place."
In the White House meeting Aug. 19 where the final recommendations were to be made for the President, officials chose to attack the Afghan camps and two sites in Sudan: Al Shifa and a tannery in Khartoum that intelligence indicated was linked to bin Laden.
Berger denies that there was a significant debate about the evidence concerning Al Shifa during the meeting. Rather, he said, there were "geopolitical" questions raised about whether it was appropriate to attack Sudan when bin Laden no longer lived there. "There were a few people who felt we shouldn't go to a second country, but those questions were not based on any doubts about Al Shifa," he said.
Notes taken at the meeting, however, say Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, alluded to "gaps" in the case linking bin Laden to the factory. His agency, he said, was working to "close the intelligence gaps on this target."
Tenet said he had been careful to delineate "what we knew and didn't know, what the risks were, and what the downsides were" about Al Shifa.
Officials said General Shelton objected to attacking the tannery, both because of the potential that missiles might hit civilians and because it was not suspected of being involved in chemical weapons.
Officials recall that the debate was brought to a halt by Berger. The Administration, he said, would rightly be pilloried if the United States did not destroy Al Shifa and bin Laden initiated a chemical attack that could have been pre-empted.
A recommendation was sent to Clinton to attack the Afghan camps, Al Shifa and the tannery.
Later that day General Shelton told his colleagues among the Joint Chiefs about the planned operation, in part to gain their help in convincing the White House to drop the tannery as a target. It was the first time the officers had been told about the pending operation.
After their meeting, General Shelton called the White House to say that the officers shared his opposition to bombing the tannery. Other senior officials began to object, and Berger relayed those concerns to President Clinton on Martha's Vinyard.
At about midnight, Clinton consulted some of his other advisors, and finally ordered that the tannery be removed from the target list at about 2 A.M.
In Washington, late in the day on Aug. 19, several officials, including members of the Administration's committee of top counterterrorism experts, were summoned to Clarke's office at the National Security Council and told to remain there for the evening. The group's members had met previously to discuss the idea of a retaliatory strike but had not been involved in selecting targets.
The officials were told of the decision to strike for the first time by Clarke that night, according to an official at the meeting. But as Clarke gave them reports to read about Al Shifa, he was met with skepticism.
Some in the group told Clarke that the intelligence was too thin. "People said, 'Dick, what is this?' " according to the participant, but Clarke brushed aside those concerns and said the decision to strike had already been made.
The officials had been summoned that night not to pass judgment on the target, Clarke told them, but to help prepare paperwork related to the operation, including talking points for American ambassadors around the world and briefings for Congress and the press after the bombing.
In an interview, Clarke denied that anyone raised doubts during that meeting or at any other time before or after the attack on Al Shifa. The "people brought in the night before were brought in to do paperwork," not to review the targets, he said.
Across the Potomac River at the C.I.A.'s headquarters in Langley, Va., similar worries were being expressed. Senior agency officials gathered in Tenet's conference room to discuss the targets and, one participant said, there was strong disagreement about the plans.
Questions about Al Shifa also surfaced at the State Department just before the attack. Pickering was shown the intelligence analysts' memo expressing skepticism about the intelligence, he said, and he mentioned the findings to Secretary Albright.
Pickering and Dr. Albright both decided to support the decision, however. They were convinced that the evidence, primarily the soil sample, was persuasive, he said.
Telling the Public: A Straight Face Belied Criticism
In the days after the attack, an international debate erupted, with Sudan demanding damages and an independent review of case. In Washington, senior officials insisted that the links between bin Laden, the factory and chemical weapons were strong and compelling.
There was much less certainty behind the scenes.
Soon after the strike, word began to filter out of the Government that senior intelligence officials, including Jack Downing, the head of the C.I.A. Directorate of Operations, its clandestine espionage arm, believed that the attack was not justified.
Others raising similar questions included the head of the Africa division at the directorate and the chief of the C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center, whose office had collected the intelligence on the site.
While these officials did not question that the intelligence raised strong suspicions, they found the connections between Al Shifa and bin Laden too indirect to support the public statements justifying the attack. Downing and the other two officials, whose names have been withheld at the request of the agency, would not comment.
At the intelligence branch of the State Department, officials began drafting a report renewing doubts about the evidence.
Soon after the strike, the C.I.A. conducted a study of its own and gathered intelligence about the plant's owner, a Sudanese businessman named Salah Idris, saying it had found new evidence about his possible financial connections to the terrorist group Islamic Jihad, which in turn has strong connections to bin Laden.
But agency officials acknowledged that they did not know that he owned the plant at the time of the strike. Officials also acknowledge that the soil sample from Al Shifa was obtained about four months before Idris bought the plant in March 1998.
Officials also say now that Idris was never put on the Government's terrorist watch list, either before or after the attack.
But after the attack, the Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control froze Idris' accounts at Bank of America branches in London and Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, prompting Idris to file suit against the Government seeking the release of his funds. In May the Treasury Department agreed to free his assets, which totaled more than $24 million, just before the Government's response to his lawsuit was due in court. Idris has reportedly considered filing suit against the United States seeking damages for the loss of his plant, but has not yet done so.
Bin Laden, meanwhile, reportedly remains in Afghanistan, and the United States has warned repeatedly during the last year that he has been attempting to attack American targets. Senior Administration officials now say they believe that bin Laden is trying to develop chemical weapons in Afghanistan, and may have obtained them.
[end]
Carl
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