In a conference call this morning, John McCain's presidential campaign denounced Barack Obama as "naive" and suggested his election would mean an America far more vulnerable to terrorist attacks after comments the Democratic nominee made yesterday to ABC News. Obama said the response to the 1993 World Trade Center attacks demonstrated an effective law enforcement approach to terrorism. On the call, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey and Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, offered the most pointed criticism.
Lehman suggested that Obama's current position is so naive it's untenable. "I can't believe Senator Obama won't change his position on this because it is a totally unsupportable position. It would provide such an opening for terrorism. No matter how naive he is he would not go forward with it. If he did, it would certainly make it far more dangerous in the United States."
More Lehman: "The investigations of the 9/11 bombing certainly made clear that the way the criminal justice system as applied to the perpetrators of the 1993 bombing, the way it operated it was a material cause of the greater tragedy of 9/11 because it was treated as a law enforcement issue. Evidence gathered and intelligence used was put under a grand jury seal and kept specifically from the Director of Central Intelligence, who personally told me -- Jim's successor -- personally told me -- Director Tenet -- that he did not get to see the evidence which would have linked some of the perpetrators of the '93 bombing to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In fact they were relatives. And would have enabled many of the dots to have been connected well before 9/11 and, in my belief, would have given a good chance to have prevented 9/11...What Senator Obama said, this this was the right approach, that they way went about it in the '93 bombing was the correct approach, shows a very deep ignorance of the facts and a very, very dangerous policy."
Jim Woolsey: "I want to stress that the approach that Senator Obama is suggesting -- that we do everything through the law enforcement system -- is precisely what failed in the 1990s...The totally criminal justice approach to dealing with international terrorists, particularly when they are suicidal and are able to pull off plots like 9/11 has not worked. It was tried for essentially eight years from the first year of the first Clinton administration up until 9/11 during the first year of the first Bush administration. It was a miserable failure."
McCain Foreign Policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann: "If Senator Obama did receive that 3am call that was so often talked about in the primaries, I guess his response would be to call the lawyers in the Justice Department."
