THE SECRET HISTORY OF 9/11: HUNTING bin laden
African bombing
African embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi were bombed by al-Qaeda.
On August 7th, 1998, the U.S. African embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi were almost destroyed by truck bombs. Two hundred and twenty-four people died, including twelve Americans. Over five thousand were injured. The investigation lead straight to Osama bin Laden.
In the Situation Room at the White House, Clinton's national security team decided to hit back with cruise missiles. The CIA had received information that bin Laden would be meeting other al-Qaeda leaders at one of his Afghanistan training camps on August 20th, 1998. The cruise missiles fired from the Arabian Sea travelled over Pakistan and landed in the Afghan training camps but narrowly missed bin Laden. Bill Clinton's crisis management team was disappointed, according to the President's Deputy National Security Advisor, James Steinberg, "We had hoped, and there was some reason to think that bin Laden might be there, and he wasn't at the time of the attack. It is a reminder that this is a very, very difficult thing to do. As people correctly said, there is a limited effectiveness to this particular tactic in dealing with this kind of problem. Cruise missiles are not well designed to deal with this kind of threat."
cruise attack
President Clinton attacks Afghan training camps with cruise missiles.
After the failure of the cruise missile attack, President Clinton reversed his position and authorized the CIA to kidnap Osama bin Laden, but now it would be more difficult. Mike Scheuer, the former chief of the bin Laden Unit explains, "He was no longer the blue-collar guy and the lunch bucket. He was moving at different times of the day, different vehicles. He was staying overnight in places away from Tarnak Farm. So we revived it but the chances of success were marginal after the cruise missile attack." "I could tell you where he was last night, but I couldn't tell you where he was going to be tonight and everyday was like that. So you couldn't get ahead of him. We couldn't get our guys out in front of him. We were always trailing about half a day behind," remembers Gary Schroen, the CIA's lead in Afghanistan.
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In late December 1998, CIA field agents were finally able to get ahead of Osama bin Laden. They received a tip that he would be coming to visit Kandahar. He would be staying overnight here at the governor's mansion. American ships in the Arabian Sea prepared their cruise missiles to strike the governor's mansion. CIA Agent Gary Schroen e-mailed headquarters --"Hit him tonight--we may not get another chance." At the White House, the military doubted the intelligence and estimated that a cruise missile strike would kill or injure over 200 people. In the end, the attack was cancelled. "It struck me as rather insane, frankly. They decided not to attack bin Laden because he was in a building in fairly close proximity to a mosque. And they were afraid that some of the shrapnel was going to hit the mosque and somehow offend the Muslim world, and so they decided not to shoot on that occasion. That's the kind of reason for not shooting that the policy maker, anyway, came up with endlessly," says Schueur.
The missed opportunities to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in the 1990's were a key topic in the investigations of the 9/11 Commission. Vice Chair Lee Hamilton defends the policy makers at the Clinton White House, "There is always the question that arises -'Who else are you going to kill?' If they're with other people, what's the collateral damage going to be? How many women and children are going to die? How many innocent people are going to die? Those are decisions that a political leader has to, they have to wrestle with those."
James Steinberg,
Former Deputy National Security Advisor
The Clinton Administration's last good chance to kill Osama bin Laden was at a falcon hunting camp in southern Afghanistan in 1999. Falcon hunting is wildly popular with the ultra rich throughout the Arab world. The CIA followed bin Laden to the camp and determined that he was going to stay for a few days. But satellite photos also revealed the presence of a military C-130 aircraft from the United Arab Emirates indicating that senior officials from the UAE government were hunting with bin Laden. Once again the White House decided to stand down. They did not want to take the chance of killing some of America's closest allies in the Persian Gulf. "Look these guys know who bin Laden is. They know he's sponsored murder. He's maimed and killed thousands of Muslims. They're hosting him. They're welcoming him. They are treating him nicely. You know, as I said to my wife when I came home, I said, you know when you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. These guys are lying down with the biggest dog in the world and we ought to take the shot, the consequences to them, that's too bad," says Scheuer.
Members of President Clinton's national security team say they were less concerned about the cost of hitting bin Laden and his friends and more pre-occupied with the cost of missing. James Steinberg was the Deputy National Security Advisor at the time, "You don't want to look like you can't succeed. That's one thing that we were very conscious of is that to undertake a number of attacks that failed would not only not achieve our purpose but would actually strengthen bin Laden and his group. It would look like we could not get him and that we were ineffective in getting him."
Bush with Clinton
In December 2000 president-elect George Bush meets with Bill Clinton.
In December 2000, when George W. Bush was finally declared the winner of the U.S. presidential election, he sat down for a private meeting with Bill Clinton at the White House. In that meeting, Clinton says he told Bush that al-Qaeda was the biggest threat to the United States and that not catching or killing bin Laden was one of the greatest regrets of his presidency.
Did Clinton wanted bin Laden dead? "Absolutely, absolutely, Bill Clinton had an enormous frustration. Bill Clinton had ordered the al-Qaeda leaders not just bin Laden to be arrested. That didn't work. Then he changed the order and said well, since it's evident that you can't arrest him, you are authorized to kill him and nothing happened. And he really didn't understand why the CIA was so ineffective and couldn't do that," says Clarke.
On January 20th, 2001 George W. Bush was sworn in as President of the United States. Five days later, Bush received a memo from his White House counterterrorism director, Richard Clarke, saying - "We urgently need a Principals-level review of the al-Qaeda network." That urgently required meeting would not take place for almost 9 months. For the new Bush administration al-Qaeda was a low priority.
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