would have been necessary to prevent the 9/11 attack.
specific desire to terminate this threat, to eliminate it.
able to take specific action that was successful.
and the, the global reach that this organization was developing.
and try to better understand the nature of this terrorist enterprise.
of a desire for the government to try to take action.
House, within the intelligence community and the Department of Defense.
and ultimately why decisive action was never taken.
covert action to try to deal with Osama bin Laden.
CIA at the specific direction of the President.
abduct him and then ultimately bring him back to the United States to face trial.
obviously paying these Pashtun tribals to execute this attack.
There was training they were, the, the, they practiced routines.
parts of 1998 it, it never went forward. why?
first of all, there was a lot of concern about the the actual plan.
would they be able to pull it off?
what would it look like? Would there be a lot of gunfire?
Would there be a lot of civilian casualties?
could we trust this group to take these actions and do them effectively?
him out to the United States for trial.
the White House, it, it was going to be an embarrassment.
Bin Laden was killed, it would look like an assassination attempt.
concerns put a, a restraint on this covert action plan.
Nairobi, Kenya, and on our embassy in Dar es Salaam Tanzania.
and Tanzanians so working in both of these embassies.
concern about the threat that Bin Laden had now clearly demonstrated.
he was willing to act.
into two countries to do simultaneous devastating bombings.
and who who's willing to act on his violent words.
very strongly believed that a, a response against Bin Laden was necessary.
opportunity thought to actually attack him and Al Qaeda.
the plan was to launch cruise missiles from a Navy ship in the Indian Ocean.
hit a variety of these these training camps.
had ties to both Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
Bin Laden was not there and, he was not injured in the attack.
Appears that approximately 20 people in the camps were killed.
one of the missiles went astray in Pakistan and killed some civilians.
there was a lot of controversy surrounding this, this reprisal.
attention from his the Monica Lewinsky problems that he was having at the time.
a mere pinprick and people were disappointed with the results.
others saw this as a overly aggressive, hostile action by the United States.
in recent times, it's hard to conceptualize that.
plant there was it was indeed a pharmaceutical plant.
off Bin Laden and that's why the mission was unsuccessful.
many in the administration after these first attacks advocated for more.
message that we were determined to destroy this organization.
sending expensive cruise missiles to destroy essentially nothing.
to where Bin Laden was we would look silly.
sending million dollar missiles into into dirt huts and jungle gyms.
with having to launch cruise missiles over Pakistan.
casualties could be caused and that would be a black eye on the United States.
place in response to the embassy bombings.
other ideas for how we might eliminate the Bin Laden threat.
there were certainly diplomatic efforts to do so.
lecture, had moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996.
and very few nations in the world actually had relations with them.
The three of them were Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan.
policy of harboring Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
Could we ratchet up the pressure maybe impose costs on the Taliban for doing so?
and so a number of avenues were tried.
Secretary of State at the time, talking here to the Crown Prince Abdullah.
and that was a diplomatic path that had some promise.
Laden to be turned over either to the United States or to them.
proceeded they were told that indeed that was not going to happen.
Taliban in Afghanistan could also bring pressure to bear to turn over Bin Laden.
Pakistan had strong relations with the, the Taliban government.
Clinton speaking here with Nawaz Sharif, and other diplomatic channels.
would Pakistan use its influence to, again, try to get Bin Laden turned over.
no evidence that Pakistan ever really tried to do that.
As I said, first of all, Pakistan had much bigger fish to fry.
it wasn't worth it for them to pressure the Taliban.
at the time were to try and maintain peace between Pakistan and India.
a time of heightened tension between those two countries.
had recently become nuclear powers might start engaging in hostilities.
influence Pakistan to lower the, the tensions with India at, at that time.
So this could not be the, the full thrust of our diplomacy with Pakistan.
throughout this entire period, 1988 to 2000 questions kept arising.
can we do a missile strike and, and, hit and kill Bin Laden.
and over and over again pieces of intelligence would come up.
There would be an idea that we understand where, the whereabouts are of Bin Laden.
It would be considered within the intelligence community.
It would be considered by what was called the Principles committee.
secretaries of the various key agencies and, and then action would not be taken.
sometimes there's deep questions about the credibility of the intelligence.
is about as good as we're going to get.
We've got a good source, we know where Bin Laden's going to be for two days.
head of the CIA would be asked, is this is this good enough?
And they'd say things like, well, this is a 50 50 chance.
and, and not hitting Bin Laden if he was in an area that was heavily populated.
big imprint, many, many civilian casualties could be caused.
considered far, far from sure bets about the caliber of the intelligence.
him to, to eliminate this threat.
call, whether they be in the White House, The CIA, or the Interagency committee.
oppression of Muslims in the Kosovo province.
campaign we mistakenly hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade with a missile.
hesitant it was to launch an attack based on maybe only partially good intelligence.