-THINKING THIS IS IMPORTANT IN RELATION TO THE CONTENTS OF THIS AWARD-WINNING WEBSITE AND THE DEVELOPING CRISIS WITH IRAQ AND UNCERTAIN WHETHER IT COULD BE FOUND ANYWHERE ELSE PRESENTLY THAN COPIES OF THE OCTOBER 12, 1998 EDITION OF NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, I DECIDED TO PUT HERE THE TEXT OF SEYMOUR M. HERSH'S IMPRESSIVE WORK OF RESEARCH ON THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION BOMBINGS IN THE SUDAN AND AFGHANISTAN, 'THE MISSILES OF AUGUST'.
I DON'T WANT TO VIOLATE EITHER GEOCITIES/YAHOO'S RULES ON COMMERCIALISM ON THE WEBSITE(S) OR MR. HERSH'S COPYRIGHT.
WHEN HE PUBLISHES HIS NEXT COLLECTION OF WRITINGS--POSSIBLY TO CONTAIN THIS--I RECOMMEND PEOPLE WHO APPRECIATE THE CARE HE HAS TAKEN WITH THIS PIECE GO OUT AND BUY IT.
AND THE COPYRIGHT FOR THIS WORK IS © 1998 BY SEYMOUR M. HERSH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
I WILL HAVE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THE AWARD-WINNING, DISTINGUISHED INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST SOON IN RELATION TO THE COPYRIGHT CLEARANCE FOR WHAT YOU FIND IF YOU TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE.
AT THAT TIME I WILL ALSO INDICATE TO HIM THAT THIS IS HERE.
IF HE ASKS ME TO REMOVE IT, I WILL.
OTHERWISE, PERHAPS HE WILL SIGN MY GUESTBOOK WITH HIS COMMENTS ON IT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS AWARD-WINNING WEBSITE.
IN A RELATED WAY, WHEN I CONTACT THE AWARD-WINNING, DISTINGUISHED INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST BOB WOODWARD IMMINENTLY ABOUT WHAT YOU FIND IF YOU TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE, I WILL ASK FOR A SIMILAR RESPONSE BY HIM AND/OR THE WASHINGTON POST.
BOBBY MAY, of Marianna, Arkansas, is a quintessential good old boy who served eighteen years as sheriff of Lee County, in the eastern corner of the state, and began a friendship with Bill Clinton twenty-five years ago, when Clinton ran an unsuccessful campaign for Congress. The friendship remained constant even in the worst of times; May attended a fund-raiser with the President in Little Rock in late July, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and contributed ten thousand dollars to help Democratic Party candidates in Arkansas.
Now, as a businessman seeking oil and natural-gas investments in Africa, May happened to be in Khartoum the week that American Tomahawk cruise missiles destroyed the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant, on August 20th. He was travelling with another Clinton acquaintance, H.H. Brookins, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Nashville, who had become interested in the question of religious freedom in Sudan.
The Sudanese plant, depicted by the President in a televised statement as a chemical-warfare facility, was one of two targets. Tomahawks were also fired at sites in Afghanistan suspected to be terrorist training camps under the control of Osama bin Laden, a Saudi extremist who had earlier issued a fatwa calling for attacks on American military and civilian targets. Bin Laden had summoned his associates to a meeting at the camps.
The Clinton Administration justified the missile attacks as retaliation for truck bombings thirteen days earlier that had destroyed the American Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing twelve Americans and more than two hundred and fifty Africans. There was "convincing evidence," Clinton said, that bin Laden and his Islamic-fundamentalist associates had been involved in the embassy bombings and had plans to strike other American targets. The camps in Afghanistan and the plant in Sudan, which was associated with the bin Laden network, had to be destroyed, the President told the nation, because of the "threat they presented to our national security."
The announcement was all the more startling because, just three days earlier, Clinton had completed his grand-jury appearance in the Lewinsky matter. The missile raids reminded Americans of the power and importance of the American Presidency. Clinton concluded his televised announcement, delivered from Martha's Vineyard, where he was vacationing, by telling the nation that he was returning to Washington "to be briefed by my national-security team on the latest information." He spoke again that evening from the Oval Office, adding little new information, and once again depicting the training camps in Afghanistan and the Sudanese plant as an "imminent threat...to our national security." Sometime that afternoon, Samuel R. (Sandy) Berger, the President's national security adviser, assured the White House press corps that the Administration had impeccable intelligence "with respect to the so-called pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, which we know with great certainty produces essentially the penultimate chemical to manufacture VX nerve gas."
In those first hours after Clinton's announcement, Berger and other senior national-security officials who were involved in the decision to bomb--Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, and General Henry Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--were obviously aware that the President's personal problems would raise questions about his motives for the Tomahawk strikes. During televised press briefings, all four officials emphasized the imminent danger of more terrorist attacks and the need for America to show resolve--arguments that decided the issue for most Americans, and most members of Congress.
Nevertheless, some reporters questioned whether the President had used military force to distract the nation's attention from the Lewinsky scandal. But Clinton's top advisers insisted that personal politics had nothing to do with the Tomahawk attacks. "The only motivation driving this action today was our absolute obligation to protect the American people from terrorist activities," Secretary Cohen declared at a Pentagon briefing. "That is the sole motivation. No other consideration has been involved."
"This is, unfortunately, the war of the future," Albright said. When Berger was asked about the nature of the chemical plant in Sudan, he responded with assurance, "Let me be very clear about this...This was a plant that was producing chemical-warfare-related weapons, and we have physical evidence of that fact." The press was later told that a C.I.A. operative had obtained a soil sample outside the Al Shifa plant* which con-
*-THERE IS A MORE UP-TO-DATE TERM OF REFERENCE ABOUT THAT "SOIL SAMPLE" (NOTE THE FOOTNOTE TO IT) IF YOU TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE.
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