PANEL: U.S. Had Plan to Overthrow Taliban

Tuesday, March 23, 2004
(12:38 PM ET)
By Hope Yen

Associated Press Writer

The commission's report Tuesday said Clarke pushed for immediate and secret military aid to the Taliban's foe, the Northern Alliance. But Rice and Hadley proposed a broader review of the al Qaida response that would take more time. The proposal wasn't approved for Bush's review until just weeks before Sept. 11.

Secretary of State Colin Powell gives testimony to the federal panel reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks in Washington, Tuesday, March 23, 2004.

Image Credit: Gerald Herbert -- AP

WASHINGTON -- AP
One day before the Sept. 11 attacks, senior Bush administration officials agreed that the United States would try to overthrow Afghanistan's Taliban rulers if a final diplomatic push to expel Osama bin Laden from the country failed, a federal panel reported Tuesday.

The independent commission reviewing the attacks said in a preliminary report that in the years before the attacks the Clinton and Bush administrations chose to use diplomatic rather than military options, which allowed bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders to elude capture.

The commission said that three years before the attacks, Saudi Arabia won a commitment from the Taliban to expel bin Laden, but Afghan leaders later reneged.

``From the spring of 1997 to September 2001, the U.S. government tried to persuade the Taliban to expel bin Laden to a country where he could face justice,'' the report said. ``The efforts employed inducements, warnings and sanctions. All these efforts failed.''

The panel, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, presented its findings as it began hearings with top-level Bush and Clinton administration officials. The aim was to question officials on their efforts to stop bin Laden in the years leading up to the attacks.

Secretary of State Colin Powell stressed administration efforts to fight terrorism, an implicit rebuttal to criticism in a recent book by President Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, who is expected to testify Wednesday.

``President Bush and his entire national security team understood that terrorism had to be among our highest priorities and it was,'' Powell said.

Shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration was debating how to force bin Laden out of Afghanistan. At a Sept. 10, 2001, meeting of second-tier Cabinet officials, officials settled on a three-phase strategy. The first step called for dispatching an envoy to talk to the Taliban. If this failed, diplomatic pressure would be applied and covert funding and support for anti-Taliban fighters would be increased.

If both failed, ``the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action,'' the report said. Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley said the strategy had a three-year timeframe.

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* National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
(AKA "the 9-11 Commission")

Dan