WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- In "The Sign of the Four," Sherlock Holmes famously says that if we "eliminate all other factors, the one which remains must be the truth." In his latest book, investigative journalist Richard Miniter has done an exhaustive job of eliminating all other possibilities, leaving us with the unsettling conclusion that the Clinton Administration's failure for eight years to ably wage war on Osama bin Laden and his supporters actually provoked and encouraged this terrorist.
Miniter's expose is based on interviews with Clinton's National Security Advisors, his secretary of State, top CIA agents (including the CIA director), senior intelligence officials from Egypt, France, and the Sudan and lawmakers in Washington, D.C. "Losing Bin Laden" opens with bin Laden's first attack in Yemen on American Marines shortly after the November 1992 presidential elections. As Miniter notes, "Yemen wanted help tracking down Osama bin Laden. But no help ever came."
One can't read "Losing Bin Laden" and watch the connecting of the dots without being frightened and informed. We're informed about "'expendables', a common feature of sophisticated terrorist operations; they serve as cannon fodder to fool the target nation into believing that it has caught all of the perpetrators and thereby cloak the wider conspiracy. The 'expendables' allow the professionals to escape." And we're frightened by a Clinton Administration beset by internal demons and ill-equipped to deal with the crisis -- going so far as to tell reporters that it was "speculation" to assume that the World Trade Center had been bombed in 1993 in a gambit to gain time to decide on what action to take.
The World Trade Center bombing occurred on the 39th day of the Clinton presidency. "From the day of the World Trade Center bombing until the last day of the Clinton Administration, the president demanded absolute proof before acting against terrorists," because as Rich Miniter demonstrates with interviews and contemporary news accounts, "strong action was politically dangerous if it misfired." It's this shortsighted and feckless policy which under girded the Clinton Administration's anti-terror policy and ultimately prevented its success.
It may surprise you to learn about several attempts by the Saudi government to assassinate bin Laden starting as early as 1994. But this gives the reader some greater understanding of the sinister strategy by bin Laden to use Saudi citizens as the agents of evil against America on Sept. 11. As Janet McElligott (who has represented the government of Sudan in Washington) explains, even though the "Saudis wanted bin Laden 'neutralized,' they didn't want the responsibility of doing it themselves." The Clinton Administration, however, insisted on getting Saudi Arabia to take bin Laden in to custody and at the same time refused the Saudi royal family's request for intelligence in "permanently removing" bin Laden from the Sudan.
Miniter keeps digging and uncovers extensive evidence of an Iraq-al Qaida connection. He shows that "the most compelling reason for bin Laden to work with Iraq was money." But would Iraq provide financial support to al-Qaida? In a word, yes. Miniter notes that the State Department routinely listed Iraq as one of the world's largest funders of terrorism beginning as early as 1969. But the clincher is that "secret documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center in Baghdad in April 2003 prove that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces (an adjunct of bin Laden's operating out of Uganda). Also the head of the Iraqi Kurdish Group (a terrorist group modeled on the Taliban) admitted that he met with bin Laden in Afghanistan and bin Laden's fighters attended training camps in Iraq. Miniter also mentions CIA Director George Tenet's public testimony of Iraq providing training in document forgery and bomb making to al-Qaida.
"Losing Bin Laden" also recounts in deadly detail the destructive nature of the precursor assaults on the United States prior to Sept. 11. He describes in eerie detail the way the Ryder rental truck was used as the explosive device inside the World Trade Center. "The blast smashed through the concrete wall, grabbed Monica Smith from her office chair and smashed her against a reinforced-steel concrete wall. The impact was so great that the knit pattern of her sweater was imprinted on her shoulder. Flying chunks of concrete hit her body like bullets. In seconds she and her unborn child were dead."
Confirming the fears of many, "Losing Bin Laden" reveals a White House overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance -- reflexively opposed to force on the one hand and yet publicly committed to the foreign policies of a "New Democrat" on the other. Dick Morris, a former Clinton adviser, says, "Clinton chose to treat the Trade Center attack as an isolated criminal act, devoid of serious foreign policy or military implications." Ultimately this conflict made the Clinton White House incapable of developing a coherent and effective response to the challenge of international terrorism and reveals it instead to be a captive of parochial political concerns.
And the evidence just continues to pile up. After the World Trade Center attack in 1993, President Clinton never even visited the site -- even when political events brought him to New York City he was able to prevent himself or his senior staff from appreciating the magnitude of the attack, instead urging the public not to "overreact" to the bombing.
Read "Losing Bin Laden" and meet terrorist Ramzi Yousef, who had a "habit of wearing sunglasses at night. He once had a business card printed up that featured his name in bold print. Below was his job title: 'international terrorist.'" As Miniter recounts, he enjoyed bombmaking. "His specialty was a difficult recipe involving liquefied nitroglycerin." And according to Pakistani investigators, at least twice, Yousef was taken to emergency rooms in Karachi, Pakistan, while "conducting a test explosion of one of his trademark liquid bombs -- which misfired."
"Losing Bin Laden" details the visit in 1996 of Sudan's Minister of State for Defense -- then Elfatih Erwa -- who offered to arrest and turn over bin Laden. Sudan had turned over international terrorist Carlos the Jackal to the French government in 1994 and offered to do the same for the U.S. in hopes of bettering relations. The official response of the CIA official was "we have nothing we can hold him on." Tragically, "over the next few months and years, Sudan repeatedly would try to provide its voluminous intelligence files on bin Laden to the CIA, the FBI, and senior Clinton Administration officials -- and would be repeatedly rebuffed."
Sherlock Holmes is less well known for saying that "the most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless." During the Clinton Administration, fifty-nine Americans were killed by bin Laden's operations. As Rich Miniter documents so well, the Clinton Administration reacted in fits and starts with half measures that served only to frustrate those who knew what needed to be done.
"Losing Bin Laden" ends the way it started. "In his last night in office as president of the United States, Clinton was at his desk past midnight. He wasn't issuing last-minute orders to smash al-Qaida or to capture bin Laden. He was signing pardons for dozens of well-connected friends." Meanwhile, "the planning for bin Laden's most spectacular attack was already well underway."
From beginning to end, "Losing Bin Laden" is the riveting account of the all out terror war that bin Laden declared against the U.S. and which for eight years during the Clinton Administration was largely ignored. After finishing "Losing Bin Laden" you too will lament the opportunities lost.
-- Horace Cooper writes regularly for United Press International and GOPUSA.com. He was praised as a key Republican strategist in Elizabeth Drew's New York Times bestseller "Showdown: The Struggle Between the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton White House" and extolled as a "poster conservative" by Michele Mitchell in "A New Kind of Party Animal."
-- United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues.
