Staff Statement: The Military Page: 4 of 13

                                
infrastructure of the Bin Ladin terrorist network. Clarke recognized that individual
targets might not have much value. But, he wrote to Berger, we will never again be able
to target a leadership conference of terrorists, and that should not be the standard.
Principals repeatedly considered Clarke's proposed strategy, but none of them agreed
with it. Secretary Cohen told us that the camps were primitive, easily constructed
facilities with "rope ladders." The question was whether it was worth using very
expensive missiles to take out what General Shelton called "jungle gym" training camps.
That would not have been seen as very effective. National Security Adviser Berger and
others told us that more strikes, if they failed to kill Bin Ladin, could actually be
counterproductive-increasing Bin Ladin's stature.
These issues need to be viewed, they said, in a wider context. The United States
launched air attacks against Iraq at the end of 1998 and against Serbia in 1999, all to
widespread criticism around the world. About a later proposal for strikes on targets in
Afghanistan, Deputy National Security Adviser James Steinberg noted that it offered
"little benefit, lots of blowback against [a] bomb-happy U.S."
In September 1998, while the follow-on strikes were still being debated among a small
group of top advisers, the counterterrorism officials in the Office of the Secretary of
Defense were also considering a strategy. Unaware of Clarke's plan, they developed an
elaborate proposal for a "more aggressive counterterrorism posture." The paper urged
Defense to "champion a national effort to take up the gauntlet that international terrorists
have thrown at our feet." Although the terrorist threat had grown, the authors warned
that "we have not fundamentally altered our philosophy or our approach." If there were
new "horrific attacks," they wrote that then "we will have no choice nor, unfortunately,
will we have a plan." They outlined an eight-part strategy "to be more proactive and
aggressive." The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low
Intensity Conflict, Allen Holmes, brought the paper to Undersecretary Slocombe's chief
deputy, Jan Lodal. The paper did not go further. Its lead author recalls being told by
Holmes that Lodal thought it was too aggressive. Holmes cannot recall what was said,
and Lodal cannot remember the episode or the paper at all.
The President and his advisers remained ready to use military action against the terrorist
threat. But the urgent interest in launching follow-on strikes had apparently passed by
October. The focus shifted to an effort to find strikes that would clearly be effective, to
find and target Bin Ladin himself.
Military Planning Continues
Though plans were not executed, the military continued to assess and update target lists
regularly in case the military was asked to strike. Plans largely centered on cruise
missile and manned aircraft strike options, and were updated and refined continuously
through March 2001.

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