What Bill Clinton Knew About bin Laden
By Tom Fitton
In the days leading up to the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, while most Americans were remembering those murdered that day, Bill Clinton was busy launching a pressure campaign to prevent ABC from airing the docudrama, “The Path to 9/11.” The Clinton attack machine was back in action again. Bill Clinton reportedly “went ballistic” when he learned the ABC program cast his administration in an unfavorable light regarding its lackadaisical response to the threat posed by Osama bin Laden.
The truth hurts, doesn’t it?
Whenever any Clinton official is criticized about that administration’s impotent response to terrorism, we hear the same tired excuses: “The world was different before September 11.” “Hindsight is 20/20.” “We didn’t know the full extent of the bin Laden threat.”
No one would contest the point that the world changed on 9/11. Yet there is no doubt Osama bin Laden was a looming menace long before his 19 hijackers boarded airplanes on that day destined for the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And Bill Clinton knew it.
But why trust a television show, when you can examine the Clinton administration’s own records?
Last summer, Judicial Watch efforts led to the declassification of a “top secret” Clinton State Department intelligence report, entitled, Terrorism/Usama bin Ladin: Who’s Chasing Whom?” The document, dated July 18, 1996, analyzes bin Laden and his network after the terrorist leader was “expelled” from Sudan and sent to Afghanistan. (The Sudanese had offered to turn bin Laden over to the U.S., but the offer was rebuffed by the Clinton administration. “The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time…” former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Burger told The Washington Post.)
Here are a few excerpts from the Clinton State Department document:
• “Bin Laden’s willingness to issue recent public anti-western threats hardly fits the image of a man running scared.”
• [Bin Laden’s] interest in supporting radical Islamists extends well beyond the Middle East.”
• “[Bin Laden’s] prolonged stay in Afghanistan…could prove more dangerous to US interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum [Sudan].”
• “Even a bin Laden on the move can retain the capability to support individuals and groups who have the motive and wherewithal to attack US interests almost worldwide.”
With all of the intelligence failures that contributed to 9/11, this is one piece of good intelligence that was simply ignored. Just as the State Department report essentially predicted, bin Laden attacked the U.S. on two more occasions during the Clinton years. The 1998 bombing of two U.S. Embassies in Africa, and the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen resulted in the murder of 300 people. Then came 9/11.
The truth – whether Bill Clinton wants to acknowledge it or not – is that the Clinton administration was warned about the threat posed by bin Laden. The administration chose not to address the threat seriously, which is one reason why Americans were forced to commemorate a heartbreaking anniversary last week.
Tom Fitton is President of Judicial Watch, www.judicialwatch.org.
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