By Open Chronicle with agencies
Former US President Bill Clinton says the CIA abandoned an operation targeting Osama bin Laden before the September 11 attacks because officials feared that a failed attempt could kill large numbers of civilians, offering new details about Washington’s efforts to stop the al Qaeda leader years before 9/11.
Clinton said he had authorized the CIA to pursue bin Laden and would have preferred that he be captured alive, but regarded preventing him from carrying out attacks against the United States as the overriding objective.
“I had authorized the CIA to try to take him out,” Clinton said during an interview with John Catsimatidis on WABC Radio’s Cats Roundtable.
The former president said he remained frustrated that the operation did not proceed.
“I was scared, and I was mad because we tried to get him before, and the CIA at the last minute killed the plan that I think might well have succeeded,” Clinton said.
According to Clinton’s account, CIA officials ultimately decided that the risk to civilians was too great if the operation failed to hit its intended target.
Clinton says civilian casualties influenced CIA decision
Clinton said he did not overrule the agency’s judgment at the time.
“They were afraid that if they missed, they’d kill a lot of innocent civilians,” he said. “They didn’t want to run the risk.”
Clinton acknowledged that he did not second guess the decision, but said he continued to believe bin Laden represented the most serious terrorist threat facing the United States.
“I wish we had done even more to get him,” Clinton said. “I always thought he was our biggest threat.”
His comments add another perspective to the long running debate over whether the United States missed opportunities to capture or kill bin Laden before al Qaeda carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The precise operation Clinton was referring to and its probability of success cannot be established from his comments alone. His statement that the plan “might well have succeeded” represents his retrospective assessment rather than proof that the operation would have eliminated bin Laden.
Newly declassified intelligence revisits warnings before 9/11
Clinton’s remarks come as newly declassified CIA material has renewed scrutiny of what US intelligence agencies knew about bin Laden and al Qaeda before the attacks.
More than 100 pages of presidential intelligence material covering the years before September 11 have recently been released, showing repeated warnings about bin Laden’s ambitions and the possibility of attacks against American targets.
The intelligence was often incomplete, uncertain or based on sources whose reliability could not always be established. Nevertheless, the documents demonstrate that the threat posed by al Qaeda was increasingly occupying the attention of US intelligence officials during the late 1990s and into 2001.
One intelligence briefing from 1998 discussed information concerning a possible al Qaeda operation involving the hijacking of a commercial aircraft.
A September 10, 1998 assessment went further, reporting intelligence that bin Laden’s preferred option was to strike the United States on American soil and raising the possibility of an aircraft packed with explosives being flown into a US city.
The existence of such warnings does not mean US intelligence knew the specific September 11 plot in advance. The eventual attacks involved four hijacked passenger aircraft and an operational plan that differed substantially from some of the scenarios appearing in earlier intelligence reporting.
Warnings continued under George W. Bush
Concern about bin Laden continued after George W. Bush succeeded Clinton as president in January 2001.
One of the most scrutinized documents from the period is the August 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief, which warned that bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States.
According to the material described in the newly released records, intelligence officials were concerned that al Qaeda could use operatives already present in the country.
The assessment also referred to FBI information concerning suspicious activity that could be consistent with preparations for hijackings or other attacks.
Another assessment, dated August 28, described bin Laden’s organization as highly adaptable and capable of maintaining operations even under increased security pressure.
Analysts highlighted al Qaeda’s careful planning, operational security and flexibility, characteristics that made disrupting the organization particularly difficult.
Less than two weeks later, the United States suffered the deadliest terrorist attack in its history.
Clinton recalls immediately suspecting bin Laden
Clinton also described where he was when the September 11 attacks occurred.
The former president was in Australia, while Hillary Clinton was in Washington and their daughter Chelsea was in Lower Manhattan.
After the second aircraft struck the World Trade Center, Clinton said he immediately believed bin Laden was responsible.
He recalled being asked how he could reach that conclusion so quickly and said he believed only a small number of US adversaries possessed the capacity to conduct an operation of that scale.
Clinton said he discounted Iran and concluded that bin Laden was the most likely perpetrator.
At the same time, the Clinton family was unable to contact Chelsea as thousands of people evacuated Lower Manhattan on foot.
The attacks ultimately killed nearly 3,000 people after hijackers seized four passenger aircraft. Two struck the World Trade Center in New York, another hit the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back.
Missed opportunities remain part of the 9/11 debate
The question of whether bin Laden could have been stopped before September 11 has remained controversial for a quarter of a century.
US officials considered various options against al Qaeda during the Clinton administration, while intelligence agencies struggled with the difficulty of locating and targeting bin Laden in Afghanistan without causing civilian casualties or creating broader political consequences.
Clinton’s latest comments reinforce the difficult balance intelligence and political leaders faced between acting on incomplete information and accepting the potential consequences of a failed operation.
They also underline a recurring problem in counterterrorism: intelligence may identify a growing threat without revealing precisely when, where or how an attack will occur.
The newly declassified material provides additional evidence of how seriously parts of the US intelligence community regarded bin Laden. It does not, by itself, demonstrate that Washington possessed actionable knowledge of the eventual September 11 operation.
‘You only have to miss once’
Twenty five years after the attacks, Clinton said he believes the United States remains vulnerable to terrorism despite major improvements in intelligence gathering and domestic security.
Asked whether New York could face another major terrorist attack, he said such an outcome remained possible and argued that intelligence collection must remain a permanent national security priority.
“We’re much better prepared now than we were,” Clinton said.
But he added a stark warning about the asymmetry confronting governments attempting to prevent terrorism.
“You only have to miss once,” he said.
Bin Laden remained at large for almost another decade after September 11. On May 2, 2011, US special operations forces killed him during a covert raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, ordered by President Barack Obama.
The latest disclosures do not settle the historical debate over whether 9/11 could have been prevented. Instead, they add another layer to the record of warnings, intelligence judgments and abandoned opportunities that preceded the attacks, and to the continuing examination of how the world’s most powerful intelligence apparatus failed to stop al Qaeda before September 11, 2001.