- October: FBI agents Robert Wright and John Vincent are tracking a terrorist cell in Chicago; they believe that evidence links the embassy bombings with Saudi businessman Yassin al-Qadi. FBI supervisors attempt to block investigations into al-Qadi's connections. Wright and Vincent are prohibited from making any arrests or opening any new investigations. In January 2001, both agents are told that the investigation is closed and to "let sleeping dogs lie." The agents believe that their investigation, had it been supported, would have led directly to the 9/11 hijackers and the possible prevention of the 9/11 attacks. Wright later said, "september the 11th is a direct result of the incompetence of the FBI's International Terrorism Unit.... Absolutely no doubt about that." Chicago federal prosecutor Mark Flessner, also working on the case, says there "were powers bigger than I was in the Justice Department and within the FBI that simply were not going to let [the building of a criminal case] happen." Wright will write an internal FBI memo slamming the FBI in June 2001. (CCR)
- October: the FBI issues the first of three warnings to American airports warning of the possibility of terrorist hijackings, particularly from Eastern US airports. The warnings are based on statements made by bin Laden and other terrorists after the August missile strikes. This flatly contradicts numerous later statements made by Bush administration officials saying that the US never had any specific pre-9/11 threats inside the US or involving hijackings. (CCR)
- October: Khidhir Hamza, the senior scientist whom Iraq accused of master-minding the country's nuclear program along with General Kamel, publishes an article detailing the various ways in which Iraq was deceiving IAEA/UNSCOM on its nuclear abilities. (BAS/Electric Venom)
House impeaches Clinton over lying about Lewinsky affair
- October 8: The House of Representatives begins impeachment procedures against Clinton for a wide-ranging set of charges relating to Whitewater and the Lewinsky affair. In the following weeks, Republicans will use the proceedings in their campaign ads. In December, the House will authorize further investigation of potential charges of campaign finance abuse; that investigation is dropped two days later. (Clinton Impeachment Timeline)
- During the impeachment proceedings, Manhattan literary agent and conservative talk show hostess Lucianne Goldberg gives an interview to the NY Press where she says, "For all we know, Clinton is finger-f*cking Chelsea," his daughter. The horrendous comment sparks outrage from liberals but is ignored by the mainstream media. (David Brock)
- October 23: Abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian is shot and killed by a sniper who fires through his kitchen window in his home in Amherst, New York. Slepian has been the target of acrimonious and sometimes violent protests at his home and offices by anti-abortionists for years. The murder is finally pinned on anti-abortion extremist James Kopp, who is not arrested for nearly two years, until he is found hiding out in France. The execution-style murder shows strong similarities to four other sniper attacks in the border region of the US and Canada over the last four years. "The cold-blooded assassination of Dr. Slepian is a shocking example of just how far some opponents of abortion and reproductive rights will go to deny women their constitutional right to choose," says Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. New York governor George Pataki, a Republican, echoes Michelman's characterization of Kopp as a "cold-blooded" assassin and says that the murderer should receive the death penalty. On the other hand, Operation Rescue's national director, the Rev. Philip "Flip" Benham, tells reporters that Slepian had "murdered countless thousands of innocent children" and deserves little sympathy, though he insists his group does not support violence. Federal authorities immediately begin collecting evidence, and soon determine that Kopp is the killer. Kopp will be convicted of Slepian's murder on March 18, 2003. Kopp, who requested a trial by judge instead of a jury trial, admits to shooting Slepian, though he insists he did not shoot to kill, and when sentenced to 25 years to life, shows no remorse, saying that he wishes he could serve "10 life sentences or 10 death penalties" to save the lives of the unborn. A close friend of Slepian's, cardiologist Marc Kozinn, says of his friend, "This man stood for certain principles. He wasn't going to be bullied. That's what he stood for and what he died for." Kozinn's wife, Betsy, a registered nurse who worked for Slepian, says, "Protesters called him 'murderer' and they called him all kinds of other names. When you use that rhetoric, it sort of sets a tone for violence." Slepian knew he was vulnerable. He told the Buffalo News in 1993, after an abortion doctor was killed in Florida, "It could happen to me or to someone around here." Two years later, after gunman John Salvi had killed two receptionists in a Massachusetts abortion clinic, Slepian said of abortion protesters: "When you're using words like 'kill' and 'murder,' that's where it can lead." The radical group Army of God maintains a pro-Kopp site, titled "Babykiller Barnett," that can be viewed here. And supporters of Kopp maintain another web site, James Kopp, loaded with diatribes about abortion providers such as Slepian along with the usual horrific (and often Photoshopped) pictures of aborted fetuses. (Washington Post, CBS, Washington Post, Washington Post)
- October 27: The UN Disarmament Commission determines that Iraq has again failed to comply with UN resolutions regarding weapons and arms, and is concealing information about biological and chemical weapons. (FactMonster)
Iraq Liberation Act authorizes "regime change" against Saddam Hussein
- October 31: Clinton signs the Iraqi Liberation Act into law. The Act, co-written by Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, Chalabi's aide and marketing specialist Francis Brooke, and their Congressional allies (most notably GOP senator Trent Lott), passed Congress almost unanimously on October 7. It states the US's support for Iraqi opposition groups dedicated to the overthrow of the Hussein regime, and acts in concert with $8 million allocated to these groups. $3 million of that money goes to Ahmad Chalabi's Iraq National Congress. In signing the bill, Clinton says, "My administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership. In the meantime, while the United States continues to look to the Security Council's efforts to keep the current regime's behavior in check, we look forward to new leadership in Iraq that has the support of the Iraqi people. The United States is providing support to opposition groups from all sectors of the Iraqi community that could lead to a popularly supported government." The ILA calls for "regime change" in Iraq, but, partly because of the impeachment controversy and the obsessive media coverage it garners, the ILA is almost ignored in the press. It skims over any mention of serious US involvement in any overthrow of Hussein, because Chalabi had pitched the overthrow to Congress as something that could be achieved almost entirely by insurgent Iraqis. Congress also authorizes $97 million for the various Iraqi opposition groups, of which about a third finds its way to Chalabi's own exile group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC). The INC mounts what it calls an "information collection program," essentially an INC propaganda operation which pays Chalabi and his aides to troll Arab communities around the world for Iraqi defectors and exiles who can provide the US with information about Saddam Hussein.
- General Anthony Zinni, the commander of CENTCOM in the Middle East, sees Chalabi's military plans for overthrowing Hussein shortly thereafter. "It got me pretty angry," Zinni recalls. Zinni goes before Congress and calls Chalabi's plan "pie in the sky, a fairy tale. ...They were saying if you put a thousand troops on the ground Saddam's regime will collapse, they won't fight. I said, 'I fly over them every day, and they shoot at us. We hit them, and they shoot at us again. No way a thousand forces would end it.' The exile group was giving them inaccurate intelligence. Their scheme was ridiculous." Zinni later says of Chalabi's neoconservative allies, most of whom will gain positions of tremendous power within the Bush administration in 2001 and beyond, "Chalabi was the crutch the neocons leaned on to justify their intervention" in Iraq. "He twisted the intelligence that they based it on, and provided a picture so rosy and unrealistic they thought it would be easy." (Iraq News/Federation of American Scientists, Iraq News/Federation of American Scientists, Findlaw [actual text of the act], New Yorker, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)