WriterDom
Good to the last drop
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2000
- Posts
- 20,077
Not once, not twice, but three times???
But I'll agree with one thing. He does play a good saxophone.
U.S. missed 3 chances to seize bin Laden: Sunday Times
.c Kyodo News Service
LONDON, Jan. 6 (Kyodo) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton turned down at least three offers involving foreign governments to help to seize Osama bin Laden after he was identified as a terrorist who was threatening the United States, The Sunday Times reported Sunday, quoting sources in Washington and the Middle East.
According to one Washington source, the report said, Clinton, at a private dinner shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the U.S., said the refusal to accept the first of the offers was probably ''the biggest mistake'' of his presidency.
The report said senior sources in the former Clinton administration have confirmed Sudan sent a former intelligence officer with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) connections to Washington in 1996 with an offer to hand over bin Laden just as it had put another terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, into French hands in 1994.
But Washington spurned the secret extradition offer on grounds that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him in an American court, even though the State Department at the time was describing bin Laden as ''the greatest single financier of terrorist projects in the world'' and was accusing Sudan of harboring terrorists.
In May 1996, bin Laden was expelled from Sudan and flew by chartered plane to Afghanistan via the Gulf state of Qatar, which has friendly relations with Washington but allowed him to proceed unhindered.
Barely a month later, on June 25, a huge truck bomb ripped apart a U.S. military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen. Bin Laden was immediately suspected.
A second offer to get bin Laden came unofficially from Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American millionaire who was a donor to Clinton's election campaign in 1996. On July 6, 2000, he visited John Podesta, then the president's chief of staff, to say that intelligence officers from a Gulf state were offering to help to extract bin Laden.
The newspaper said it had seen an exchange of e-mails between the White House and Ijaz that confirmed details of the offer, which involved setting up an Islamic relief fund to aid Afghanistan in return for the Taliban handing over bin Laden to the Gulf state, from which the U.S. could then extract him.
Ijaz reportedly maintained that the White House destroyed the deal, which was to have been arranged only through unofficial channels, by sending a senior official to meet the rulers of the United Arab Emirates, who denied there was any such offer.
A third offer to help came from Saudi Arabia's intelligence services, then led by Prince Turki al-Faisal, who by one account offered to help to place a tracking device in the luggage of bin Laden's mother, who was seeking to make a trip to Afghanistan to see her son. The CIA did not take up the offer, the report said.
But I'll agree with one thing. He does play a good saxophone.
U.S. missed 3 chances to seize bin Laden: Sunday Times
.c Kyodo News Service
LONDON, Jan. 6 (Kyodo) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton turned down at least three offers involving foreign governments to help to seize Osama bin Laden after he was identified as a terrorist who was threatening the United States, The Sunday Times reported Sunday, quoting sources in Washington and the Middle East.
According to one Washington source, the report said, Clinton, at a private dinner shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the U.S., said the refusal to accept the first of the offers was probably ''the biggest mistake'' of his presidency.
The report said senior sources in the former Clinton administration have confirmed Sudan sent a former intelligence officer with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) connections to Washington in 1996 with an offer to hand over bin Laden just as it had put another terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, into French hands in 1994.
But Washington spurned the secret extradition offer on grounds that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him in an American court, even though the State Department at the time was describing bin Laden as ''the greatest single financier of terrorist projects in the world'' and was accusing Sudan of harboring terrorists.
In May 1996, bin Laden was expelled from Sudan and flew by chartered plane to Afghanistan via the Gulf state of Qatar, which has friendly relations with Washington but allowed him to proceed unhindered.
Barely a month later, on June 25, a huge truck bomb ripped apart a U.S. military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen. Bin Laden was immediately suspected.
A second offer to get bin Laden came unofficially from Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American millionaire who was a donor to Clinton's election campaign in 1996. On July 6, 2000, he visited John Podesta, then the president's chief of staff, to say that intelligence officers from a Gulf state were offering to help to extract bin Laden.
The newspaper said it had seen an exchange of e-mails between the White House and Ijaz that confirmed details of the offer, which involved setting up an Islamic relief fund to aid Afghanistan in return for the Taliban handing over bin Laden to the Gulf state, from which the U.S. could then extract him.
Ijaz reportedly maintained that the White House destroyed the deal, which was to have been arranged only through unofficial channels, by sending a senior official to meet the rulers of the United Arab Emirates, who denied there was any such offer.
A third offer to help came from Saudi Arabia's intelligence services, then led by Prince Turki al-Faisal, who by one account offered to help to place a tracking device in the luggage of bin Laden's mother, who was seeking to make a trip to Afghanistan to see her son. The CIA did not take up the offer, the report said.
