“ From 1999 through early 2001, the United States, and President Clinton personally,pressed the UAE, one of the Taliban’s only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off its ties and enforce sanctions, especially those relating to flights to and from Afghanistan.165 These efforts achieved little before 9/11. In July 1999,UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hamdan bin Zayid threatened to break relations with the Taliban over Bin Ladin.166 The Taliban did not take him seriously, however. ”

“ In May 1999, CIA assets in Afghanistan reported on Bin Ladin’s location in and around Kandahar over the course of five days and nights.The reporting was very detailed and came from several sources. If this intelligence was not “actionable,” working-level officials said at the time and today, it was hard for them to imagine how any intelligence on Bin Ladin in Afghanistan would meet the standard. Communications were good, and the cruise missiles were ready.“This was in our strike zone,” a senior military officer said. ”

“ It urged the department to become a lead agency in driving a national counterterrorism strategy forward, to “champion a national effort to take up the gauntlet that international terrorists have thrown at our feet.” ”

“ The day after the embassy bombings,Tenet brought to a principals meeting intelligence that terrorist leaders were expected to gather at a camp near Khowst,Afghanistan, to plan future attacks. According to Berger,Tenet said that several hundred would attend, including Bin Ladin.The CIA described the area as effectively a military cantonment, away from civilian population centers and overwhelmingly populated by jihadists. Clarke remembered sitting next to Tenet in a White House meeting, asking Tenet “You thinking what I’m thinking?” ”

“ The argument for hitting al Shifa was that it would lessen the chance of Bin Ladin’s having nerve gas for a later attack.42 Ever since March 1995, American officials had had in the backs of their minds Aum Shinrikyo’s release of sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway. President Clinton himself had expressed great concern about chemical and biological terrorism in the United States. ”

“ Despite the availability of information that al Qaeda was a global network, in 1998 policymakers knew little about the organization. The reams of new information that the CIA’s Bin Ladin unit had been developing since 1996 had not been pulled together and synthesized for the rest of the government. ”

“ The Justice Department lawyer who worked on the draft told us that what was envisioned was a group of tribals assaulting a location, leading to a shoot-out. Bin Ladin and others would be captured if possible, but probably would be killed.The administration’s position was that under the law of armed conflict, killing a person who posed an imminent threat to the United States would be an act of self-defense, not an assassination.On Christmas Eve 1998, Berger sent a final draft to President Clinton, with an explanatory memo. ”

“ Briefing papers prepared by the Counterterrorist Center acknowledged that hitches might develop. People might be killed, and Bin Ladin’s supporters might retaliate,perhaps taking U.S. citizens in Kandahar hostage.But the briefing papers also noted that there was risk in not acting. “Sooner or later,” they said, “Bin Ladin will attack U.S. interests, perhaps using WMD [weapons of mass destruction] .”19 Clarke’s Counterterrorism Security Group reviewed the capture plan for Berger. ”

“ After years of war in the Balkans, the United States had finally committed itself to significant military intervention in 1995–1996.Already maintaining a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia, U.S. officials were beginning to consider major combat operations against Serbia to protect Muslim civilians in Kosovo from ethnic cleansing.Air strikes were threatened in October 1998;a full-scale NATO bombing campaign against Serbia was launched in March 1999.55 In addition, the Clinton administration was facing the possibility of major combat operations against Iraq. ”

“ President Clinton and Berger also worried about the Economist’s point—that attacks that missed Bin Ladin could enhance his stature and win him new recruits. After the United States launched air attacks against Iraq at the end of 1998 and against Serbia in 1999, in each case provoking worldwide criticism, Deputy National Security Advisor James Steinberg added the argument that attacks in Afghanistan offered “little benefit, lots of blowback against [a] bomb-happy U.S.”59 During the last week of August 1998, officials began considering possible follow-on strikes. ”

“ But since the tribals seemed to know where Bin Ladin was or would be, an alternative to capturing Bin Ladin would be to mark his location and call in another round of missile strikes. On November 3, the Small Group met to discuss these problems, among other topics. Preparing Director Tenet for a Small Group meeting in mid- November, the Counterterrorist Center stressed,“At this point we cannot predict when or if a capture operation will be executed by our assets.”106 U.S. counterterrorism officials also worried about possible domestic attacks. ”

“ But the United States did not, before 9/11, adopt as a clear strategic objective the elimination of al Qaeda. Early Efforts against Bin Ladin Until 1996, hardly anyone in the U.S. government understood that Usama Bin Ladin was an inspirer and organizer of the new terrorism. In 1993, the CIA noted that he had paid for the training of some Egyptian terrorists in Sudan. The State Department detected his money in aid to the Yemeni terrorists who set a bomb in an attempt to kill U.S. troops in Aden in 1992. ”

“ Zinni’s planners surely considered the two previous times the United States had used force to respond to terrorism, the 1986 strike on Libya and the 1993 strike against Iraq.They proposed firing Tomahawks against eight terrorist camps in Afghanistan, including Bin Ladin’s compound at Tarnak Farms.38 After the embassy attacks, the Pentagon offered this plan to the White House. ”

“ The Counterterrorist Center RESPONSES TO AL QAEDA’S INITIAL ASSAULTS 113 planned to brief cabinet-level principals and their deputies the following week, giving June 23 as the date for the raid, with Bin Ladin to be brought out of Afghanistan no later than July 23.27 On May 20, Director Tenet discussed the high risk of the operation with Berger and his deputies, warning that people might be killed, including Bin Ladin. ”

“ In addition, the CIA would increase contacts with the Northern Alliance rebels fighting the Taliban.191 With a new operational strategy,the CIA evaluated its capture options.None scored high marks.The CIA had no confidence in the Pakistani effort. In the event that Bin Ladin traveled to the Kandahar region in southern Afghanistan, the tribal network there was unlikely to attack a heavily guarded Bin Ladin; the Counterterrorist Center rated the chance of success at less than 10 percent.To the northwest, the Uzbeks might be ready for a cross-border sortie in six months ”

“ He commented that they had not shown comparable sensitivity when deciding to bomb Muslims in Iraq.The principals, he said, were “obsessed” with trying to get others— Saudis,Pakistanis,Afghan tribals—to “do what we won’t do.”Schroen was disappointed too.“We should have done it last night,” he wrote.“We may well come to regret the decision not to go ahead.”119 The Joint Staff ’s deputy director for operations agreed, even though he told us that later intelligence appeared to show that Bin Ladin had left his quarters before the strike would have occurred. ”

“ Even after the embassy attacks, Bin Ladin had been responsible for the deaths of fewer than 50 Americans, most of them overseas. An NSC staffer working for Richard Clarke told us the threat was seen as one that could cause hundreds of casualties, not thousands.54 Even officials who acknowledge a vital threat intellectually may not be ready to act on such beliefs at great cost or at high risk. ”

“ But his bands had been charged with more than one massacre, and the Northern Alliance was widely thought to finance itself in part through trade in heroin. Nor had Massoud shown much aptitude for governing except as a ruthless warlord. Nevertheless, Tenet told us Massoud seemed the most interesting possible new ally against Bin Ladin.170 In February 1999,Tenet sought President Clinton’s authorization to enlist Massoud and his forces as partners. ”

“ But he told us that he could not drum up much interest in or money for such a purpose from Washington, partly, he thought, because these countries had dictatorial governments. 140 After the decision—in which fear of collateral damage was an important factor— not to use cruise missiles against Kandahar in December 1998, Shelton and officers in the Pentagon developed plans for using an AC-130 gunship instead of cruise missile strikes. Designed specifically for the special forces, the version of the AC-130 known as “Spooky”can fly in fast or from high altitude, undetected by radar ”

“ The President spoke to the congressional leadership from Air Force One, and he called British Prime Minister Tony Blair,Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from the White House.47 House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott initially supported the President.The next month, Gingrich’s office dismissed the cruise missile attacks as “pinpricks.”48 At the time,President Clinton was embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal,which continued to consume public attention for the rest of that year and the first months of 1999. ”

“ Berger told us that he did not feel any sense of constraint.52 The period after the August 1998 embassy bombings was critical in shaping U.S. policy toward Bin Ladin. Although more Americans had been killed in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack, and many more in Beirut in 1983, the overall loss of life rivaled the worst attacks in memory.More ominous, perhaps,was the demonstration of an operational capability to coordinate two nearly simultaneous attacks on U.S. embassies in different countries. ”

“ He told us he knew of no one at the Pentagon or the CIA who thought it was a bad gamble. Bin Ladin “should have been a dead man” that night, he said.173 Working-level CIA officials agreed. While there was a conflicting intelligence report about Bin Ladin’s whereabouts, the experts discounted it.At the time, CIA working-level officials were told by their managers that the strikes were not ordered because the military doubted the intelligence and worried about collateral damage. ”

“ First, in December 1998, the principals’wariness about ordering a strike appears to have been vindicated: Bin Ladin left his room unexpectedly, and if a strike had been ordered he would not have been 140 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT hit. Second, the administration, and the CIA in particular,was in the midst of intense scrutiny and criticism in May 1999 because faulty intelligence had just led the United States to mistakenly bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the NATO war against Serbia. ”

“ The FAA issued a security directive on December 8, with specific requirements for more intensive air carrier screening of passengers and more oversight of the screening process, at all three New York City area airports.112 The intelligence community could learn little about the source of the information. ”

“ Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the “exact formula used by Iraq.”110This language about al Qaeda’s “understanding” with Iraq had been dropped, however, when a superseding indictment was filed in November 1998.111 On Friday, December 4, 1998, the CIA included an article in the Presidential Daily Brief describing intelligence, received from a friendly government, about a threatened hijacking in the United States.This article was declassified at our request. ”

“ Several terrorists were sent to an Arab country.The CIA described working with FBI operatives to prevent a planned attack on the U.S. embassy in Uganda, and a number of suspects were arrested. On September 16, Abu Hajer, one of Bin Ladin’s deputies in Sudan and the head of his computer operations and weapons procurement,was arrested in Germany. He was the most important Bin Ladin lieutenant captured thus far. ”

“ Suspicion quickly focused on Bin Ladin.Unusually good intelligence, chiefly from RESPONSES TO AL QAEDA’S INITIAL ASSAULTS 115 the yearlong monitoring of al Qaeda’s cell in Nairobi, soon firmly fixed responsibility on him and his associates.37 Debate about what to do settled very soon on one option:Tomahawk cruise missiles. Months earlier, after cancellation of the covert capture operation, Clarke had prodded the Pentagon to explore possibilities for military action. ”

“ Berger arranged for the NSC’s legal adviser to inform Albright, Cohen, Shelton, and Reno.None was allowed to keep a copy. Congressional leaders were briefed, as required by law. Attorney General Reno had sent a letter to the President expressing her concern: she warned of possible retaliation, including the targeting of U.S. officials. ”

“ The history of such cooperation in 1997 and 1998 had been strained.66 Several officials told us, in particular, that the United States could not get direct access to an important al Qaeda financial official, Madani al Tayyib, who had been detained by the Saudi government in 1997.67Though U.S. officials repeatedly raised the issue, the Saudis provided limited information. ”

“ He worried also lest Pakistani authorities not get adequate warning, think the missiles came from India, 134 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT and do something that everyone would later regret. Discussing potential repercussions in the region of his military responsibility, Zinni said,“It was easy to take the shot from Washington and walk away from it.We had to live there.”139 Zinni’s distinct preference would have been to build up counterterrorism capabilities in neighboring countries such as Uzbekistan. ”