Clarke: Clinton Worried about al-Qaida

[Switch84]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
Oliver Stone film to follow!

I'd rather see Quentin Tarantino's version......


BUWHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!

[Warham]

Originally posted by jacksmar
Two days before the Oklahoma bloodshed, on April 17, 1995, a plane-load of top military brass were murdered when their sabotaged plane blew up near Alexander City, Alabama. It was a real life version of "Seven Days in May". According to federal grand jurors we interviewed, there was an attempt, later blocked, by a grand jury to investigate this aborted coup. It was actually part of a series of events involving twenty four Admirals and Generals, some of the most patriotic flag officers in the history of this Republic. They vowed, under the Uniform Military Code, to arrest their Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton, for his various acts of treason aiding and abetting sworn enemies of the United States, such as Red China and Iraq. If Clinton had them arrested for mutiny, they were prepared, if not assassinated, to defend themselves with their heavily documented charges of his treachery against the U.S. Constitution and the people of the United States.

This is no surprise to me.

I posted a Clinton body count a few days ago.

[jacksmar]

Well, even if it’s true and the story has some merit, it still falls into the conspiracy theory thing for me.

The body count around former President Clinton is tall. Mostly by coincidence but there are a few questions surrounding the guy.

I just put this here because the pot stirring has been a little deep from the non-President Bush squad. They have their reasons, but we’re not the insipid lot they want people to believe we are.

[Nickdfresh]

There are questions surrounding any president. The idea of a group of military officers on a plane, that crashes, and no one knowing about it or blowing the whistle is ridiculous. The theory makes it sound as if the entire US high command was killed. And can you imagine if it were true and they did arrest Clinton, regardless of your politcal beliefs, it would have smacked of a banana republic military coup de tat.

It is far more likely that TWA 800 was shot down by a US Navy cruiser in 1996.

Conspiracy theories are fun, but usually implausible.

[ELVIS]

Peter Jennings might be next on the Clinton list...

[John Ashcroft]

Notice, Lucky layeth's the smack down on liberal propaganda, and yet it doesn't stop them...

They didn't even wink.

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by lucky wilbury
oh yeah clinton was distracted by starr try again he was distracted by Lewinsky! obl was ours and bubba said nobecause he was more focused on her.



Bin Laden Arrest Offer Spurned as Clinton Met Lewinsky

At least two offers from the government of Sudan to arrest Osama bin Laden and turn him over to the U.S. were rebuffed by the Clinton administration in February and March of 1996, a period of time when the former president's attention was distracted by his intensifying relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

NO NO NO! While there is some basis in truth, this simplistic article that turns what would have been a very complex operation and makes it sound like it is all so simple and deletes some key facts of the case (such as Bin Laden was to have been sent to Saudi Arabia, not the US, and they refused to take him) The overall assertion of Clinton ignoring Bin Lickcock is clearly not the case, whether he was getting stress relief blowjobs or not!

It was not so simple nor was it cut and dryed. This rag article you provided makes it seem like a done deal or something which clearly NOT THE CASE. This is puerile "Monica" bullshit at it's most repugnant and you guys make fun of Ford for his BCE theories and then believe this trash! Whatever!

I have research three sources from the provided links. The first is by the Pakistani man that claimed to have "brokered" a deal, which has been discredited. I believe the real story, is the Washington Post article at the end:

PBS.org

May 1996---The Sudan expels bin Laden because of international pressure by the United States and Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden then moves back to Afghanistan. (Source: Jane's Intelligence Review 10/1/98)




© 2001 New York University. All Rights Reserved.

Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away

"Radical Islam was a convenient national security threat"

By Mansoor Ijaz
December 11, 2001

NEW YORK -- President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year. I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.

From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.

Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.

The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening.

As an American Muslim and a political supporter of Clinton, I feel now, as I argued with Clinton and Berger then, that their counter-terrorism policies fueled the rise of Bin Laden from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster.

Realizing the growing problem with Bin Laden, Bashir sent key intelligence officials to the U.S. in February 1996. The Sudanese offered to arrest Bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or, barring that, to "baby-sit" him--monitoring all his activities and associates.

But Saudi officials didn't want their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them.

In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.

Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with him Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the United States to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for Al Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.

Some of these men are now among the FBI's 22 most-wanted terrorists. The two men who allegedly piloted the planes into the twin towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, prayed in the same Hamburg mosque as did Salim and Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian trader who managed Salim's bank accounts and whose assets are frozen.

The Sudanese had compiled Important data on each. But U.S. authorities repeatedly turned the data away, first in February 1996; then again that August, when at my suggestion Sudan's religious ideologue, Hassan Turabi, wrote directly to Clinton; then again in April 1997, when I persuaded Bashir to invite the FBI to come to Sudan and view the data; and finally in February 1998, when Sudan's intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi, wrote directly to the FBI.

Gutbi had shown me some of Sudan's data during a three-hour meeting in Khartoum in October 1996. When I returned to Washington, I told Berger and his specialist for East Africa, Susan Rice, about the data available. They said they'd get back to me. They never did.

Neither did they respond when Bashir made the offer directly. I believe they never had any intention to engage Muslim countries--ally or not. Radical Islam, for the administration, was a convenient national security threat.

And that was not the end of it. In July 2000--three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen--I brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with Bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States' closest Arab allies--an ally whose name I am not free to divulge--approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials.

The offer, which would have brought Bin Laden to the Arab country as the first step of an extradition process that would eventually deliver him to the United States, required only that Clinton make a state visit there to personally request Bin Laden's extradition. But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family--Clintonian diplomacy at its best.

Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.


Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is chairman of a New York-based investment company.

Copyright 2001, Global Beat Syndicate, 418 Lafayette Street, Suite 554, New York, NY 10003 http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate.





The National Review

JuLY 2, 2002 8:45 a.m.
Sudan Story
Second-guessing games.


Al Gore is revisiting an old strategy. Back in 1992, the then-vice presidential candidate led the charge against President Bush I's handling of foreign policy. National security was an area in which most thought the former U.N. ambassador, deposer of Noriega and victor of Desert Storm was immune from criticism. However, the Clinton team adroitly turned this supposed immunity into a liability, making charges that were difficult to respond to and impossible to disprove. One such accusation was that Bush in fact caused the Gulf War by coddling Saddam. Therefore, the (incomplete) victory was in fact just damage control, the product of an inept foreign policy. It was a smart tactical ploy, and may have convinced some impressionable people that the Clinton-Gore team would handle foreign affairs more wisely.


Now Gore is assailing another President Bush on a national-security issue by accusing him of failure in not having "gotten Osama bin Laden or the al Qaeda operation." Gore did not offer any helpful hints on how to achieve this goal, but it is nevertheless a clever gimmick. Who can argue with the sought after result? He tossed in a sop to the Left by mentioning that Bush had not provided enough peacekeepers to prevent resurgent warlordism in Afghanistan, but Gore is far ahead of other Democratic 2004 hopefuls in understanding that if they want to criticize the president on the war, they should do it from the right.
However, in so doing, Gore has legitimized an inquest into the role of the administration he served in "getting" bin Laden. Secretary of State Powell raised the issue in his response to Gore on Sunday by mentioning the failure of the Clinton-Gore team to close a deal with the Sudan in the mid-90s when the terrorist haven offered bin Laden up. The sometimes fluctuating details can be found in a series of articles dating back at least to David Rose's September 30, 2001 Observer report, "Resentful west spurned Sudan's key terror files." See also Barton Gellman's October 3, 2001 Washington Post article, "Sudan's Offer to Arrest Militant Fell Through After Saudis Said No," Mark Huband's November 30 Financial Times article, "US rejected Sudanese files on al-Qaeda: Clinton administration refused offer to share terror network intelligence" (posted here — scroll down a bit:, David Rose's expanded account in the December 2001 Vanity Fair, "The Osama Files," and Mansoor Ijaz's December 11, 2001 column (among others) "Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away."
Ijaz is the source for much of this information. He is a Pakistani American investor and Clinton fundraiser who claims to have been an important broker in the deal. Last May 20 on WOR Radio, DNC spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said that Ijaz was lying, that he had "absolutely no credibility," which really only tends to confirm his status as a Clinton insider. However, even she would not deny that something was going on back then. Sandy Berger is quoted in the Gellman article saying "the FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time, and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States." The administration had wanted bin Laden to go someplace where justice was more "streamlined" like Saudi Arabia. Prince Turki al Faisal, former Saudi intelligence chief, confirmed negotiating inconclusively with Sudan, and later with Afghanistan, over bin Laden's extradition. Bin Laden himself has given various reasons for leaving Sudan, including threats from the United States, but is lately unavailable for comment.
As I have argued here before, second-guessing in these situations is not productive. No one knew in 1996 that bin Laden would perpetrate the 9/11 attacks six years later. However, neither can Al Gore be free to make such charges without an examination of his record on the bin Laden issue. Personally, I think such an exercise would be exhausting and distracting. We know how this will shake out, it will be the usual Clinton-Gore m.o., a series of carefully crafted, somewhat ambiguous statements designed to skip around perjury — technical evasions of truth designed primarily to shift blame — explanations worthy of overly clever adolescents that offend common sense (Osama? I recall Usama.) We've seen it before. Nevertheless, if this is the direction Gore wants to go, equity demands a thorough inquiry. In the process, perhaps we will learn more about the war that bin Laden began in 1996 (if not earlier). We will find out why he was not taken seriously sooner, and what gave him the confidence to undertake what he called "the Battles of New York and Washington." It is a New World since 9/11; the question is did the attacks signal the beginning of a new era, or the logical culmination of the old?
— James S. Robbins is a national-security analyst & NRO contributor





The WashingtonPost

U.W. Was Foiled Multiple Times in Efforts
To Capture Bin Laden or Have Him Killed

Sudan's Offer to Arrest Militant Fell Through After Saudis Said No

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, October 3, 2001; Page A01

The government of Sudan, employing a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in Saudi custody, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.

The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at a Rosslyn hotel on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later. Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts at the time, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture.

Sudan expelled bin Laden on May 18, 1996, to Afghanistan. From there, he is thought to have planned and financed the twin embassy bombings of 1998, the near-destruction of the USS Cole a year ago and last month's devastation in New York and Washington.

Bin Laden's good fortune in slipping through U.S. fingers torments some former officials with the thought that the subsequent attacks might have been averted. Though far from the central figure he is now, bin Laden had a high and rising place on the U.S. counterterrorism agenda. Internal State Department talking points at the time described him as "one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world today" and blamed him for planning a failed attempt to blow up the hotel used by U.S. troops in Yemen in 1992.

"Had we been able to roll up bin Laden then, it would have made a significant difference," said a U.S. government official with responsibilities, then and now, in counterterrorism. "We probably never would have seen a September 11th. We would still have had networks of Sunni Islamic extremists of the sort we're dealing with here, and there would still have been terrorist attacks fomented by those folks. But there would not have been as many resources devoted to their activities, and there would not have been a single voice that so effectively articulated grievances and won support for violence."
Clinton administration officials maintain emphatically that they had no such option in 1996. In the legal, political and intelligence environment of the time, they said, there was no choice but to allow bin Laden to depart Sudan unmolested.

"The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time, and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who was deputy national security adviser then.

Three Clinton officials said they hoped -- one described it as "a fantasy" -- that Saudi King Fahd would accept bin Laden and order his swift beheading, as he had done for four conspirators after a June 1995 bombing in Riyadh. But Berger and Steven Simon, then director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council (NSC) staff, said the White House considered it valuable in itself to force bin Laden out of Sudan, thus tearing him away from his extensive network of businesses, investments and training camps.

"I really cared about one thing, and that was getting him out of Sudan," Simon said. "One can understand why the Saudis didn't want him -- he was a hot potato -- and, frankly, I would have been shocked at the time if the Saudis took him. My calculation was, 'It's going to take him a while to reconstitute, and that screws him up and buys time.' "

Conflicting Agendas

Conflicting policy agendas on three separate fronts contributed to the missed opportunity to capture bin Laden, according to a dozen participants. The Clinton administration was riven by differences on whether to engage Sudan's government or isolate it, which influenced judgments about the sincerity of the offer. In the Saudi-American relationship, policymakers diverged on how much priority to give to counterterrorism over other interests such as support for the ailing Israeli-Palestinian talks. And there were the beginnings of a debate, intensified lately, on whether the United States wanted to indict and try bin Laden or to treat him as a combatant in an underground war.

In 1999, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir referred elliptically to his government's early willingness to send bin Laden to Saudi Arabia. But the role of the U.S. government and the secret channel from Khartoum to Washington had not been disclosed before.

The Sudanese offer had its roots in a dinner at the Khartoum home of Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Othman Taha. It was Feb. 6, 1996 -- Ambassador Timothy M. Carney's last night in the country before evacuating the embassy on orders from Washington.

Paul Quaglia, then the CIA station chief in Khartoum, had led a campaign to pull out all Americans after he and his staff came under aggressive surveillance and twice had to fend off attacks, one with a knife and one with claw hammers. Now Carney was instructed, despite his objections, to withdraw all remaining Americans from the country.

Carney and David Shinn, then chief of the State Department's East Africa desk, considered the security threat "bogus," as Shinn described it. Washington's dominant decision-makers on Sudan had lost interest in engagement, preparing plans to isolate and undermine the regime. The two career diplomats thought that was a mistake, and that Washington was squandering opportunities to enlist Sudan's cooperation against radical Islamic groups.

One factor in Washington's hostility was an intelligence tip that Sudan aimed to assassinate national security adviser Anthony Lake, the most visible administration critic of Khartoum. The Secret Service took it seriously enough to remove Lake from his home, shuffling him among safe houses and conveying him around Washington in a heavily armored car. Most U.S. analysts came to believe later that it had been a false alarm.

Taha, distressed at the deteriorating relations, invited Carney and Shinn to dine with him that Tuesday night. He asked what his country could do to dissuade Washington from the view, expressed not long before by then-United Nations Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright, that Sudan was responsible for "continued sponsorship of international terror."

Carney and Shinn had a long list. Bin Laden, as they both recalled, was near the top. So, too, were three members of Egypt's Gamaat i-Islami, Arabic for Islamic Group, who had fled to Sudan after trying to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Sudan also played host to operatives and training facilities for the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

"It was the first substantive chat with the U.S. government on the subject of terrorism," Carney recalled.

Taha mostly listened. He raised no objection to the request for bin Laden's expulsion, though he did not agree to it that night. His only rejoinders came on Hamas and Hezbollah, which his government, like much of the Arab world, regarded as conducting legitimate resistance to Israeli occupation.

Sudanese President Bashir, struggling for dominance over the fiery cleric Hassan Turabi, had already made overtures to the West. Not long before, he had delivered the accused terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal" to France. Less than a month after Taha's dinner, he sent a trusted aide to Washington.

Maj. Gen. Elfatih Erwa, then minister of state for defense, arrived unannounced at the Hyatt Arlington on March 3, 1996. Using standard tradecraft, he checked into one room and then walked to another, across Wilson Boulevard from the Rosslyn Metro.

Carney and Shinn were waiting for him, but the meeting was run by covert operatives from the CIA's Africa division. The Washington Post does not identify active members of the clandestine service. Frank Knott, who was Africa division chief in the directorate of operations at the time, declined to be interviewed.

In a document dated March 8, 1996, the Americans spelled out their demands. Titled "Measures Sudan Can Take to Improve Relations with the United States," the two-page memorandum asked for six things. Second on the list -- just after an angry enumeration of attacks on the CIA station in Khartoum -- was Osama bin Laden.

"Provide us with names, dates of arrival, departure and destination and passport data on mujahedin [holy warriors] that Usama Bin Laden has brought into Sudan," the document demanded. The CIA emissaries told Erwa that they knew of about 200 such bin Laden loyalists in Sudan.

During the next several weeks, Erwa raised the stakes. The Sudanese security services, he said, would happily keep close watch on bin Laden for the United States. But if that would not suffice, the government was prepared to place him in custody and hand him over, though to whom was ambiguous. In one formulation, Erwa said Sudan would consider any legitimate proffer of criminal charges against the accused terrorist. Saudi Arabia, he said, was the most logical destination.

Susan Rice, then senior director for Africa on the NSC, remembers being intrigued with but deeply skeptical of the Sudanese offer. And unlike Berger and Simon, she argued that mere expulsion from Sudan was not enough.

"We wanted them to hand him over to a responsible external authority," she said. "We didn't want them to just let him disappear into the ether."

Lake and Secretary of State Warren Christopher were briefed, colleagues said, on efforts launched to persuade the Saudi government to take bin Laden.

The Saudi idea had some logic, since bin Laden had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, denouncing the ruling House of Saud as corrupt. Riyadh had expelled bin Laden in 1991 and stripped him of his citizenship in 1994, but it wanted no part in jailing or executing him.

Saudis Feared a Backlash

Clinton administration officials recalled that the Saudis feared a backlash from the fundamentalist opponents of the regime. Though regarded as a black sheep, bin Laden was nonetheless an heir to one of Saudi Arabia's most influential families. One diplomat familiar with the talks said there was another reason: The Riyadh government was offended that the Sudanese would go to the Americans with the offer.

Some U.S. diplomats said the White House did not press the Saudis very hard. There were many conflicting priorities in the Middle East, notably an intensive effort to save the interim government of Prime Minister Shimon Peres in Israel, which was reeling under its worst spate of Hamas suicide bombings. U.S. military forces also relied heavily on Saudi forward basing to enforce the southern "no fly zone" in Iraq.

Resigned to bin Laden's departure from Sudan, some officials raised the possibility of shooting down his chartered aircraft, but the idea was never seriously pursued because bin Laden had not been linked to a dead American, and it was inconceivable that Clinton would sign the "lethal finding" necessary under the circumstances.

"In the end they said, 'Just ask him to leave the country. Just don't let him go to Somalia,' " Erwa, the Sudanese general, said in an interview. "We said he will go to Afghanistan, and they said, 'Let him.' "

On May 15, 1996, Foreign Minister Taha sent a fax to Carney in Nairobi, giving up on the transfer of custody. His government had asked bin Laden to vacate the country, Taha wrote, and he would be free to go.

Carney faxed back a question: Would bin Laden retain control of the millions of dollars in assets he had built up in Sudan?

Taha gave no reply before bin Laden chartered a plane three days later for his trip to Afghanistan. Subsequent analysis by U.S. intelligence suggests that bin Laden managed to draw down and redirect the Sudanese assets from his new redoubt in Afghanistan.

From the Sudanese point of view, the failed effort to take custody of bin Laden resulted primarily from the Clinton administration's divisions on how to relate to the Khartoum government -- divisions that remain today as President Bush considers what to do with nations with a history of support for terrorist groups.

Washington, Erwa said, never could decide whether to strike out at Khartoum or demand its help.

"I think," he said, "they wanted to do both."



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© 2001 The Washington Post Company



[URL=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/etc/cron.html[/URL]

[lucky wilbury]

nothing's and nobody been discredited. even bubba ADMITTED there was an offer made . the clitnonites have tried to say that they didn't take obl because there was nothing to hold him on which is bullshit. hell he could have been pick up just for making threats againest us. clinton could have had obl on multiple occasions but choose not to.what was he doing at the time of these offers? hanging with monica. plain and simple. you said clinton was distracted but it was by star it was by monica. it wasen't a complex operation either. the sudanese we offering to go get him and all we had to do was fly him out of the country. nothing hard about that.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0144/gould.php

How the U.S. Missed a Chance to Get Bin Laden
Thanks, But No Thanks
by Jennifer Gould
October 31 - November 6, 2001

From his offices at the Sudan Mission, the turbaned, white-robed United Nations ambassador sips strong cinnamon coffee and tells a tale of intrigue that might have prevented the worst mass murder in American history.

Osama bin Laden could have been in U.S. custody five years ago if Washington had accepted an offer from the Sudanese government. So says UN ambassador and major general Elfatih Erwa, who, as Sudan's then minister of state for defense, flew from Khartoum to Washington for secret negotiations with the CIA in 1996.

When Washington finally declined the offer—because the FBI did not believe it had sufficient evidence to try Bin Laden in a U.S. court—and Saudi Arabia refused Washington's request to arrest and even execute the terrorist, the U.S. demanded that Bin Laden leave Sudan for any other country except Somalia. "Bin Laden worked with groups who wanted to create a perfect Islamic state," Erwa says. "But Somalia is a tribal, clan-based culture, not Islamic. He found that with the Taliban."

Khartoum then watched as Bin Laden packed up his arms, money, and followers, chartered a plane, and fled for Afghanistan. "We told him Sudan is no longer safe for him and creates problems for us and asked him to leave," Erwa recalls. "We liquidated everything, and he left with his money. We didn't confiscate anything because there was no legal basis. Nobody had indicted him. He rented a charter plane and left in broad daylight. He was free to plot and build his network. The Americans then came back and wanted us to help track him, but by then it was too late. He didn't trust us anymore."

Khartoum warned Washington it was making a mistake: "The Americans thought he needed a base in Sudan," Erwa notes. "We warned them. In Sudan, Bin Laden and his money were under our control. But we knew that if he went to Afghanistan no one could control him. The U.S. didn't care; they just didn't want him in Somalia. It's crazy. They don't get it. It's a culture of arrogance that will make them always blind. They forgot about human intelligence after the Cold War. The feeling of supremacy led them astray. Many think that. Now they're harvesting the thorns."


Anthony Lake, then U.S. national security adviser, says Washington was skeptical of Sudan's offer. He adds that Sudan—which is still on America's list of state sponsors of terrorism—may be bringing up the story now because it fears U.S. bombing attacks during the war on terrorism.

At the time, there was a split between U.S officials who wanted to work with Sudan to counter terrorism and those who wanted to isolate that nation. Washington ended up pulling out its diplomats for 18 months, and at one point there was even alarm that Lake was an assassination target. Lake says the U.S. did the best it could at the time "to give [Bin Laden] no sanctuary anywhere and to keep him on the run.

"I think the fundamental problem is that Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are not like Hamas and Hizbullah," Lake adds. "They have no clear political agenda. They are reacting to changes in their society that they find threatening. Any administration will make mistakes. There is no magic solution."

Nevertheless, one U.S. intelligence source in the region called the lost opportunity a disgrace. "We kidnap minor drug czars and bring them back in burlap bags. Somebody didn't want this to happen." He added that the State Department may have blocked Bin Laden's arrest to placate a part of the Saudi Arabian government that supported Bin Laden. (Much of Bin Laden's funding and some of his followers, including suicide bombers, come from Saudi Arabia, which was one of only three countries to recognize the Taliban. That changed after September 11. By then, the Saudis had fired their longtime intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, reportedly for his support of Bin Laden.)

Forgoing the opportunity to arrest Bin Laden was "not the most brilliant maneuver we've ever made," notes another former intelligence chief familiar with the story. "But everything looks good in hindsight."

Another American involved in the secret negotiations says the U.S. could have used Khartoum's offer to keep an eye on Bin Laden, but that the efforts were blocked by another arm of the federal government. "I've never seen a brick wall like that before. Somebody let this slip up," the intelligence chief says. "We could have dismantled his operations and put a cage on top. It was not a matter of arresting Bin Laden but of access to information. That's the story, and that's what could have prevented September 11. I knew it would come back to haunt us."


Former National Security Council officials disagree. They say that, as a base for terrorist operations, Somalia was at greater risk than Afghanistan at the time because the Taliban was not yet in power. Washington hoped that forcing Bin Laden to move would disrupt and slow down his terror activities.

Perhaps a tragedy like September 11 would have happened sooner if the U.S. hadn't forced Bin Laden out of Sudan, says Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There is a gulf between intelligence knowledge that someone's up to no good and being able to prove it," Benjamin says. "If Bin Laden had stayed in Sudan, he might have destroyed the World Trade Center four years ago and we might have seen far worse by now. Bin Laden had a small empire in Sudan that posed a great danger. One couldn't know he'd recoup so fast."

Other ex-officials doubt the sincerity of Sudan's offer because of its track record of supporting terrorism. "It's like an alcoholic saying he won't have another drink," says Susan Rice, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs who was then senior director for Africa on the NSC. "At the time we had no basis to prosecute Bin Laden in a U.S. court. It would have been a huge mistake to try him and let him go free, and the Saudis didn't want him. Our desire was not to let him remain in Sudan, which was an active state sponsor of terrorism. There was no government operating in Somalia. We wanted him to go somewhere where he wouldn't disappear into the ether. We had no discussion of him going to Afghanistan."

Rice also says Sudan made the offer knowing the U.S. couldn't accept it. "They calculated that we didn't have the means to successfully prosecute Bin Laden. That's why I question the sincerity of the offer."

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by lucky wilbury
[B]nothing's and nobody been discredited. even bubba ADMITTED there was an offer made . the clitnonites have tried to say that they didn't take obl because there was nothing to hold him on which is bullshit. hell he could have been pick up just for making threats againest us. clinton could have had obl on multiple occasions but choose not to.what was he doing at the time of these offers? hanging with monica. plain and simple.

But it wasn't a direct offer of extradition like the article makes it sound! Yes there was an offer, but it was a complex on at best that had Bin Laden going to Saudi Arabia! This isn't an episode of CSI. Plus the Sudanese were up to there ass in working with Bin Laden, should we have worked more with them--YES! But they are untrustworthy genocidal assholes in their own right, you know like that guy we overthrew in Iraq?, but the Sudanese have spun this as well, by the way one of the sources you provided was the Sudanese State media. The Village Voice article is quoting the fucking Sudanese UN Ambassador for Christ sakes, Am I supposed to believe him? Don't you guys hate the UN?

[lucky wilbury]

that one was thrown in awhile ago for ford. that list of links is old. it doesn't matter if saudi arabia wanted him or not. obl was wanted here in this country. WE could have had him. the sudanese offer was for anyone that wanted him. clinton said no and told saudi arabia to take him. they said no. in the end he left for afghanistan.

[Nickdfresh]

You believe what you want, but you are making a very gray area sound black and white in my opinion. We'll agree to disagree. Interesting reading nonetheless. Thanks for the links.

[ODShowtime]

I just can't imagine that Clinton was too busy getting head to do his job. That's silly. It's just silly. How long does a blow-job take? At most like 20 minutes.

At least he was in the Oval Office instead of back at the ranch.

And this talk of 17 Generals being shot down is absolutely ridiculous and has less merit than almost all of Ford's theories. Nonsense.

[ELVIS]

Originally posted by ODShowtime
I just can't imagine that Clinton was too busy getting head to do his job. That's silly. It's just silly. How long does a blow-job take? At most like 20 minutes.

having an affair, on the job, in a place that has the highest security imaginable, takes a certain pre-occupation of one's thoughts...

Would you not agree ?? If not, try to imagine...

What you just said is "silly"...

At least he was in the Oval Office instead of back at the ranch.

Now you're being stupid!

Ronald Reagan NEVER entered the Oval Office without a proper suit and tie! Look it up, It's documented...

That show's a tremendous level of respect for the office of the Presidency. Something Clinton took advantage of and abused...

And if you want to give me some crap about one's private life being different than their public life, tell it to someone else...

[Nickdfresh]

having an affair, on the job, in a place that has the highest security imaginable, takes a certain pre-occupation of one's thoughts...

Would you not agree ?? If not, try to imagine...

What you just said is "silly"...

Many would say that is silly.

[ELVIS]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
Many would say that is silly.

Shut up...