Homeland Security

DATE=3/21/2004

TYPE=ENGLISH PROGRAMS REPORT

TITLE=Bush/Terrorism

NUMBER=4-0111

BYLINE=Rebecca Ward

PHONE=203-4262

ENGLISH PROGRAMS REPORT

Inserts are available in Dalet - SOD/English News Now/Updates

INTRO: A former top White House adviser says the Bush Administration ignored the threat posed by the al-Qaida terrorist organization before the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

TEXT: A former advisor on terrorism -- Richard Clarke - says the president and his aides were more focused on dealing with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Mr. Clarke says as a result, the Bush team did not pay sufficient attention to intelligence that al-Qaida was planning a major attack.

But a leading terrorism expert says there is plenty of blame to go around. Neil Livingstone, of the risk-management firm Global Options, says prior to September 11th, no U-S administration took the terrorism threat seriously.

///LIVINGSTONE ACT ONE///

We've had a series of administrations do too little to combat terrorism, and only now are we getting serious about it. It also should be stated that Mr. Clarke - while he was very firm about doing more to combat terrorism - served the same administrations that he is basically now condemning for doing too little.

///END ACT///

Another terrorism expert, Edward Haley, agrees with Mr. Clarke's allegation that the Bush administration waited too long to act against al-Qaida. But the professor of international relations at Claremont-McKenna College says the Clinton administration was also slow to address the al-Qaida threat.

/// HALEY ACT ///

They did just about everything that you could do without doing what needed to be done. They took all the obvious and bureaucratically easy steps. They poured money on the problem, and they didn't do the essential thing, which was to get the F-B-I and the C-I-A to talk to each other, to share their information, to break the old paradigm about who were terrorists and what to do about them inside the American government.

/// END ACT ///

Neil Livingstone says the debate now needs to focus on how to combat terrorism - rather than what did or did not happen prior to September 11th.

///LIVINGSTONE ACT TWO///

There's plenty of blame to go around and I think the finger-pointing doesn't serve any real purpose right now. I think we ought to be debating right now how we get on with the war on terrorism, and how we bring Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden to justice, how we essentially destroy other terrorist cells around the world.

///END ACT///

Neil Livingstone is the head of the risk management firm "Global Options." He has also written nine books about terrorism.

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