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Plan to Arrest Bin Laden in 1996 Fell Apart
WASHINGTON, Oct 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A plan for Sudan to arrest Osama bin Laden in 1996 fell through when the United States found it unable to put him on trial and failed to convince Saudi Arabia to take him, the
Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The newspaper also said Washington, three years later, trained 60 Pakistani intelligence agents to go into Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden, but that a coup in Islamabad put an end to that operation.
The U.S. administration of then-president Bill Clinton had secretly spoken with the Sudanese government in 1996 on a plan to seize the Saudi dissident - who is now Washington's prime suspect in the devastating September 11th attacks on New York and the Pentagon - but let the idea go after evaluating the situation, according to U.S. officials quoted by the newspaper.
Bin Laden had been living in Sudan at the time, after being expelled from Saudi Arabia.
"Had we been able to roll up bin Laden then ... we probably never would have seen a September 11th," the newspaper quoted an unnamed U.S. government anti-terrorism official as saying.
Despite bin Laden being seen by intelligence officers as a rising threat, "The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time, and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States," Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who was deputy national security adviser then, said to the
Post.
Berger told the newspaper that the U.S. Constitution would have made it difficult to win a conviction. "Our first choice was to send him some place where justice is more 'streamlined'," he said.
The newspaper said Clinton and his officials hoped that place would be Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's birth country, which had forced him into exile in 1991 and stripped him of his citizenship three years later.
But Riyadh refused, the Post said, leaving U.S. officials to simply make sure Sudan expelled bin Laden, tearing him away from his business and contacts in the country.
Bin Laden made his way to Afghanistan in 1996, where he is believed to have holed up ever since.
When bin Laden was fingered as the likely mastermind of the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 that killed more than 200 people, Clinton switched tactics, and in August of that year, targeted bin Laden by ordering cruise missiles fired into his camps in Afghanistan. Bin Laden managed to escape that attempt, but Clinton reportedly did not give up.
In a separate report, the Washington Post said the CIA in 1999 had secretly trained and equipped around 60 agents from Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency to go into Afghanistan to assassinate bin Laden.
In return, Clinton was to lift sanctions and provide economic aid to Pakistan.
The operation was begun less than a year after the U.S. strikes on training camps in Afghanistan, along side additional covert action approved that year by Clinton for the CIA to work with Afghani and other foreign intelligence services to move against bin Laden, the
Post said.
Defense officials, quoted in the article, expressed regret that the strikes had been so few and limited, saying that a serious campaign to eliminate bin Laden and al-Qaeda should have been initiated at that time, but that it was held back by many of the same concerns that are restraining President George W. Bush, such as the threat of killing innocent civilians and an inability to pinpoint bin Laden's exact location.
Between the 1998 strikes and the late 1999 commando plan, the paper quoted officials as saying that a number of opportunities had arisen to go after bin Laden, but that intelligence had never been solid enough.
The CIA's plan was aborted in October 1999, the paper quoted unnamed sources as saying, when the Pakistani government headed by prime minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted in a military coup by the current president, General Pervez Musharraf.
National Public Radio (NPR) reported that the reasons for aborting the action were not specified and could be varied, ranging from direct opposition from Musharraf at the outset of his takeover, to the decision being reached after relations between the U.S. and Pakistan deteriorated after the U.S. mounted severe criticism for Musharraf's coup, and the insisted for a restoration of civilian government.
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