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QUESTION: Were all of those issues part of alleged plan that was late December and the Clinton team decided not to pursue because it was too close to ...
CLARKE: There was never a plan, Andrea. What there was was these two things: One, a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat. And two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years, and which were still on the table.
QUESTION: So there was nothing that developed, no documents or no new plan of any sort?
CLARKE: There was no new plan.
QUESTION: No new strategy — I mean, I don't want to get into a semantics ...
CLARKE: Plan, strategy — there was no, nothing new.
QUESTION: 'Til late December, developing ...
CLARKE: What happened at the end of December was that the Clinton administration NSC principals committee met and once again looked at the strategy, and once again looked at the issues that they had brought, decided in the past to add to the strategy. But they did not at that point make any recommendations.
QUESTIONS: Had those issues evolved at all from October of '98 'til December of 2000?
CLARKE: Had they evolved? Um, not appreciably.
ANGLE: What was the problem? Why was it so difficult for the Clinton administration to make decisions on those issues?
CLARKE: Because they were tough issues. You know, take, for example, aiding the Northern Alliance. Um, people in the Northern Alliance had a, sort of bad track record. There were questions about the government, there were questions about drug-running, there was questions about whether or not in fact they would use the additional aid to go after Al Qaeda or not. Uh, and how would you stage a major new push in Uzbekistan or somebody else or Pakistan to cooperate?
One of the big problems was that Pakistan at the time was aiding the other side, was aiding the Taliban. And so, this would put, if we started aiding the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, this would have put us directly in opposition to the Pakistani government. These are not easy decisions.
ANGLE: And none of that really changed until we were attacked and then it was ...
CLARKE: No, that's not true. In the spring, the Bush administration changed — began to change Pakistani policy, um, by a dialogue that said we would be willing to lift sanctions. So we began to offer carrots, which made it possible for the Pakistanis, I think, to begin to realize that they could go down another path, which was to join us and to break away from the Taliban. So that's really how it started.
QUESTION: Had the Clinton administration in any of its work on this issue, in any of the findings or anything else, prepared for a call for the use of ground forces, special operations forces in any way? What did the Bush administration do with that if they had?
CLARKE: There was never a plan in the Clinton administration to use ground forces. The military was asked at a couple of points in the Clinton administration to think about it. Um, and they always came back and said it was not a good idea. There was never a plan to do that.
(Break in briefing details as reporters and Clarke go back and forth on how to source quotes from this backgrounder.)
ANGLE: So, just to finish up if we could then, so what you're saying is that there was no — one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the spring months just after the administration came into office?
CLARKE: You got it. That's right.
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