In our prior lecture, we took a look at how the United States' foreign policy during the late 1970's and 1980's, especially in the Middle East. May have impacted the rise of Al-Qaeda and began to establish precedence for how we would deal with terrorist organization. In this lecture, I will take a look at how in the 1990s the threat of Al-Qaeda was clearly growing and becoming much more apparent to our government. But how the government's actions to prepare and address this growing threat were too little and too late. Actually, during the presidency of George H W Bush which spanned from 1988 to 1992, there was actually a law entries the activities from the very high tempo of things that we saw during the eight years of the Reagan administration. But that definitely would not be true for our 42nd President William Jefferson Clinton, whereas terrorism was probably one of the predominant national security issues to affect the eight years of his presidency. Indeed, five days after this picture was taken at his inauguration, a Pakistani extremist literally walk down the road where cars are waiting to enter the CIA parking lot and started shooting into them, killing two people. He was actually able to escape to Pakistan only to be captured years later. But in some ways, this incident only five days after the inauguration began to set the tone for much of the early parts of the Clinton administration. As we've discussed, in February of 1993 was the first attack on the World Trade Center. We knew very soon that thereafter that this was executed by a group of Middle Eastern militants. But we didn't know that they had linkages to a group called Al-Qaeda or a person named Osama bin Laden because these people and groups were not up on the radar screen, essentially, at the CIA. We didn't even really begin tracking Osama bin Laden until years later. Later in 1993, Intelligence disclosed and uncovered a proposed assassination attempt by the Iraqi intelligence services on President George H W Bush when he was visiting Kuwait. Two years later in 1995, a sarin gas attack inside the Tokyo subway system by a cult organization called Aum Shinrikyo, killed over a dozen people. And was an example of the potential for chemical and maybe biological weapons to cause mass damage. And then in April 19th, 1995, the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, a federal government office building that was devastated by the truck bomb planted by Timothy McVeigh, who had assistance from Tim Nichols. One of whom got the death penalty, and the other who's serving a life term in prison. Now, these were four terrorist incidents very large scale, and they actually all came from different sources. Islamic militants, domestic anti-government haters, the foreign intelligence service in Iraq, and a Japanese cult. But nonetheless, this episodes and others are subsequent to it was heightening the awareness and concern in the United States government over the question of terrorism. And our vulnerability to terrorism and the extent that our government was equipped to deal with that. Soon after the Oklahoma City attack, although this was something that had probably been in the works well before that, President Clinton issued a Presidential Policy Directive Number 39. And in it, he announced that it is the policy of the United States to deter, defeat and respond vigorously to all terrorist attacks on our territory and against our citizens. The United States regards all such terrorism as a potential threat to national security as well as a criminal act. Now this presidential directive then went on after making these policy statements to highlight and instruct all the different government agencies, all the different parts of the federal government that had counterterrorism responsibilities. And they were diffused over a multiple agency uninitiatives, that the president wanted them to start taking to deal with what he perceived as a growing threat of terrorism wherever its source. And also our grave of vulnerability as a free nation when open nation with lots of critical infrastructures to these types of attacks, all of which have been revealed by those four text that I just mentioned. In the Presidential Decision Directive, the first priority was, as I mentioned, reducing vulnerabilities both inside United States and abroad. There are provisions directing agencies to do more to protect our critical infrastructures inside the United States. Directions to the Department of Defense that our military installations. And to Department of State that our embassies had to be made more aware and more secure of the threat from terrorism. Instructions to the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration to better secure and provide more protection for aviation and other forms of transportation. And the need to start to tighten our border controls and make sure that terrorists were not allowed to enter the country. The second area discussed in the Presidential Decision Directive was efforts to better deter terrorism. First, a clear policy statement to undercut the logic of terrorism by announcing very clearly that terrorist attacks would not impact or lead to the change in US policy. President also announced initiatives through the Department of Treasury and other agencies to try to cut off the sources of funding and other material support to terrorist organizations. Inhibit their ability to have money transferred through international means. And then directives at state sponsors of terrorism sanctions publicly disclosing them. Other forms of both traditional and coercive diplomacy to try to prevent states from supporting terrorist organization. The third era was how we could better respond to incidents of terrorism. Of course, instruction to the FBI and CIA to share information and use all means to use the intelligence system to identify terrorists, and also to find out about their plots before they occur. Efforts with FEMA and the Department of Justice, and working with local responders to improve incident and post-incident response. Announcements that all these activities to respond when there was an incident would be coordinated through the National Security Council, through the White House essentially. And then initiative to create a rapid emergency support teams that could deal with the potential incidents that occurred and especially if there were weapons and mass destruction involved. And finally, an emphasis on WMDs, an announcement that we need to do better job at detecting, preventing, defeating and managing potential WMD. Noticing that we were, after the Aum Shinrikyo attack, we were woefully unprepared to deal with the consequences of a chemicals or biological, or even almost unthinkable, the nuclear attack inside the United States. Instructions that the CIA needed to do a better job of collecting intelligence on terrorists' use and collection of WMD. To improve our response capabilities if there was any incident, both through our Department of Defense and our local responders. And specific plans to develop, Initiatives to respond of a WMD did attack did occur, such as stock piling more vaccines for the potential diseases that occurred, could occurred for biological weapons. Decontamination facilities, plans for mass casualties events. All of these efforts were essentially begun and started to give momentum through the White House, and principally through the chief point person in the National Security staff, I should say. Richard Clarke, who had actually served in the Bush administration, but then stayed on to continue working these issues. And he took on a greater, greater role in counterterrorism as the Clinton administration proceeded. Now in 1998, through another set of Presidential Decision Directives, Clark was actually given this title of the National Coordinator for counterterrorism. Giving him more sweeping powers to work with agencies to propose initiatives to the president and to try to essentially compel the agencies to pay a greater attention to these issues. Through these additional directives, more discussion of how to deal with unconventional threats, meaning a WMD, chemical and biological. More directives to try to do a better job of protecting not only physical infrastructure, but our cyber infrastructure. Concerns that terrorists could implicate by an attack on the heart of our government, the ability of our government to operate. So, plans and procedures to how a government would continue to operate in the event of a terrorist action. So you can see that a lot of planning later in the Clinton administration was going on. Of course, all of these initiatives take money and budgets. And in Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, he discusses how from 1995 pretty much when the Clinton administration started having big influences over the federal budget through to 2,000 towards the end of the administration funding for counterterrorism initiatives had doubled. Now, an increase of $5.5 billion is almost pocket change in today's parlance given the literally hundreds of billions that we're spending on security and counterterrorism and homeland defense. But for those times when terrorism was just emerging as this core national security concern, this was a pretty substantial achievement. And a direction or indication of the seriousness with which the administration was taking these emerging problems.
