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Clinton tom on to many cuts and basically cut the CIA to so third and culled the militar. I feel the CIA being cut basically disconnected us from the world and gave us no info leading to the terrorist attacks.
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That's a fair and valid viewpoint.
I was typing a detailed response when I came across this article which very accurately articulated my views on Clinton's decisions with regards to the CIA:
http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back/issue10/boys.htmIronically, it was George W. Bush’s father who initiated many of the changes that Clinton would implement. In the early 1990s, Bush conducted an examination of the Intelligence Community and instigated a steady series of budgetary cuts from its historic high of $30 billion in 1991, to $28 billion by 1993. Bush also began the realloÂcation of resources “away from old Cold War concerns toward new economic tarÂgets, as the world marketplace became an ever more important battlefield for America.” During the Cold War, up to 60% of CIA resources were targeted on the USSR. By 1993, that figure had dropped to 13%.12 CIA analysts would continue to investigate weapons proliferation and traditional espionage activities, but they would now develop an enhanced role in the area of economic espionage.
What Clinton did was to make past practices official, if sometimes undeclared, policy. This was done in part through a 1995 National Security Strategy statement that noted “collection and analysis can help level the economic playing field by identifying threats to U.S. companies from foreign intelligence services.” The CIA claimed to have uncovered bribes affecting $30 billion in foreign contracts from 1992 to 1995, giving credence to Secretary of State Christopher’s declaration that “Our national security is inseparable from our economic security.” The weight of America’s national security apparatus was brought to bear in maintaining economic security, as under Clinton, economic intelligence gathering became policy. Economic intelligence became one of the few growth areas at the CIA in the 1990s, proving the Agency could adapt to ever changing circumstances.
One must recall however, that whilst such attacks occurred, massive terrorist attacks on American soil remained a hypothetical danger in the 1990s. Despite this, Clinton doubled counter terrorist spending across 40 departments and agencies and officially recognised the anger such actions posed. Presidential Decision Directive 35 set out the Clinton Administration’s intelligence collection priorities on March 2, 1995. This represented an elevation in status for a danger that had previously received little attention. This marked the Clinton Administration as “the first to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort, in terms of resources and anti-terrorist activity.” Clinton also devoted some of his highest-profile foreign policy speeches on the subject, including an address to mark the United Nations’ 50th anniversary, when he spoke of the terrorists who had “plotted to destroy the very hall we gather in today.”
It makes interesting reading.
