Clinton’s actions as president have come under close scrutiny as journalists and politicians have begun to analyze how the U.S. was so vulnerable to the September eleventh attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Recent articles by the Associated Press and the Philadelphia Inquirer have charged that the Clinton administration had opportunities to eliminate bin Laden, but failed to do so. The Inquirer article reported that the U.S. had for years both "the knowledge and capability to kill...bin Laden." It said that American special forces and CIA operatives had been in Afghanistan, but were prohibited by the White House from going after him.
Bin Laden’s terrorist organization had been linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, for which he was indicted by the U.S. government. Clinton signed a policy directive authorizing the CIA to prepare a plan to get him. We attacked one of his camps in Afghanistan with cruise missiles and reportedly killing some of his supporters. Our missiles also destroyed an aspirin plant in Sudan owned by a Saudi businessman. It was targeted because it was believed to be a chemical-weapons plant owned by bin Laden.
The AP has reported that last December the Pentagon told President Clinton that they knew the location of bin Laden and could take him out. But Clinton decided it was too risky, and refused to authorize such an action. Clinton was asked by Fox News if this was true. He said it was not true and that his best shot was when he bombed bin Laden’s training camp in ’98. Several days later he told the London Times he had authorized bin Laden’s capture or assassination two years ago, but the intelligence information needed to carry it out was never available.
Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California, charged in a speech on the House floor on September 17, that the Clinton administration had secretly informed Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that it would not try to overthrow the Taliban. He had tried in vain to persuade the Clinton administration that this was a mistake and that the U.S. should be supporting the Northern Alliance, which has succeeded in keeping the Taliban from taking over all of Afghanistan.
Rohrabacher, an authority on Afghanistan, also said that he was going to see White House officials on September 11 to warn them that the Taliban’s assassination of Commander Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, meant that bin Laden was going to do something so terrible that retaliation would be required. He was right, but his warning was too late.
