THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

Written and Compiled by Black Max

1999

US payoffs to Taliban in order to secure oil pipeline rights

• The US pays the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official in hopes of securing a stable government in Afghanistan that will allow US oil giant Unocal to build a pipeline through it to connect to the Caspian Sea. (SFGate/Killtown)
• Halliburton's attempts to join Russia's Tyumen Oil Company in developing huge Siberian oil fields hit a snag when BP-Amoco and the CIA determine that Tyumen is largely controlled by criminals with ties to the former KGB and Russian drug cartels and organized crime consortiums. Not to be denied, Halliburton, who already had a $292 million stake in Tyumen's $489 million loan from the Ex-Im Bank, begins working its Republican connections in Washington. Tyumen's lead attorney in Washington is James Langdon, a Bush Pioneer. With Langdon's help, Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney succeeds in convincing Clinton's undersecretary of state for economic affairs, Alan Larson, to support Halliburton's efforts to join Tyumen in developing the Siberian oil fields. In April 2000, the State Department withdraws its objections to Halliburton's participation in the deal; as a result, Larson will be the only member of the Clinton State Department to retain his position after Bush takes office in January 2001. In October 2002, Tyumen will begin selling oil to the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, making handsome profits for both Tyumen and Halliburton. (Kevin Phillips)
• During the year, 9/11 hijacking suspect Zacarias Moussaoui is spotted making several trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan by French intelligence. The French ask British intelligence to place Moussaoui under surveillance, but the request is ignored. (CCR)
• By 1999, Enron has become #1 among energy companies in political donations, giving $5.3 million to federal candidates from 1993 through 2001, almost all of which was targeted for Republican candidates. In 1999 and 2000, Enron will spend $3.4 million lobbying the US Congress to deregulate the energy industry. Its Washington staff boasts, among others, former US congressman Dick Armey and the wife of House majority whip Tom DeLay. Enron is equally involved in state campaign politics; in 1996 alone, Enron spent millions backing Texas Republicans, and was awarded with a Texas Supreme Court decision slashing $15 million from the inventory taxes Enron owed to the Spring, Texas school district. (Kevin Phillips)
• Secretary of State Madeleine Albright requests that the CIA draw up plans for using US special forces troops to kidnap and/or assassinate bin Laden. The Joint Chiefs of Staff refuse, saying the idea is "going Hollywood" and couldn't work. (CCR)
• British intelligence secretly offers 9/11 paymaster Saeed Sheikh, who is currently jailed in India, amnesty if he will talk about his connections with al-Qaeda. Sheikh refuses. Shortly thereafter, he is released from India as part of a hostage swap deal, and openly travels to and from Britain numerous times without interference. Sheikh was arrested in 1994 for kidnapping three British citizens, but was never charged in Britain until after 9/11. Many in the Pakistani intelligence community believe that Sheikh is a CIA asset as well as an ISI and al-Qaeda operative. (CCR)
• The State Department counterterrorism coordinator Michael Sheehan recommends a different approach in dealing with al-Qaeda. He suggests the US focus on Pakistan's, Saudi Arabia's, the UAE's, Afghanistan's, and Yemen's ties to terrorism, with Pakistan the major country to focus upon. He suggests the US pressure these countries to sever their ties with terrorist groups. The proposal is given little, if any, consideration. (CCR)
• George W. Bush continues his financial support of the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. As in years past, he helps raise money for the organization's annual ball, which is held in Tredgar Iron Works, an old slave hall where slaves were forced to build war materials for the Confederate Army. Bush is no stranger to pro-confederate and quasi-racist causes; in 1996 he wrote a letter honoring the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that frequently offers platforms for overtly racist organizations such as the Council of Conservative Citizens. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green)

Early 1999

• Early 1999: British intelligence advises US intelligence that al-Qaeda has plans on using commercial airliners in their next terrorist attacks, "possibly as flying bombs." (CCR)

January 1999

• January: UNSCOM's final compendium on Iraq's weapons programs, presented to the UN Security Council, says that UNSCOM has discovered warheads containing degraded VX, which contradicts Iraq's claims it had never filled warheads with nerve agents. Iraq has not provided any remnants of the 50 proscribed missile propellants it claimed to have unilaterally destroyed. Iraq has still not provided adequate information concerning its BW program, particularly the weaponization of produced BW agents and their acquisition. Still unaccounted for are the 550 shells filled with mustard gas that Iraq claimed were "lost" shortly after the Gulf War. (UN/Iraqwatch/Electric Venom)
• January: The Nigerian military, using helicopters and boats supplied by US oil giant Chevron, attacks two villages in the Nigerian delta. Four villagers are killed, scores are missing, and the villages are burned to the ground. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
• January: Indonesia announces that it will consider limited independence for East Timor if the people reject autonomy. In February, imprisoned resistance leader Xanana Gusmao orders the Timorese opposition to resume their active struggle for independence. (BBC/East Timor Timeline )
• January 7: The Senate begins consideration of the charges of impeachment brought against Clinton. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, presiding over the proceedings, wears an unusual set of robes that he himself designed, inspired, he says, by the costumes from Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Iolanthe. Hillary Clinton will later observe in her memoir, "How fitting that he should wear a theatrical costume to preside over a political farce." (Clinton Impeachment Timeline, H.R. Clinton)
• January 13: Iraq suspends all cooperation with UN inspectors. Though UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will broker a peaceful solution to the impasse, Iraq will continue to impede the inspectors' task until the UN lifts economic sanctions. On October 31, Hussein will stop all activities by weapons inspectors inside Iraqi borders. (CCR)
• January 15: A web site called the "Nuremberg Files" is being challenged in an Oregon federal court. The site, operated by radical anti-abortionists, posts the names, addresses, and personal information of abortion providers and clinics, with instructions to stalk and harass, and possibly kill, the doctors, their spouses, and their children. Dr. Robert Crist says that once he saw his name on the site, surrounded by graphics of dripping blood and aborted fetuses, he began wearing a bulletproof vest, changed his work habits, and rarely drove in the same car as his family. He says he feels his life, and the lives of his family, are endangered. The site publishes the names, photos, home addresses and license plate numbers of doctors. It calls them "baby butchers," suggests stalking them and identifies some of their spouses and children. Doctors who have been murdered have a line crossed through their names. Those who run the site say they intend no harm and do not advocate violence, but are merely collecting data on doctors in the hope that one day that it will help them be prosecuted for "crimes against humanity." But doctors suing to have the government shut down the site call it a hit list. One of the site's authors, Michael Bray, is a conservative minister who has served time for setting fire to abortion clinics, and publicly advocates the "justifiable homicide" of abortion providers. The site's right to exist is defended by free-speech advocates such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation, whose spokesman, Michael Godwin, says, "There's no constitutional right in this country not to be scared, and I can see why these doctors are, but there is a right to express hateful, even frightening thoughts." But plaintiffs's attorneys say that the site must be judged in the context of events happening in the US and Canada, where a large number of violent attacks against abortion providers and clinics, including at least seven murders, continue to occur. The site is an illegal threat, they are arguing in court, because it is produced by people who support killing doctors who perform abortions and it exists in a climate of growing violence against clinics. The attorneys also claim that the style and substance of the Web site implicitly encourages readers to threaten or harm doctors. "For example, after Barnett Slepian was killed in upstate New York by sniper fire on Oct. 23, his name appeared with a line through it on the Web site. Other doctors wounded in recent years are shaded in gray. "Certainly the strongly implied message here is to go after these doctors by any means necessary," says Sandi Hansen, the executive director of the Oregon chapter of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. "This site should have a responsibility not to yell 'fire' in a crowded movie theater. What they're doing goes beyond free speech. It's a form of terrorism." Defendant Andrew Burnett says of the site, "If I was an abortionist, I would be afraid."
• More than 200 doctors are listed on The Nuremberg Files, as are scores of clinic owners and workers, judges and politicians who support the right to abortion. The site provides photos and detailed personal information on what it terms "The Dirty Dozen," doctors nationwide who perform abortions frequently. Seeking to complete their dossiers on other physicians, it asks for data on "their car, their house, their friends." Some antiabortion groups have distanced themselves from the site because of this kind of content. In testimony this week, doctors have spent hours explaining how terrified they are of the Web site. Elizabeth Newhall, a physician in Portland, said that after her name appeared, she began wearing wigs to hide her identity. "suddenly, I feel real visible to individuals who might not be quite balanced," she said. Warren Hern, a doctor in Colorado who has had shots fired at his clinic, said he is wary of talking to strangers anymore and always sits with his back to a wall in public places. Crist, of St. Louis, wore a bulletproof vest on the stand and testified that he has spent thousands of dollars on home-security devices. "I need relief from the threats, harassment and the feeling that my death can be imminent," Crist told jurors.
• In February, the court will rule in favor of the plaintiffs, finding the anti-abortion activists liable for threatening doctors. The court orders the defendants, who were members of the American Coalition of Life Activists and Advocates for Life Ministries, to pay more than $100 million in damages to abortion clinics and doctors. Shortly afterwards, the site's host, Mindspring, shuts the web site down; attempts to resurrect the site on other US providers have failed, though an anti-abortion activist, Karin Spaink, will temporarily host the site in Amsterdam. Currently the site is unavailable; its last hosts, Christian Gallery, maintains a site, linked here, that accuses the FBI and the Internet Archive of censoring the site's content, though some of the site's content, including bloody (and often retouched or fraudulently created) pictures of aborted fetuses, can be found on that site. (Washington Post, C|Net)
• January 16: 45 Albanian citizens are slaughtered in Racak, Kosovo, amid an upswing in violence in that breakway province. Serbian military forces, along with less official paramilitaries, patrol the country, fighting with citizens, intimidating, looting, raping, and murdering. (Ministry of Defence)

February 1999

• February: The CIA sponsors a report on how the US will deal with a terrorist attack using mailed anthrax. The report is so similar to the actual anthrax mailings after 9/11 that the BBC suggests the anthrax mailings were a CIA project gone "madly out of control." The CIA and the report's author, William Patrick, deny the existence of the report even after copies are leaked to the media. (CCR)

Anthrax mailings begin, with little media notice

• February: A barrage of fake anthrax mailings reach media and government targets in Washington, Atlanta, and Fort Benning, Georgia. The New York Times suggests Steven Hatfill may be behind these mailings as well as the ones in 1997. Hatfill, who works at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, commissioned the earlier CIA report. (CCR, New York Times/UCLA School of Public Health)

Iraq ambassador visits Africa; the visit will later trigger false accusations that Iraq purchased uranium from Niger

• February: Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican Wissam Al Zahawie visits several African countries, including Niger. This trip will trigger the allegations that Iraq was trying to buy tons of uranium from Niger. Shortly after the Iraqi ambassador's trip to Niger, the Italian intelligence service comes into possession of forged documents claiming Saddam was after Niger uranium. The documents, which can be viewed here, are passed to MI6 and then handed by the British to the office of US Vice-President Dick Cheney. Later the forged documents will be used by Bush and Blair to give credence to their allegations that Iraq is rebuilding its nuclear arsenal, including the now-infamous reference in Bush's State of the Union speech of 2003. The IAEA will quickly prove the documents were forgeries, finding these discrepancies (among others) in the documents: in a letter from the President of Niger, a reference is made to the constitution of May 12, 1965, but the constitution is dated August 9, 1999; another letter purports to be signed by Niger's foreign minister, but bears the wrong signature; an obsolete letterhead is used, including the wrong symbol for the presidency; and references to state bodies such as the Supreme Military Council and the Council for National Reconciliation are incompatible with the letter's date. The US State Department and CIA will also find these documents fake, but nevertheless they are used numerous times by Bush, Cheney, and other top administration officials as "proof" of Iraq's nuclear intentions. It would also be very difficult for Niger to sell anywhere near the amount of uranium that Iraq would need for a nuclear program, as Niger's uranium mines are managed by France, and the entire output goes to France, Japan, and Spain, and is rigorously monitored. (Sunday Herald, Information Clearinghouse)
• February: Air Force general Michael Hayden is nominated to run the National Security Agency by Clinton. The shadowy, ill-documented NSA is twice the size of the more infamous and well-documented CIA and can be said to be the dominant electronic spy agency in the world. Hayden is galvanized to buff up the image of the NSA by two disparate events: the controversy over the agency's "Echelon" global surveillance program, which is suspected of spying not only on citizens of friendly countries but on US citizens, and the release of the Hollywood movie Enemy of the State, which portrays the NSA as a rogue agency bent on destroying the civil rights of innocent Americans. Hayden decides not to use the typical intelligence agency methods of denial and secrecy, but instead goes public, giving a round of speeches and media interviews designed to polish the agency's reputation. Many of the agency's veterans are shocked by Hayden's PR assault; the NSA is, at heart, a "blue-collar spy agency," as journalist James Risen observes. "It operated the intelligence plumbing, and so it tended to attract quiet technicians, math and linguistics geeks, and military and civilian managers who were bureaucratic conformists." Hayden's PR blitz made them uncomfortable. They preferred to stay in the shadows and do their jobs.
• The NSA has a number of startlingly effective achievements under its belt, few of which have ever been made public. In 1990, the CIA and NSA broke virtually every code in use by the Soviet Union, giving NSA's code breakers a tremendous advantage in the Cold War. The NSA could, if it wished, brag about other such victories, but most of its members preferred to let the public believe what it wished rather than to disclose the agency's activities. But Hayden worried that urban legends and conspiracy theories growing up around the NSA's actions would take hold of the national imagination and erode the agency's effectiveness. He didn't intend to allow the NSA to be exposed to harsh public scrutiny the same way the CIA and FBI were in the 1970s by the Church Commission, which discovered the FBI -- and the NSA -- had been illegally spying on domestic antiwar activists during the Vietnam War and civil rights movements. The public disclosures had resulted in the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, which mandated the issuance of warrants for wiretaps by a secret FISA court. Between the Church Commission and the FISA legislation, the NSA's role in domestic surveillance operations was effectively ended, with the NSA relegated to bugging foreign embassies and diplomatic missions from other nations.
• Hayden is a relentless cheerleader for the NSA in print and on television. He makes speeches to civic groups and political organizations, gives interviews, and even hosts off-the-record dinner parties for the press at his home in Fort Meade. His thrust is twofold -- that the NSA is committed to complying with the law, and the agency is struggling to remain relevant in the new Information Age of the Internet, cell phones, Blackberry wireless data terminals, and general information overload. The NSA is manfully playing catchup, Hayden asserts, and too behind the curve to even attempt to spy on Americans. In 2000, he tells an audience at American University, "Despite what you've seen on television, our agency doesn't do alien autopsies, track the location of your automobile by satellite, nor do we have a squad of assassins. ...The best I can hope for now is to wipe away some of the mystique surrounding the National Security Agency."
• Hayden will drastically change his tune, and his approach to domestic surveillance, after the 9/11 attacks. As Risen writes in 2006, "the technical wizards of the [NSA] have been engaged in a program of domestic data mining that is so vast, and so unprecedented, that it makes a mockery of long-standing privacy rules." (James Risen)

Senate fails to vote to impeach Clinton

• February 12: The Senate votes to clear Clinton of all charges brought against him in the impeachment proceedings. Both counts of the impeachment fail, with all votes to convict being cast by Republicans. The perjury charge fails 55-45, while the obstruction charge fails 50-50. (Family Education, Wikipedia)
• February 28: Former president George H.W. Bush, the guest speaker at a reunion dinner of over 200 Gulf War veterans in Fort Myer, Virginia, explains why he chose not to enter Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein in 1991. "Had I gone into Baghdad -- we could have done it. You guys could have done it. You could have been there in 48 hours. And then what? Which sergeant, which private, whose life would be at stake in perhaps a fruitless hunt in an urban guerrilla war to find the most secure dictator in the world? Whose life would be on my hands as the commander in chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we're going to show our macho? 'We're going into Baghdad. We're going to be an occupying power -- America in an Arab land -- with no allies at our side.' It would have been disastrous." (Federation of American Scientists, Al Franken, Bob Woodward)

March 1999

• March: An al-Qaeda operative is arrested in Egypt and charged with planning on flying a hang glider into the Egyptian Presidential Palace. The operative, a US citizen, received hang glider training in the US. (CCR)

Susan McDougal found innocent of Whitewater-related charges and goes free for the first time since 1993

• March: Susan McDougal is tried for contempt of court and obstruction of justice. During the trial, Kenneth Starr's OIC calls three of the jurors as witnesses to prove that they just wanted McDougal to testify so they could wrap up their investigation and let Bill Clinton get about his duties as President. The first juror is amazed to learn of David Hale's criminal convictions, of which the OIC never informed her; as it turns out, neither she nor the jurors had been told a great many things that pointed to Clinton's innocence or damaged the OIC's credibility. Another juror's honesty is invalidated when she asserts she hasn't met with the OIC before giving her testimony, and is reminded that she spent her entire lunch break discussing her testimony with OIC lawyers just before she took the stand.
• OIC lawyers Ray Jahn and Hickman Ewing are both poor witnesses, nervous, jittery, and self-contradictory. OIC attorney Julie Myers makes the mistake of questioning a defense witness about the supposed sexual relationship between McDougal and Clinton in the hallway outside the courtroom, and Geragos uses this encounter to devastate the OIC's credibility. Julie Hiatt Steele also testifies for the defense, telling the jury about her abuse at the hands of the OIC. An attempt by Myers to bully Steele on the witness stand backfires tremendously; veteran Arkansas attorney Rick Holliman says just after Steele's testimony, "They just lost the case. No Arkansas jury is going to stand for a woman to be treated like that."
• The verdict eventually comes in: not guilty of obstruction of justice, and a hung jury on the two contempt charges, with the vote 7-5 in favor of McDougal. Several jurors publicly question the trustworthiness and the motives of the OIC. Starr eventually decides not to retry the case; for the first time since November 1993, Susan McDougal is free of all criminal charges. (Ann Coulter signs to go on the Larry King Live show to promote her new book, but backs out when she found out that King had invited a newly freed McDougal to appear and challenge her assertions.)
• McDougal writes about her ordeal at the hands of the Whitewater investigation: "...[O]ne thing still rankles me about the Starr apologists and the way he's been covered in the media. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, he is almost always described as an honest man, indeed as a man of real integrity. Any 'misstatements' of facts by Starr have always been written off as simple mistakes resulting perhaps from his inexperience as a prosecutor when he became independent counsel. Virtually no one challenged Starr's honesty throughout the investigation despite the fact that he was caught in numerous lies. ...Actually, Ken Starr was the architect of one of the greatest snow jobs of the 20th century. Remarkably, his charade continues even today, with several commentators recently depicting him as simply a naive, in-over-his-head prosecutor who tried to do the best he could with a tough job that was supposedly thrust upon him. Of all the ludicrous stories to come out of Whitewater, this characterization of Starr is one of the most ridiculous. Before he became head of the OIC, Starr was a very powerful Washington lawyer who defended the tobacco industry and other major corporations in multimillion dollar lawsuits. A lawyer doesn't represent clients like that on the strength of old-fashioned values and 'aw-shucks' charm. Unlike the picture his supporters paint of him, Starr was not some political neophyte who got eaten up by the Washington wolves when he took on Bill Clinton. For years, Starr himself had been one of the head wolves -- and he didn't get there by being naive. He actively lobbied for the job as head of the OIC, viewing the position as his ticket to the Supreme Court, and when he found that the rest of the country wasn't as willing to go along with his witch-hunt as his K Street buddies were, he started holding everyone else but himself responsible."
• Starr spent millions of dollars and thousands of FBI man-hours going through every record of Madison Guaranty and its associated banks. Net product: one misdemeanor conviction of an appraiser who didn't even work for Madison, but who had inflated an appraisal of one of Madison's loans, and one fraudulent loan that helped convict James McDougal. Starr's repeated characterization of Madison as a "most corrupt"s&L is just one of the many, many lies he told as a part of his investigation. "But thanks to Starr and his willingness to lie, it's now a widely accepted fact that Madison Guaranty was a criminal enterprise. He knew that wasn't true when he stood before Congress and referred to Madison as a corrupt institution. A lot of very good, hard-working people were smeared by Starr's statements and were unable to get work later because Madison was on their resumes. But that was the modus operandi of the entire OIC investigation. They were willing to run over people and ruin lives in order to further their goals." On his last day in office, Bill Clinton will pardon Susan McDougal, a pardon that she had hoped for, but did not ask for and did not expect. (Susan McDougal)
• March 3: Andrew Krepinevich, Executive Director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, states before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, "There appears to be general agreement concerning the need to transform the US military into a significantly different kind of force from that which emerged victorious from the Cold and Gulf Wars. Yet this verbal support has not been translated into a defense program supporting transformation ... the 'critical mass' needed to effect it has not yet been achieved. One may conclude that, in the absence of a strong external shock to the United States - a latter-day 'Pearl Harbor' of sorts - surmounting the barriers to transformation will likely prove a long, arduous process." Krpinevich is not the first stragetist to make this kind of comment. (CCR)
• March 8: NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, who is paid around $7 million a year, reminisces with Today Show co-host Katie Couric about his stint on the show: "I must say some things never change," he tells Couric. "I was coming to work early this morning down Fifth Avenue in predawn darkness and it reminded me of the old days when I was doing the Today show because I saw the homeless people in the church shelters and the park benches and so on. And you feel great sympathy for them. But you also envy the extra hour of sleep that they're getting. I mean, you go by and you say, 'If I were them, I would still be sleeping.'" Brokaw's remarks, taken by many as flippant and heartless, cause a brief and embarrassing scandal. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)

False claims that Gore "invented the internet" hit media

• March 9: Vice President Al Gore tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." His statement is accurate; Gore's congressional leadership led to the transformation of ARPANET, a tiny, private network of about 30 universities and government agencies, into the huge public Internet that exists today. Vint Cerf, widely regarded as the "father of the Internet," and even Newt Gingrich later acknowledge that Gore's contributions to making the Internet what it is today were critical. However, the media again misrepresents Gore's statement as a blanket assertion that "I invented the Internet," and roundly attack him for being a "serial liar." Over 2,600 articles attacking Gore for claiming he "invented the Internet" will appear between the Blitzer interview and Election Day. ABC's Mark Halperin later explains, "somewhere along the line, the dominant political reporters for most dominant news organizations decided they didn't like [Gore], and they thought the story line on any given day was about his being a phony or a liar or a waffler. Within the subculture of political reporting, there was almost peer pressure not to say something neutral, let alone nice, about his ideas, his political skills, his motivations." Journalist Paul Waldman later writes, "As citizens we have the right to expect that reporters will put aside their personal feelings -- whether about an issue or a candidate -- and report the story as fairly as they can. That is the heart of journalistic integrity. But in 2000, Gore couldn't overcome the suspicion and resentment that reporters had of him, which had been building for years. And Bush's back-slappin', nickname-givin', regular-guy routine had its desired effect: journalists were soft on him, not bothering to expose his lies or question him too harshly." (Consortium News, Paul Waldman)
• March 10: Since his election as Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert has opened the Congressional doors to industry lobbyists, offering them private audiences where, for a price, they can voice their views on what kind of agenda the 106th Congress should pursue. Last week, for instance, Hastert gathered for fund-raising meetings with accounting executives, financial services representatives and the clients of the lobbying firm Fierce & Isakowitz, which represents companies in the telecommunications and fast-food industries. In one week alone, Hastert collected roughly $200,000 in contributions for his Keep Our Majority political action committee, in comparison to raising a mere $85,000 for his PAC during all of last year. Hastert's predecessor Newt Gingrich raised tremendous amounts of money by appealing to grassroots conservatives; in contrast, Hastert focuses more on corporate donors and their lobbyists. Common Cause legislative director Meredith McGehee calls Hastert's operation a "pay to play system," in which only influential political activists have an opportunity to participate. "If you're someone who's a lobbyist or you can hire someone to do it, you get your chance to make your case. If you happen to be like 99% of the rest of us, you don't," says McGehee. "It's unfortunate that he shows more interest in playing the game than changing the game." Jack Abramoff, government affairs counselor for the firm Preston Gates, a veteran lobbyist firm with close connections to both Gingrich and Hastert, says, "He is being exceedingly active, even more than Newt. For people who have not dealt with him on a lobbying level, this will be their first chance to go over their issues with him." (Washington Post)
• March 12: Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic are admitted to NATO. (CBS News, NATO and UN History)
• March 24: Ann Coulter tells Geraldo Rivera, "I think [Whitewater]'s going to prevent the First Lady from running for Senate." (Huffington Post)
• March 24: With full-scale war breaking out in the separatist province of Kosovo, NATO begins 78 days of air strikes (Operation Allied Force) against Yugoslavia (specifically Serbia) over its military actions and accusations of "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo. Russia, a traditional ally of the Serbs, protests, and freezes relations with NATO. The airstrikes are successful; on June 10, Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic agrees to withdraw all troops from Kosovo and the war officially ends. (During the bombings, a US laser-guided missile strikes the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade; the US protests of the strike being an accident is not accepted by Beijing.) NATO then reworks its mission to one of keeping the peace. Yugoslavia will eventually fracture into a number of smaller, independent nations, including Serbia and Montenegro (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Slovenia, and Macedonia. Serbian nationalist leader Milosevic will be charged with an array of war crimes.
• Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vern Clark remembers in a 2001 conversation with Dick Cheney that Clinton's advisors had told him in no uncertain terms that Milosevic would fold if he were threatened by NATO force deployments. When that didn't happen, the same advisors told Clinton that the entire operation would take two, maybe three days before Milosevic capitulated. Instead, the bombing took 78 days to make Milosevic cave. "You needed a roomful of psychiatrists to counsel all the cabinet members to make sure none of them slit their wrists," Clark wryly recalls, "because they had so grossly misrepresented what was going to happen and the way they cased this for the president." Some of the Clinton national security team had been selling hope and had lost their sense of realism, Clark recalls. There was not even a plan on what to do after the 72-hour bombing runs, Clark says. Without saying so directly, Clark seems to lay much of the blame for the blind optimism on the Pentagon bureaucracy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by General Hugh Shelton. (NATO and UN History, Kosovo War Poetry, Ministry of Defence, Pat Buchanan, Bob Woodward)
• March 27: The UN Security Council's inspection commission on Iraqi weaponry reports to the Council, "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated." In 2003 Tony Blair will tell the British press that the UN had "tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully," a claim contradicted by the UN itself. Blair will also claim that UN inspectors "found no trace at all of Saddam's offensive biological weapons program" until his son-in-law defected, when in fact the UN got the regime to admit to its biological weapons program more than a month before the defection. (United Nations, Independent)

April 1999

• April: Khalid bin Mahfouz, a major Saudi investor in G.W. Bush's Harken Oil venture, is placed under house arrest in Saudi Arabia for funding terrorist activities. He attempts to direct $3 million dollars to various Osama bin Laden front operations, and is prevented by the Saudis from contributing money directly to bin Laden. His bank, National Commercial Bank, is bought out by the Saudi government. The US refuses to freeze Mahfouz's assets, and he continues to make deals with a number of American oil firms, including Harken Oil. (CCR)
• April 12: Susan McDougal is cleared of the charges of obstruction of justice leveled against her by Starr's OIC. She has spent 18 months in jail. "If anything should put a stake through the heart of Kenneth Starr, this should be it,"says defense attorney said Mark Geragos. "This guy should pack up, should get out of here. I'm happy to be the one, along with Susan, to wish him a bon voyage. Get the heck out of Arkansas and do it now." McDougal characterizes Starr's pursuit of her as a "personal vendetta." (CNN, , H.R. Clinton)

Columbine High School massacre

• April 20: Two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado use guns and explosives to kill 14 students and one teacher. The horrific event polarizes many Americans over the issue of gun control, and some Republicans use the tragedy to push their own agendas: for example, representative Tom DeLay, a creationist, says the shootings occurred "because our school systems teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud." DeLay has often said that he was elected to Congress to promote "a Biblical worldview."
• As part of his relentless attack on liberals, homosexuals, and the like, Internet trash journalist Matt Drudge, himself a closet homosexual who often appears in public in trenchcoat and fedora, frequently claims that boys and men who dress as the two Columbine assailants did -- identified in the public eye as part of the "Trenchcoat Mafia" -- are themselves gay. Drudge has no facts whatsoever on which to base his slanders. (CNN, Peter Singer)

Spring 1999

• Spring; US intelligence learns of a planned attack by bin Laden on a US government facility in Washington DC. In June, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees hear testimony about planned al-Qaeda attacks on US soil. (CCR)

May 1999

Libya secretly agrees to cease its production of WMDs and help the US fight Islamic terror

• May: Libya's dictator, Moammar Qaddafi, enters into secret talks with the US government to have the US help lift UN and US-imposed economic sanctions on Libya in return for giving up its biological and chemical weapons programs. Qaddafi tells the US that he is fed up with trying to create a pan-Arabic state, that he realizes Libya is as threatened by Islamic fundamentalism as is the West, and he wants to begin an era of increased cooperation with the US and Great Britain. In return for opening dialogue, Libya agrees to help the US and Britain with its search for Islamic terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, and to assist in the prosecution of two Libyans for their role in the bombing of PanAm Flight 103, which went down over Lockerbie, Scotland. Libya also agreed to stop supporting Palestinian insurgents and to endorse US peace efforts in the Middle East. In 2003, President Bush will claim, falsely, that the invasion of Iraq prompted Libya to end its WMD programs and begin cooperating with the US. (Financial Times/Brookings Institute)
• May: GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich calls his wife Marianne at her mother's home, wishes his mother-in-law a happy birthday, and then informs his wife that he is divorcing her. During the ugly divorce proceedings, Gingrich, who is carrying on a long-term affair with intern Callista Bisek, falsely accuses his ex-wife of abandoning him and taking a lover, then tries unsuccessfully to have the Catholic diocese of Atlanta annul his nineteen-year marriage. Bisek will later become Gingrich's third wife. (Joe Conason)
• May: In an interview with George magazine, Ann Coulter says, "If you don't hate Clinton and the people who labored to keep him in office, you don't love your country." (Huffington Post)

GOP refuses to support Clinton administration's peacekeeping efforts in Balkans

• May 2: House Majority Whip Tom DeLay says of Clinton's Kosovo bombing strategy: "The President said if we did nothing, there would be an instability in the region. There would be a flood of refugees. Kosovars would die, and the credibility of NATO would be undermined. Well, Clinton's bombing campaign has caused all these problems to explode." DeLay is ignoring the realities of the situation in his quest for an anti-Clinton sound bite. Far from causing "these problems to explode," the NATO bombing campaign halted much of the genocidal slaughter being perpetuated by the Serbs against their neighbors. The general consensus from regional experts and Balkan leaders is that Clinton's measured intervention in Kosovo prevented a holocaust in the region comparable to Hitler's execution of six million Jews. It is also noteworthy that just a few years later, DeLay and his fellow GOP legislators would tell Americans that it is tantamount to treason to criticize a sitting president while he is carrying out a war. (Al Franken)
• May 3: The orchestrated GOP attack on Clinton over the Kosovo bombings escalates, with Senate foreign policy expert Richard Lugar proclaiming, "This is President Clinton's war, and when he falls flat on his face, that's his problem." (Al Franken)
• May 4: GOP senator Trent Lott chimes in: "I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning. I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area." (Al Franken)
• May 7: In recent weeks, Republicans have stepped up the level of rhetoric aimed at the Clinton administration over the war in Kosovo (see above). Two GOP congressmen, Senator Don Nickles and Representative Tom DeLay, have accused Clinton of escalating the war, and lay responsibility for the deaths at his feet: "Once the bombing commenced, I think then [Slobodan] Milosevic unleashed his forces, and then that's when the slaughtering and the massive ethnic cleansing really started," Nickles said at a news conference. "The administration's campaign has been a disaster. ...[It] escalated a guerrilla warfare into a real war, and the real losers are the Kosovars and innocent civilians." DeLay blames the ethnic cleansing on US intervention: "Clinton's bombing campaign has caused all of these problems to explode," DeLay charged in a House floor speech. Senator Trent Lott blames the failure of diplomacy to avoid war in the region on Clinton: ""I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning. ...I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area." Nickles added that NATO's prewar peace proposal to the Serbs was "a very arrogant agreement" that "really caused this thing to escalate."
• Lott and Nickles, who along with 70% of the Senate GOP voted earlier not to support the NATO air campaign in the region, said that they would not support an authorization for Clinton to use ground troops if necessary to bring the conflict to a close. Nickles questioned the propriety of "NATO's objectives," calling its goal of "access to all of Serbia...ludicrous." DeLay, meanwhile, voted not only against last week's House resolution authorizing Clinton to conduct the air war -- which failed on a tie vote -- but also in favor of legislation "directing the president...to remove U.S. Armed Forces from their positions in connection with the present operations against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
• DeLay and Nickles expressed public doubt that Milosevic could be defeated by US-led forces: "I don't know that Milosevic will ever raise a white flag," warned Nickles. DeLay agreed: "He's stronger in Kosovo now than he was before the bombing. ...The Serbian people are rallying around him like never before. He's much stronger with his allies, Russians and others." Clinton "has no plan for the end" and "recognizes that Milosevic will still be in power," added DeLay. "The bombing was a mistake. ...And this president ought to show some leadership and admit it, and come to some sort of negotiated end." DeLay and Nickles publicly disagreed with military assessments of the progress of the war; Nickles asserted that "This war is not going well. ...[F]rankly ...we grossly miscalculated what Milosevic's response would be." DeLay added, "It is not helpful for the president's spin machine to be out there right now saying that Milosevic is weakening." The truth, said DeLay, is that "nothing has changed." Lott stated that unless Clinton finds "a way to get the bombing stopped" and to "get Milosevic to pull back his troops" voluntarily, NATO faces "a quagmire ... a long, protracted, bloody war." Both Nickles and Lott see little reason to abide by NATO's recommendation that a well-armed force needs to remain in Kosovo to protect ethnic Albanians; Lott insists that there must be some "wiggle room." Finally, Nickles recommends that Clinton pull American forces from Kosovo without forcing Milosevic to stop his practice of ethnic cleansing. Columnist William Saletan observes presciently, "some Democrats call Republicans who make these arguments unpatriotic. Republicans reply that they're serving their country by debunking and thwarting a bad policy administered by a bad president. You can be sure of only two things: Each party is arguing exactly the opposite of what it argued the last time a Republican president led the nation into war, and exactly the opposite of what it will argue next time." (Slate)
• May 10: Talk show host Sean Hannity joins in the anti-Clinton bashing over the Kosovo bombing campaign: "They haven't prepared for anything in this. And they're running out of weapons to do it. And frankly, I don't think Clinton has the moral authority or ability to fight this war correctly." Note that while Hannity and his GOP masters are ratcheting up the rhetoric, the NATO bombing is bringing the fighting in Kosovo to a successful end and avoiding mass slaughter. In 2003, Hannity would reverse course on his position of criticizing a president who is waging a questionable war, calling criticism of Bush "disgraceful" and saying, "I thought we always would unite behind our troops with a pending conflict." (Al Franken)
• May 17: Ehud Barak defeats Banjamin (Binyamin) Netanyahu to become the new Prime Minister of Israel. Due to heavy fighting between Israel and the PLO, as well as political infighting and the failure of the 2000 Camp David peace negotiations, Barak's term of office will last little over a year, when he will be replaced as PM by hard-right former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok)
• May 21: George W. Bush, angry about the contents of a parody Web site, www.gwbush.com/, states, "there ought to be limits to freedom." His campaign files a complaint with the Federal Election Commission and delivers a cease and desist order demanding the parody material be removed from the Web. As of 2005 the site is still up, though it is no longer being maintained. (ABC/Killtown)

June 1999

• June: Enron contracts to build a $140 billion power plant in the Gaza Strip. The bin Laden family contracts with Enron to help finance the project. Just before completion, construction is halted because of Palestinian-Israeli violence and Enron's bankruptcy. (CCR)

George W. Bush presidential campaign whitewashes his military records

• June: Bush campaign operative Dan Bartlett is sent to Fort Mabry, Texas, to oversee "scrubbing" efforts of Texas Air National Guard records concerning George W. Bush's military history. According to the State Plans Officer for the Texas National Guard, Bill Burkett, who participated in the operation, "The archives were closely scrutinized to make sure that the Bush autobiography plans and the record did not directly contradict each other. In essence it was the script of the autobiography which Dan Bartlett and his small team used to scrub a file to be released. This effort was further involved by General Daniel James and Chief of Staff William W. Goodwin at Camp Mabry." (Protalion)
• June: Florida Governor Jeb Bush's wife Columba is caught trying to smuggle $19,000 of designer clothes and jewelry through US Customs as she returns from a Paris shopping trip. She is fined $4,100 and later calls it "an awful mistake." (Naples Daily News)
• June 7: The FBI adds Osama bin Laden to the "10 Most Wanted List." (CCR)
• June 12: George W. Bush officially kicks off his presidential campaign in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and announces his candidacy before several hundred supporters crammed into a hangar. Bush has already been preparing himself for the campaign by presenting himself as "a uniter, not a divider." In the hangar, he adds that he is a tried-and-true moral leader: "some people think it's inappropriate to draw a moral line," he tells his audience. "Not me. For our children to have the lives we want for them, they must learn to say yes to responsibility, yes to family, yes to honesty." He continues: "I've learned you cannot lead by dividing people. This country is hungry for a new style of campaign. Positive. Hopeful. Inclusive. ...We will prove that someone who is conservative and compassionate can win without sacrificing principle. We will show that politics, after a time of tarnished ideals, can be higher and better. We will give our country a fresh start after a season of cynicism." He tells reporters after the speech, in a line he will repeat for the next five years and beyond, "I don't run polls to tell me what to think."
• Bush's bright speech is larded with lies. For one, every applause line (including most of the lines quoted above) have been tried out in front of a number of focus groups in South Carolina, Michigan, and California, using a sophisticated technique called "people-metering," where audience members turn knobs to indicate their level of approval or disapproval for specific lines, and a graph line is superimposed over footage of Bush showing a moment-by-moment approval rating. 16 different versions of Bush's stump speech are produced by head speechwriter Michael Gerson. "I don't get coached," he will falsely assert time and again on the campaign trail.
• Over the next 16 months Bush will run a campaign marked by ugly television ads studded with lies about himself, his record, and his opponents, will shift his positions back and forth based on audience responses, and will take the art of political "spin" to heights never before reached. David Corn writes, "All this would be done to mount a false advertising campaign about a product he knew well: George W. Bush." Over the next few months he will ride his label of "compassionate conservative" to an early lead in the GOP primaries. "The most dangerous threat Bush faced was himself," writes Corn, "...his reputation as a less-than-serious, smirkful, syntax-challenged fellow who would rarely be mistaken for an intellectual heavyweight."
• He makes a number of embarrassing slips early on, calling the Greek people "Grecians," fumbling on the leadership of Pakistan, India, and Chechnya, and, when asked which rendition of the Ten Commandments he preferred -- Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish, responding, "The standard one," proving he doesn't know that each religion prefers different versions. But his campaign, led by the clever strategist Karl Rove, decides to make a virtue of Bush's ignorance of world affairs. The campaign decides to build on Bush's record as governor of Texas, but lies about the specifics of his record: Bush says he is responsible for keeping Texans from paying personal income taxes, that he had pushed through two huge tax cuts, that he had rammed through a patients' bill of rights, that he had expanded a children's health insurance program, that he had overseen a general cleanup of the Texan environment, and under his tenure the size of Texas's government had dramatically shrunk. "Look at my record," Bush will invite the electorate. Unfortunately, his record doesn't bear up under scrutiny. The prohibition against a personal income tax was passed by Texas Democrats as an amendment to the Texas constitution before Bush took office. The two tax cuts were offset by other tax hikes he oversaw (even Bush's successor, Rick Perry, calls the Bush tax cuts "rather illusory"), and the tax cuts benefited mostly wealthy Texans at the direct cost to the Texas school system; the environment was far more polluted after Bush left office, mostly as a result of his corporate-friendly environmental policies. As for the patients' bill of rights and the children's health insurance program, both did indeed pass under his tenure -- but only after he and his fellow Republicans fought them tooth and nail, and one, the patients' bill of rights, actually survived a veto by Bush. The size of Texas government actually increased by 34% under Bush, a growth rate far larger than the federal government's increase of 21%. But none of this will be revealed on the campaign trail. (David Corn, NBC/Paul Waldman)
• June 12: The first policy issue Bush raises in his Cedar Rapids speech is taxes: "We'll be prosperous if we reduce taxes. ...Everybody who pays taxes ought to get relief." He promises that his proposed tax cuts will be financed without touching Social Security funds: "[F]or years politicians in both parties have dipped into the [Social Security] trust fund to pay for more funding. And I will stop it." This turns out to be a major lie, as Bush will raid the Social Security trust fund shamelessly during his first term in office. He also tells another huge lie on the campaign trail and during the Bush-Gore debates: "[A]fter my [tax] plan, the wealthiest of Americans will pay more [in] taxes of the percentage of the whole than they do today." He continues to reiterate the lie with the oft-repeated statement, "The Bush tax cuts benefit all Americans but reserve the greatest percentage for the lowest income families." (Alterman/Green)
• June 25: While briefly considering running as a Libertarian candidate against Republican representative Christopher Shays, conservative commentator Ann Coulter tells the Hartford Courant: "I really want to hurt him. I want him to feel pain." (Washington Monthly)

July 1999

• July: In an interview with George magazine, Ann Coulter says, "If you don't hate Clinton and the people who labored to keep him in office, you don't love your country." In another interview with Equal Time, she says, "We're now at the point that it's beyond whether or not this guy is a horny hick. I really think it's a question of his mental stability. He really could be a lunatic. I think it is a rational question for Americans to ask whether their president is insane." (Washington Monthly)
• July 4: Now that the pipeline deal appears dead, the Clinton administration finally issues an executive order banning all commercial transactions with the Taliban. The next day, he freezes all Taliban assets in the US and prohibits trade between US citizens and the Taliban. (CCR, From the Wilderness)
• July 14: In New York City, US intelligence informant Randy Glass tape-records the dinner conversation between him, two arms dealers, a former Egyptian judge, and an ISI agent named Rajaa Gulum Abbas. Abbas wants to buy a shipload of stolen US military arms to give to bin Laden. During the conversation, Abbas points to the World Trade Center, visible from the restaurant, and announces, "Those buildings are coming down." (CCR)
• July 28: Former Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell pleads guilty to one felony count of concealing his legal work on the failed Castle Grande land deal in Arkansas, and one misdemeanor count of tax evasion, as part of a plea agreement with Whitewater investigator Kenneth Starr. Numerous other charges are dropped, and Hubbell receives a year's probation. "After five years, it's over," says Hubbell following the court appearance. "The Office of Independent Counsel has finally agreed to leave me, my family and my friends alone, and our lives can begin again. For the first time in five years I am not under criminal investigation." The felony charge stems from legal work Hubbell and Hillary Clinton performed in the 1980s on the Castle Grande land development in Arkansas, a project that became part of the Whitewater investigation headed by Starr. Hubbell says, "Mrs. Clinton did nothing wrong and what I plead to today has nothing to do with Mrs. Clinton. All of those charges against me have been dismissed for good." He adds, "I have no knowledge of wrongdoing on behalf of President and Mrs. Clinton." Starr disagrees, saying that he could have proven all the charges in court, but he agreed to the deal in light of the impending expiration of the independent counsel statute. Hubbell has already served 16 months in jail for misappropriating $400,000 in funds from the Rose Law Firm, where he worked with Hillary Clinton. Financier Bernard Rapaport testifies before the jury that Hubbell is being railroaded for being a friend of Bill Clinton, and calls the impending trial a "political hanging." (CNN, Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose)

August 1999

• August 2: Conservative commentator Ann Coulter tells Geraldo Rivera that Clinton "masturbates in the sinks." (Washington Monthly)
• August 17: Ann Coulter tells Fox's Hannity and Colmes that "I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote." (Washington Monthly)
• August 18: Though Clinton was cleared of all charges in his impeachment hearings and no further charges are under consideration, the independent counsel investigation continues, on a 2-1 vote by the federal judges who originally authorized the investigation. (Clinton Impeachment Timeline)
• August 26: Bush makes a telling statement about his foreign policy expertise: "No one needs to tell me what to believe, but I do need someone to tell me where Kosovo is." In another interview, Bush draws a blank when asked about the Taliban, until prompted by the interviewer, who reminds him about the "repression of women in Afghanistan." Bush replies, "Oh, I thought you said some band. The Taliban in Afghanistan. Absolutely. Repressive." His campaign strategists will try, with some success, to parlay Bush's ignorance as a positive, focusing on his "American values" and touting his "on-the-ground experience." What exactly that experience is, considering Bush's lack of military service, his well-documented ignorance of the most basic foreign issues, and his failure to visit foreign countries, is never explained. (Cox News/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)

September 1999

• September: A report entitled the "sociology and Psychology of Terrorism" is completed by the National Intelligence Council, which advises the President and US intelligence agencies. It states: "Al-Qaeda's expected retaliation for the US cruise missile attack...could take several forms of terrorist attack in the nation's capital. Al-Qaeda could detonate a Chechen-type building-buster bomb at a federal building. Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and Semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House. Whatever form an attack may take, bin Laden will most likely retaliate in a spectacular way." The Bush administration later claims to have never heard of this report until May 2002, despite the fact that it had been publicly posted on the internet since 1999, and "widely shared within the government," according to the New York Times. (CCR)
• September: US intelligence receives reports that al-Qaeda is planning a major attack against targets in California and New York City.(CCR)
• September: 99% of East Timorese voters participate in a UN-sponsored referendum on that beleagured country's political future; around 78% of voters endorse independence. Violence erupts throughout the country as Indonesian forces along with anti-independence militias run rampant, killing around 1,000 civilians and destroying 80% of Timorese buildings. (President Clinton initially refuses to cut off aid for Indonesia in response to the Timorese slaughter; an outcry from grassroots organizations and members of the US Congress force him to reverse his position.) Resistance leader Xanana Gusmao is released from house arrest. In October, the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) will be established, an organization that will lead to ultimate freedom for the East Timorese people. (BBC/East Timor Timeline, Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
• September: After a much-publicized abuse of executive power by Texas governor George W. Bush, who had a group of peaceful protesters arrested for violating an obscure law prohibiting demonstrations outside the governor's mansion (though hundreds of protests had taken place on the selfsame sidewalk in front of the mansion without incident), Bush claims that the rules governing protest have changed. He refuses, however, to make these rule changes public. "The motive is clearly to stop their speech," says ACLU representative Jay Jacobsen. (Ventura County Star/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
• September 15: The first report of the US Commission on National Security/21st Century, co-chaired by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, is issued, which Hart characterizes as "the most comprehensive review of US national security since 1947." It concludes: "America will be attacked by terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and Americans will lose their lives on American soil, possibly in large numbers." Hart later says, "The first of fifty recommendations [in the report], all of which were eminently doable, was to create a National Homeland Security agency. And if CNN or anyone else was saying that it wasn't feasible, well, two years later, we had one finally created. So the question was: are you going to do it before the terrorists attack, or afterwards? And unfortunately, the Administration waited until well afterwards." (CCR, Buzzflash, Gary Hart News)
• September 23: Presidential candidate George W. Bush gives a speech on the military at the Citadel, a military academy in South Carolina, where he says, "I will begin creating the military of the next century.... Homeland defense has become an urgent duty." He lists the threats of "biological, chemical, and nuclear terrorism" and says, "Every group or nation must know, if they sponsor such attacks, our response will be devastating. ...Even if I am elected I will not command the new military we create. They will be left to a president who comes after me. The results of our efforts will not be seen for many years." Bush's speech is shaped by an ad hoc group of foreign advisors led by former Stanford provost and Soviet Union expert Condoleezza Rice, informally called the "Vulcans." Other members of this group include two veterans of Dick Cheney's Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz and Stephen Hadley. Hadley helped write Bush's speech. Bush, like the neoconservatives that make up the Vulcans, wants to transform the US military and reform the Defense Department, and wants to build the credibility he needs to take on the military bureaucracy at the Pentagon. Bush seems to flounder in the huge amount of information his advisors give him, and at one point, Hadley says, "You don't need all this technical stuff. You've got great instincts. If I could urge you to do one thing, it would be 'Trust your instincts.'" Bush finds that advice easy to swallow; in later years, he would make numerous references to his instincts, and at one point tells reporter Bob Woodward, "I'm not a textbook player. I'm a gut player." (Bob Woodward)
• September 30: Two of the senior campaign aides for right-wing Presidential candidate Gary Bauer resign in protest over Bauer's alleged affair with his deputy campaign manager. Bauer denies that he has ever behaved inappropriately with the manager. Bauer, an evangelical Christian with ties to the groups Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, is warned by both groups to stop behaving inappropriately with the manager, Melissa McClard, though they do not withdraw their support. Bauer calls the resignations "trash-can politics" and infers that at least one of the resignations is due to the manipulations of the campaign of fellow Republican candidate Steve Forbes. Bauer's long-shot campaign ends shortly afterwards. (Washington Post)

October 1999

• October: The ANSER Institute for Homeland Security is founded. It claims to be "leading the [homeland security] debate through executive-level education, public awareness programs, workshops for policy makers and online publications: a weekly newsletter and the Journal of Homeland Security, which features articles by senior government leaders and leading homeland security experts." As their webpage makes clear, the first mention of the phrase "homeland security" in a US context came only one month earlier. This institute, which has deep roots in the Air Force, has received tens of millions of government dollars in support. They talked about a "second Pearl Harbor" long before 9/11. It is clear that the Department of Homeland Security has its roots in the ANSER Institute, which was founded long before 9/11. The ANSER website touts their role in the creation of this department. (CCR)

CIA plans to assassinate bin Laden fail

• October: The CIA readies a plan to assassinate bin Laden, with the cooperation of Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency. Pakistan supposedly agrees to the plan in return for economic and military aid. The plan is aborted because on October 12, General Musharref takes control of the Pakistani government in a coup. Most CIA participants feel that Pakistan's cooperation was a ruse designed to stall the CIA until Musharref could take control. One reason for the coup is the fear among ISI that the previous government would bow to American pressure and stop cooperating with the Taliban. Musharref replaces the leader of the ISI, Brig Imtiaz, and places Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed in charge. Imtiaz will later be charged with keeping tens of millions of dollars of drug money in a Deutschbank account; insider trading just prior to 9/11 is eventually connected to a branch of Deutschbank recently run by "Buzzy" Krongard, who will be named Executive Director of the CIA by George W. Bush. Ahmed is later fired when he is found to have helped finance the 9/11 terrorists. (CCR)
• October 5: Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor reports that US intelligence is very concerned over a possible al-Qaeda attack on US soil. They recommend stepped-up security at the New York Stock Exchange and at the Federal Reserve. (CCR)
• October 14: The right-wing Internet news site NewsMax, funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, writes approvingly of a recent diatribe by conservative radio host Michael Savage. Savage opined, "We are now living through the equivalent social chaos that the Germans experienced in the Weimar Republic in pre-Hitler Germany before 1933. We have the same radical political leadership that caters to pornographers, drug dealers, perverts, foreign immigrants, foreign competitors.... It disdains church, family, fathers, mothers, children, and decency." It is interesting to note that Savage, who is obviously no historian by his fantastical take on Weimar Germany, seems to believe that the biggest problem with prewar Germany was not the Nazis as much as it was the "degenerate" Weimar government that preceded them. "Believe me, there is no essential difference between Bill Clinton's and the leadership of the Weimar Republic. It's the same mentality, the same diseased mind that's come back to haunt us again." (NewsMax/Mark Crispin Miller)

Starr resigns as head of Whitewater investigation

• October 18: Kenneth Starr resigns as the Whitewater independent counsel; Robert Ray is sworn in as his successor, and will write the final report of the commission. (Clinton Impeachment Timeline)
• October 28: Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush makes it clear that he intends, if elected, to prove himself the equal (or superior) of his father, former president George H.W. Bush, by being aggressive with America's military, and that he will begin that aggression in Iraq. According to author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz, Bush said in recent days, "One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.... My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.... If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it." According to Herskowitz, "Bush expressed frustration in a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow." (GNN/OhMy News)
• October 29: Conservative commentator Ann Coulter writes in her syndicated column that the "backbone of the Democratic Party" is a "typical fat, implacable welfare recipient." (Washington Monthly)

November 1999

• November 3: Australian intelligence admits that the Echelon global surveillance system exists; the US still denies it. The BBC describes Echelon's power as "astounding," and elaborates: "Every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission can be listened to by powerful computers capable of voice recognition. They home in on a long list of key words, or patterns of messages. They are looking for evidence of international crime, like terrorism." (CCR)
• November 14: UN sanctions against Afghanistan take effect. The sanctions freeze Taliban assets and curtail Ariana Airlines' operations, all in an effort to force Afghanistan to turn over bin Laden. Ariana continues flying until stronger sanctions in early 2001 finally ground its planes. (CCR)
• November 30: Jordanian intelligence uncover an al-Qaeda plot to blow up the Radisson Hotel in Amman, and other sites on Jan. 1, 2000. Though US intelligence claims that it could not crack the al-Qaeda coded transmissions that preceded 9/11, the same codes that were used in transmissions regarding this attempt had long since been cracked successfully by the FBI. (CCR)

WTO conference sparks police riot against protesters

• Late November - Early December: The World Trade Organization holds a week-long conference in Seattle, Washington. The WTO is a secretive, unelected body created in Geneva in 1995 with strong support of President Clinton, which has the power to override local laws in favor of its own rulings for what it euphemistically calls "free trade" -- in reality, it works to enact procedures favoring its corporate clients at the expense of the average worker and the environment. The conference, which drew almost no coverage from the mainstream media before it began, draws the attention of as many as 100,000 protesters from around the world who descend on Seattle to protest its actions. Protesters peacefully picketing the conference are attacked by Seattle police with tear gas and rubber bullets; the mayor of Seattle declares martial law, and has the city establish "no-protest zones." Between the protests, which draw belated, if often contemptuous, coverage from the mainstream media, and the European Union's anger at the United States' attempts to impose its own agenda on the other participants, the conference breaks up with little to show for its efforts except a blaze of bad publicity. The spokesman on trade for the socialist group of MEPs, Beryl McNally, says it was the EU that pulled the plug on the talks. "The United States was too greedy," she says, "it was all take and no give. I can't believe that America's chief negotiator could have been so foolish to think we would accept it." Of the 135 countries that participate in the conference, only 25 are given unlimited access, leaving the rest of the countries' delegates literally barred from participating in the most important meetings. The Foreign Minister of Guyana, Clement Rohee, says, "We from developing countries were invited to this meeting, and asked to participate, but then treated like delinquents. We didn't come here to sit outside and drink coffee while the decisions were taken by the richer countries." One delegate is even physically barred from taking part in one of the meetings.
• The extreme police response to protesters draws a great deal of negative publicity, especially when a journalist is arrested for trying to report what the delegates in the closed-door meetings are actually talking about. Thousands of peaceful protesters descend on the conference to protest the US's and other countries' economic policies, and the police respond by attacking the protesters with a variety of "non-lethal" crowd control devices. "Seattle was really a cop riot," recalls John Sellers of the Ruckus Society, one of the largest protest groups on the scene. "The cops lost their cool. The feds wanted the WTO meeting opened at all costs." Sellers had met with representatives of the Seattle police before the WTO conference, to assure them that his and other participating protest groups would conduct themselves peacefully, but the police are preparing as if Seattle is going to become a war zone. Sellers learns that, during "war games" conducted by the Seattle PD before the WTO, one policeman had his arm broken. "We realized that they had a lot of misinterpretations about us," Sellers later says. "They were getting ready for these violent anarchists coming to the city." Sellers and Ruckus try to reach out to the police, even attempting to set up a bowling night for police officers and Ruckus participants, so the police can get to know the protesters and become more comfortable with them. The police refuse the offer. "We couldn't believe how unprepared they ended up being," Sellers says. Eventually, the police response to the thousands of protesters becomes violent, after "Secretary of State Madeline Albright freaked out," Sellers recalls, and the police, in his words, become "a brutal, marauding presence. ...It was just a melee." Police use tear gas, pepper spray, oversized billy clubs, and stun grenades to disperse the crowd, and use so many chemical weapons that they have to reload from local surplus stores and the National Guard units. The Seattle chief of police will eventually resign because of the storm of criticism about the police response to protesters.
• In response to the failure of the corporate-controlled media to cover the protests, a raft of independent media outlets spring up (including the now-nationwide Indymedia), feeding the world with its own coverage. The Christian Science Monitor later admits that it, and the mainstream media in general, was inexcusably "scooped" by the many small, independent media outlets reporting from Seattle: while independent media provides "edgy, fresh dramatic video of the events," the mainstream media relies on "repeated footage of a couple of incidents and interviews with establishment talking heads that the networks and cable-news operations favored." Sellers recalls that in the aftermath of the WTO conference, mainstream outlets such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal report on the violent response of the Seattle PD to peaceful protests, but in the following months, the story changes to become the Seattle PD's heroic resistance to violent anarchists bent on destroying the conference. A small group of vegan teenagers, unaffiliated with any of the larger groups, is captured on videotape during the protests looting a Starbucks, and that clip becomes the defining image of the protests, to Sellers's disgust, while extensive footage of police officers attacking and beating protesters remain unseen by most viewers. (Global Issues, BBC, Amy Goodman and David Goodman, John Sellers/Bill Kavotsky)

December 1999

• December: Libya's Moammar Qaddafi denounces terrorism, as part of his efforts to steer Libya away from the "rogue state" category it had previously labored under, expels the Abu Nidal terrorist organization, and forcibly shuts down terrorist training camps. (History of the Middle East Libya Timeline)
• December 1: The US media roundly attacks Presidential candidate Al Gore for falsely claiming that he discovered the Love Canal environmental disaster and is solely responsible for taking action: he is widely misquoted as saying, "I was the one who started it all," a deliberate misquote faxed to all and sundry by the Republican National Committee. Gore actually stated to a high-school audience in Concord, New Hampshire on November 30 that he learned of a toxic waste dump in Toone, Tennessee, in the late 1970s from a high-school student who contacted his office, and his subsequent investigation led him to learn of the Love Canal dumping site, which had already been evacuated. Because of the student's initiative, Gore said, he "called for a congressional investigation and a hearing.... I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upsate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee -- that was the one you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all." Gore claimed, accurately, that he was the first senator to open hearings into Love Canal, and notes that his hearings led to the creation of the Superfund environmental cleanup program. The media continues to hammer Gore for lying even after the high school students to whom Gore made the original statements publish a letter documenting the actual statements and imploring the media to correct the errors and cease their misguided attacks. Some media outlets issue quiet corrections, but most, even some of the ones who correct their earlier statements, continue to pillory Gore for his so-called "lies." GOP operatives, many affiliated with the Bush campaign for president, continue to doctor his statements to make him appear to be even more of a liar, and trumpet the falsified quotes all over the media, which dubs him "Zelig" after the chameleon-like Woody Allen character, and characterizes him as "delusional" and a "serial prevaricator." (Consortium News, David Corn, Al Franken)
• December 14: US border patrol agents arrest al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ressam for attempting to enter the US with 130 pounds of explosives in his car. The NSA is tipped to Ressam through monitored phone calls, including one that featured an Arab man saying, "The time for training is over." Ressam later admits he is part of a group that is planning to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on December 31 as part of a wave of planned bombings, sometimes called the "Millennium Bombings." Other bombings were planned for Jordan and Israel. CIA director George Tenet had put the CIA on high alert; using the full cooperation of Clinton and other White House officials, the CIA had worked with the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of to trigger arrests and anti-terrorist operations in eight other countries. Ressam remains in American custody but has yet to be brought to trial. In the wake of Ressam's arrest, frantic FBI investigations lead to connections with terrorists in New York City, Boston, and Seattle. Enough arrests are made to foil the bombing plans. Even after this, US officials under both Clinton and Bush continue to deny that al-Qaeda has any serious terrorist organizations in America. (CCR, Bob Woodward)
• December 17: Security Council Resolution 1284 replaces UNSCOM with UNMOVIC, reaffirms the previous resolutions and calls on Iraq to address the humanitarian needs of vulnerable population groups, such as the Kurds and Shi'a. The resolution offers a trial period of 120 days under which sanctions would be lifted in exchange for full compliance, and a permanent end to the embargo would be considered upon demonstration of continuous movement toward disarmament. (UN/Iraqwatch/Electric Venom)
• December 20: The BBC reports that fighting between Pakistani and Indian forces has been stirred up by Iran in part to prevent the construction of an oil/gas pipeline through Afghanistan. Iran wants any pipeline to go through its own territory. Later, it seems that Pakistan and India are considering building just such a pipeline, but those plans are apparently cancelled after 9/11. (CCR)
• December 24-31: An Indian Airlines flight is hijacked and flown to Afghanistan, where 155 passengers are held hostage for eight days. They are freed in return for three militants held in Indian prisons. One of the freed militants is Saeed Sheikh, who was deeply involved in funding the 9/11 attacks. Another released militant, Maulana Masood Azhar, journeys to Pakistan, where he tells cheering crowds that "Muslims should not rest in peace until we have destroyed America and India." He then tours Pakistan for weeks under the protection of the ISI. The ISI and Saeed help Azhar form a new terrorist group called Jaish-e-Mohammad, and Azhar is soon plotting terrorist acts again. (Press Trust of India/CCR)
• Just before Christmas, Britain refuses to allow a shipment of children's vaccines against diptheria and yellow fever to Iraq, stating that the vaccines could be used to fashion "weapons of mass destruction." (CCR)

"Millennium Bomb" plot foiled

• December 31-January 1, 2000: The CIA expects a wave of attacks on American targets over the New Year's weekend, but none occur. Since it is known since this time that terrorists are perfectly capable of launching numerous simultaneous attacks, the fact that the US only keeps a maximum of 14 fighter planes in a state of highest readiness to defend the entire US seems to make little sense. It is later revealed that the Clinton administration coordinates successful efforts to halt a "Millennium Bomb" terrorist plot (see December 14 entry). Al-Qaeda's plans were to simultaneously attack the national airports in Washington DC and Los Angeles, the Amman Raddison Hotel in Jordan, a number of holy sites in Israel, and the USS The Sullivans at dock in Yemen. The entire plot is halted, and a number of perpetrators are arrested. In May 17, 2000, Clinton will first reveal some of the details of the plot in a speech to the Coast Guard Academy, telling his audience, "I want to tell you a story that, unfortunately, will not be the last example you will have to face."
• The plot was apparently designed and orchestrated by Jordanian terrorist leader Abu Zubaydah. After Jordanian intelligence intercepts a phone call between Zubaydah and Khadr Abu Hoshar, a Palestinian militant, where Zubaydah stated, "The time for training is over," Jordanian police arrested Hoshar and 15 others on December 12. (Hijazi and five others will be sentenced to death, and 17 others convicted; Jordanian courts sentence Zubaydah to death in absentia.) Algerian terrorist Ahmed Ressam, living in Canada, is arrested at the United States-Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington after crossing by ferry on December 14; Customs officials found nitroglycerin and four timing devices concealed in a spare tire well of his automobile. He and three other Algerians will stand trial for their crimes. Ressam cooperates with investigators, and in July 2005 is sentenced to 22 years in prison. (Part of Ressem's testimony, about al-Qaeda sleeper cells active in the US, is included in the infamous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing that warns Bush about the impending 9/11 attacks, a warning that Bush ignores.) The Yemeni plot to bomb the USS The Sullivans is not foiled by any law enforcement agencies, but aborts when the overloaded bomb boat sinks before reaching the American vessel. The same kind of attack is successful in October 2000, when a similar boat damages the USS Cole.
• In July 2001, convicted attacker Ahmed Ressam cooperates with New York state prosecutors at the trial of co-conspirator Mokhtar Haouari, giving specific and chilling testimony about how al-Qaeda cells operate, details of life in an Afghani training camp, and how Ressam operated as part of a global terrorism network. The testimony is excerpted as part of a PBS Frontline special on the Millennium bombing plot, and can be read at the PBS link below. (CCR, Truthout, Wikipedia, PBS)

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