Clinton Denies Taped Bin Laden Admission, Blames 'Misquote'

To: Nita Nupress

VANITY FAIR
Repinted from Vanity Fair (New York) January 2002, No. 497,pp.50-56

THE OSAMA FILES
BY DAVID ROSE

An updated picture of Osama bin Laden with fellow terrorists Ayman al-Zawahiri left, and Muhammad Atef.

In a squat, red-brick building next to Khartoum's presidential palace, the agents who serve the Mukhabarat, Sudan's intelligence division, keep their secrets in pale manila files. "Those guys know what they're doing," says a retired long-time C.I.A. Africa specialist. "They tend to be thorough. Their stuff is pretty reliable." And sometimes very important. Sudan's Mukhabarat spent the early to mid-1990s amassing copious intelligence on Osama bin Laden and his leading cohorts at the heart of the al-Qaeda terrorist network-when they were still little known, and their activities were relatively limited. Some of the files at Mukhabarat headquarters identify individuals who played central roles in the suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in August 1998; others chart the backgrounds and movements of al-Qaeda operatives who are said to be linked directly to the atrocities of September 11.

In the wake of those attacks, President Bush and the F.B.I. issued a list of the world's 22 most wanted terrorists. Sudan has kept files on many of them for years.

From the autumn of 1996 until just weeks before the 2001 attacks, the Sudanese government made numerous efforts to share this information with the United States all of which were rebuffed. On several occasions, senior agents at the F.B.I. wished to accept these offers, but were apparently overruled by President Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, and her assistant secretary for Africa, Susan Rice, both of whom would not comment for this story after repeated requests for interviews. Vanity Fair has obtained letters and secret memorandums that document these approaches. They were made directly to the State Department and the F.B.I., and also via a series of well-connected U.S. citizens who tried to warn America that the Sudanese offers were serious and significant.

By definition, September 11 was an intelligence failure. As the C.I.A. man puts It, We didn't know it was going to happen." Some of the reasons for that failure were structural, systemic: the shortage of Arabic-speaking agents, the inability of C.I.A. officers to go underground in Afghanistan.

This one was more specific. CE Had U.S. agencies examined the AF Mukhabarat files when they first REI had the chance in 1996, the prospects of preventing al-Qaeda's subsequent attacks would have been much greater. Tim Carney, the last U.S. ambassador to Sudan, whose posting ended in 1997, says: "The fact is, they were opening the doors, and we weren't taking them up on it. The U.S. failed to reciprocate Sudan's willingness to engage us on serious questions of terrorism. We can speculate that this failure had serious implications-at the least for what happened at the U.S. Embassies in 1998. In any case, the U.S. lost access to a mine of material on bin Laden and his organization."

How could this have happened? The simple answer is that the Clinton administration had accused Sudan of sponsoring terrorism, and refused to believe that anything it did to prove its bona fides could be genuine. At the same time, perceptions in Washington were influenced by C.I.A. reports that were wildly inaccurate, some the result of deliberate disinformation. The problem, Carney says, was "inadequate vetting and analysis by the C.I.A. of its own product." That, in turn, was being conditioned by the Clinton administration's hostility to Sudan's Islamic regime: "Despite dissent from the State Department's own Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. intelligence failed be- cause it became politicized."

Osama bin Laden, his four wives, his children, and numerous "Afghan Arab" followers who had helped drive the Soviets from Afghanistan went to Sudan from Saudi Arabia early in 1991. They chose Sudan for two main reasons. First, the restless, radicalised veterans of the Afghan war were unwelcome in most Arab countries, but Sudan left its doors open. Second, bin Laden liked Sudan's politics. The Islamic radicalism of the government's then ideological leader, the philosopher Hassan aI-Turabi, who had come to power in a coup d'etat in 1989, was at its bracing zenith. The Sudanese, in turn, welcomed bin Laden as an investor. His family had built most of Saudi Arabia's infrastructure, and they saw his wealth and experience as an engineer as valuable resources in developing Sudan.

Al-Qaeda, with its secretive structure and oath of allegiance to bin Laden, had been founded two years earlier. In Sudan, however, much of bin Laden's energy went into business: a contract, funded by the Saudis, to build the airport at Port Sudan: agricultural projects; and al-Hijra, a joint venture with the Sudan government to build a 185-mile road northward from Khartoum Abu Ibrahim, the Iraqi engineer who became al-Hijra's C.E.O., says bin Laden took a strong interest in the project's technical details. In bin Laden's large house in an affluent part of Khartoum, they spent hours together, discussing which diggers, graders, and other items the firm ought to buy.
On his visits to the site, Ibrahim says, bin Laden showed "he knew how to drive every piece of machinery." Ibrahim had known bin Laden during the Afghan war. "When we were in Afghanistan, everything was jihad, jihad, jihad," he says. "Here in Sudan we saw his many other aspects-construction, family life.

He was settling down." However, bin Laden also found time to begin a fierce propaganda campaign against the Saudi government, furious that it had allowed the U.S. military to build bases on Saudi soil. By 1994 that campaign had led to the removal of his Saudi citizenship. He was also fostering contacts with other Muslim extremists some of whom were very dangerous indeed. As we sat on gray-green leather sofas in his office, Yahia Hussien Ba-viker, the Mukhabarat's deputy chief since 1998, disclosed a nugget from 1992. In that year, the Mukhabarat learned that bin Laden had played host for a lengthy visit by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the founder of Egyptian Islamic had-a fundamentalist group , behind many armed attacks on Egyptian government ministers and officials, including the 1981 assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat.

OSAMA'S LAIR
Osama bin Laden's house in Khartoum

The Mukhabarat had monitored Egyptian Islamic Jihad for years. "If anyone in the world understands the Egyptian side of this network, it's Sudan," the C.I.A. source says. Events have served to demonstrate the significance of that meeting in 1992: Egyptian Islamic Jihad has effectively merged with al-Qaeda. Al-Zawahiri, now No.2 on the F.B.I.'s "most wanted" list, serves as bin Laden's doctor and adviser in Afghanistan. Other Egyptians occupy core positions within the al-Qaeda network, many of them known to the Mukhabarat since the 1980s. "These files on the Egyptians could have been of great value to U.S. intelligence," Baviker says.

"If we'd had communication with the U.S., we could have been on the same wavelength. We could have exchanged notes." An foreigners in Sudan were subject to some degree of surveillance. Disclosure of bin Laden's link with Egyptian Islamic Ji-had led the Mukhabarat to watch him and his Afghan Arab followers more closely. Lieutenant General Gutbi al-Mahdi, Mukhabarat director general from 1997 until 2000, says the service started keeping tabs on "the entire bin Laden clique. ...We had a lot of information: who they are, who are their families, what is their education. We knew what they were doing in the country, what is their relationship with Osama bin Laden. And photographs of all them." Not long into the 1990s, Sudan's Islamic fervor was already being tempered by pragmatism. Desperate for investment, especially to develop its vast reserves of oil, the government submitted to the stringent economic medicine prescribed by the World Bank, slashing inflation and privatizing state-owned industries. (Osama bin Laden himself became the Sudan agent for the British firm Hunting Surveys, which plays a large role in oil prospecting and whose military division makes about a fifth of the West's Trident nuclear missiles.) In 1994 it tried to assert its anti-terrorist credentials by assisting France in the capture of Illich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal," the notorious Venezuelan-born terrorist who claims to have killed 83 people, now serving a life sentence in France.

The U.S., however, remained convinced that Sudan was sponsoring terrorism. Toward the end of 1995, the then U.S. ambassador, Don Petterson, was instructed to deliver an un-signed, secret note to the spiritual leader, Hassan al-Turabi, and President Omar al-Bashir. It said the U.S. was "aware of Sudan's involvement in terrorist plots against us," and warned that if such a plot came to fruition there would be a harsh reaction. It could result in "the international isolation of Sudan, in the destruction of your economy, and in military measures that would make you pay a high price."

Photos, copies of documents, etc. found here...

http://www.espac.org/media_pages/osama_files2.html

201 posted on 04/09/2004 8:44:12 PM PDT by kcvl

The messenger Former ambassador Don Petterson delivered this unsigned letter, (above) to Sudanese leaders in 1995. It accused Sudan of "involvement in terrorist plots"at the time when the US was not focused on bin Laden

THE GO-BETWEEN MansoorIjaz a friend of bill Clinton's couldn't persuade U.S. officials to look at Sudans's reports. (above) a letter from Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir to Representative Lee Hamilton offering information to the F.B.I.

202 posted on 04/09/2004 8:47:46 PM PDT by kcvl

To: Carl/NewsMax

"Really?" said a perplexed Kerrey. "Well, then - ship it to me, because Clinton said yesterday [in private 9/11 testimony] that he didn't have a recollection of that."

It is going to be shipped to him like he really cares.

Even after he receives it and listens to it, it will be sent down the memory hole, a la 1984. Liberals like Kerrey, just like all true socialists with some degree of power, do not care about truth. They care about their influence. Just as O'Brien could tell Winston that he did not remember that which Winston was sure he could remember, Kerrey will not remember hearing the Clinton testimony even after receiving the tape.

These people are not intellectually honest. Intellectually honesty conflicts with their true pursuit.

203 posted on 04/09/2004 8:48:25 PM PDT by William Martel

THE PAPER TRAIL (Above) Sudanese intelligence head Gutbi al-Mahdi's letter to David Williams of F.B.I; the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya. (Above) William's reply to al-Mahdi's letter.

THE ACCIDENTAL EMISSARY Lobbyist Janet McElligott couldn't bridge the chasim between the U.S. and Sudan. (Above) a note written by Gutbi al-Mahdi and delivered to McElligot to F.B.I director Louis Freeh relating the arrest of two suspects in the embassy bombings.

204 posted on 04/09/2004 8:50:29 PM PDT by kcvl

"He who closes his eyes sees nothing, even in the full light of day. ...The generalissimo preferred to trust his political instinct rather than the secret reports piled up on his desk." "He who closes his eyes sees nothing." In the case of Sudan, 1996 through 2000, Madeleine Albright and her assistant secretary for Africa, Susan Rice, apparently preferred to trust their instincts that Sudan was America's enemy, and so refused to countenance its assistance against the deepest threat to U.S. security since 1945. Ambassador Carney quoted Talleyrand, the 18th-century father of modern diplomacy. This saga was "pire qu'un crime, c'etait une betise." He provided his own translation. "It was worse than a crime. It was a fuckup."

205 posted on 04/09/2004 8:53:13 PM PDT by kcvl

Damn, those virtual lying 'RATs are SO frightening! Now I'm gonna have nightmares. ;-)

Excellent work, Mia!

206 posted on 04/09/2004 8:55:26 PM PDT by nutmeg (Why vote for Bush? Imagine Commander in Chief John F’in al-Qerry)

To: William Martel

As an investor, Ijaz was interested in Sudan's oil, but he also shared "a fundamental sense of injustice" at the way the country was being treated. From July 1996 until August 1997, he made six trips to Khartoum, meeting Dr. al-Turabi, President al-Bashir, the Mukhabarat chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi, and other officials. He suceeded in convincing them that it was worth making a further effort to persuade the U.S. of Sudan's sincerity-partly by drawing America's attention to the intelligence on al-Qaeda. His initiative produced its most dramatic result in a letter dated April 5, 1997, from President al-Bashir to Lee H. Hamilton, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

It stated, "We extend an offer to the F.B.I's Counter-terrorism units and any other official delegations which your government may deem appropriate, to come to the Sudan and work with our External Intelligence Department in order to assess the data in our possession and help us counter the forces your government, and ours. seek to contain." (My italics.) According to Ijaz, Hamilton took the letter to both Madeleine Albright and Sandy Beger, neither of whom replied. Ijaz also wrote memorandums on his mission for Sandy Berger, and in a series of conversations he spelled out exactly what the Sudanese offer meant. He told Berger, "That phrase [in the letter to Hamilton], 'to assess the data in our possession,' was an explicit reference to the data on bin Laden. The reference to 'the forces we seek to contain' was an explicit reference to the attempt to stop al-Qaeda spreading." Ijaz and his family had shared their Christmas dinner in the White House with the ain- tons. However good his access, he could not budge U.S. policy on Sudan.

The Sudanese did not give up. Beginning in the autumn of 1997, they made use of another private go-between, Janet McElligott, a lobbyist who had worked at the White House under George H. W Bush.

Like Ijaz before her, she assumed that rational statecraft would, in the end, prevail. In this she was mistaken. On February 5, 1998, her efforts helped produce perhaps the smokiest of all the smoking guns in this story: a letter direct from Gutbi al-Mahdi of the Mukhabarat to David Williams, chief of the F.B.I.'s Middle East and Africa desk. It read, "I would like to express my sincere desire to start contacts and cooperation between our service and the F.B.I. I would like to take this opportunity with pleasure to invite you to visit our country. Otherwise, we could meet somewhere else. Till then I remain, yours truly."

Eighteen days later, on February 23, 1998, Osama bin Laden issued his blood- curdling fatwa from his hideout in Afghanistan, calling on all Muslims to kill Americans and Jews, adding that civilians were now to be regarded as targets. McElligott followed up the letter with a personal appeal: "I told them, 'You do realize bin Laden lived there and they have files on his main people?' There is simply no doubt the F.B.I. knew what was available. The guy I dealt with said, 'I'd give any- thing to go in there, but they'-meaning the State Department-'won't let us."' David Williams did not reply to al-Mahdi's letter for another four months. "Unfortunately," he wrote on June 24, "I am not currently in a position to accept your kind invitation." He hoped "future circumstances" might allow it, but for now the offer had to be rejected. Six. weeks after that, bin Laden's al-Qaeda network succeeded in exploding two pick- up trucks at the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. They were reduced to piles of bloody rubble in which 224 people lay dead or dying.

207 posted on 04/09/2004 9:00:52 PM PDT by kcvl

To: Carl/NewsMax

.

"All ya gotta do is DENY it" =

BILL CLINTON to his lover of 12 years JENNIFER FLOWERS

.

208 posted on 04/09/2004 9:01:28 PM PDT by ALOHA RONNIE (Vet-Battle of IA DRANG-1965 http://www.LZXRAY.com)

To: nutmeg; Howlin; Mo1; Miss Marple; nopardons

Ambassador Mohamed conveyed an open offer: the C.I.A. and F.B.I. could send a joint investigative team, which could travel freely throughout the country. "I used to say, 'Go anywhere, take a plane from Khartoum and say where you want to go once we're in the air."' It was not taken up. In February 1997, the offer was repeated in a letter from Presidental-Bashir to Clinton. Al-Bashir suggested "a mission tasked to investigate allegations that the government of Sudan trains or shelters terrorists," with "freedom of movement and contact and unrestricted choice of suspected terrorist sites." Clinton never replied.

THE GO-BETWEEN

MansoorIjaz a friend of bill Clinton's couldn't persuade U.S. officials to look at Sudans's reports. A letter from Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir to Representative Lee Hamilton offering information to the F.B.I. It began to dawn on the Sudanese that one way of convincing America that they were serious about fighting terrorists was to offer U.S. investigators access to the Mukhabarat files on bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Frustrated in their efforts to invite America in through the front door, they resolved to try a back channel-the multimillionaire Pakistani-American businessman and fund manager Mansoor Ijaz. Then a big donor to the Democratic Party, Ijaz was on personal terms with Clinton, Berger, and Al Gore. He was also fearful of the likely result of U.S. refusal to engage with Islamic regimes, such as Sudan: "As an American Muslim, I had a terrifying vision of what could go wrong. I wanted to do whatever I could to stop that happening."

209 posted on 04/09/2004 9:05:16 PM PDT by kcvl

The scandal is that we negotiated and actually thought Sudan would hand OBL over not that Clinton failed to get Sudan to hand him over. You people actually think those negotiations were legit? Would have paid off?

While that may be true, that's not the answer Bill Clinton gave for not persuing the deal. He said we had no legal grounds to go after OBL because he had no yet done anything to the United States. And he said it on tape. Now he denies any recollection of ever saying it.

That's highly relevent to a panel tasked with finding the root cause of September 11... because the root cause of the atrocities was Clinton's presidency itself.

210 posted on 04/09/2004 9:07:06 PM PDT by WhistlingPastTheGraveyard

To: ALOHA RONNIE

The U.S., however, remained convinced that Sudan was sponsoring terrorism. Toward the end of 1995, the then U.S. ambassador, Don Petterson, was instructed to deliver an un-signed, secret note to the spiritual leader, Hassan al-Turabi, and President Omar al-Bashir. It said the U.S. was "aware of Sudan's involvement in terrorist plots against us," and warned that if such a plot came to fruition there would be a harsh reaction. It could result in "the international isolation of Sudan, in the destruction of your economy, and in military measures that would make you pay a high price."

211 posted on 04/09/2004 9:07:35 PM PDT by kcvl

To: WhistlingPastTheGraveyard

However, bin Laden also found time to begin a fierce propaganda campaign against the Saudi government, furious that it had allowed the U.S. military to build bases on Saudi soil. By 1994 that campaign had led to the removal of his Saudi citizenship. He was also fostering contacts with other Muslim extremists some of whom were very dangerous indeed. As we sat on gray-green leather sofas in his office, Yahia Hussien Ba-viker, the Mukhabarat's deputy chief since 1998, disclosed a nugget from 1992. In that year, the Mukhabarat learned that bin Laden had played host for a lengthy visit by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the founder of Egyptian Islamic had-a fundamentalist group , behind many armed attacks on Egyptian government ministers and officials, including the 1981 assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat.

OSAMA'S LAIR
Osama bin Laden's house in Khartoum

The Mukhabarat had monitored Egyptian Islamic Jihad for years. "If anyone in the world understands the Egyptian side of this network, it's Sudan," the C.I.A. source says. Events have served to demonstrate the significance of that meeting in 1992: Egyptian Islamic Jihad has effectively merged with al-Qaeda. Al-Zawahiri, now No.2 on the F.B.I.'s "most wanted" list, serves as bin Laden's doctor and adviser in Afghanistan. Other Egyptians occupy core positions within the al-Qaeda network, many of them known to the Mukhabarat since the 1980s. "These files on the Egyptians could have been of great value to U.S. intelligence," Baviker says.

"If we'd had communication with the U.S., we could have been on the same wavelength We could have exchanged notes." An foreigners in Sudan were subject to some degree of surveillance. Disclosure of bin Laden's link with Egyptian Islamic Ji-had led the Mukhabarat to watch him and his Afghan Arab followers more closely. Lieutenant General Gutbi al-Mahdi, Mukhabarat director general from 1997 until 2000, says the service started keeping tabs on "the entire bin Laden clique. ...We had a lot of information: who they are, who are their families, what is their education. We knew what they were doing in the country, what is their relationship with Osama bin Laden. And photographs of all them." Not long into the 1990s, Sudan's Islamic fervor was already being tempered by pragmatism. Desperate for investment, especially to develop its vast reserves of oil, the government submitted to the stringent economic medicine prescribed by the World Bank, slashing inflation and privatizing state-owned industries. (Osama bin Laden himself became the Sudan agent for the British firm Hunting Surveys, which plays a large role in oil prospecting and whose military division makes about a fifth of the West's Trident nuclear missiles.) In 1994 it tried to assert its anti-terrorist credentials by assisting France in the capture of Illich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal," the notorious Venezuelan-born terrorist who claims to have killed 83 people, now serving a life sentence in France.

212 posted on 04/09/2004 9:11:06 PM PDT by kcvl

To: WhistlingPastTheGraveyard

Clinton is a scumbag and he is responsible for 9/11. Why he is not up on treason charges I do not know. Did you know that the 9/11 operatives were ex Muslim fighters for Bosnia? The same ones he helped?

213 posted on 04/09/2004 9:11:48 PM PDT by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorism by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)

OSAMA'S LAIR
Osama bin Laden's house in Khartoum

214 posted on 04/09/2004 9:12:24 PM PDT by kcvl

To: Carl/NewsMax

"Bill Clinton said yesterday that, that was a misquote," Kerrey told WDAY Fargo

If Kerrey & the Commission wanted the truth, maybe they should have put Clinton under oath. LOL!!!

215 posted on 04/09/2004 9:12:48 PM PDT by kevao

To: Carl/NewsMax

Bill Clinton said...

And we believe him?

Ms.B

216 posted on 04/09/2004 9:18:36 PM PDT by MS.BEHAVIN (Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. Re-elect G.W.Bush)

Sorry if I missed it earlier in the thread, but what's the book you're excerpting?

217 posted on 04/09/2004 9:28:28 PM PDT by WhistlingPastTheGraveyard

Never mind... Vanity Fair, first page... duh.

218 posted on 04/09/2004 9:29:28 PM PDT by WhistlingPastTheGraveyard

219 posted on 04/09/2004 9:32:56 PM PDT by Stew Padasso ("That boy is nuttier than a squirrel turd.")

To: kcvl; Mia T; Carl/NewsMax

.

NEVER FORGET

September 9, 2001 =

My Father Dies of Natural Causes

Septermber 11, 2001 =

RICK RESCORLA, my fellow veteran of the Battle of the IA DRANG-1965, dies as World Trade Center Tower 2 comes crashing down on him after he got almost everyone else outta there, saving 1,000's of lives.

September 12, 2001 =

MONSOOR IJAZ announces to the World on the FoX News Channel that the previous day's terrorist attacks on America could have been prevented if only the CLINTON White House had not refused the 3 Offers that he had brokered with the Sudan during the 1990's to give us OSAMA bin LADEN on a Silver Platter.

Early-June 2003 =

IMED IMBRAHIM MOHAMMED, the 1990's Sudan Ambassador to the United States, confirmed everythng to me in person what MONSOOR IJAZ told us the day after the 9/11 Attacks about his 3-OSAMA Offers being refused by the CLINTON White House.

Mid-June 2003 =

DICK MORRIS, 1990's Political Advisor to the CLINTON White House, confirms to me personally ..twice.. on 'The Judicial Watch Report' Radio Talk Show that BILL CLINTON personally refused OSAMA Offers in 1995 & 1996.

Next =

'MONSOOR IJAZ to testify before 9/11 commission'

http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1106808/posts

Signed:.."ALOHA RONNIE" Guyer / Veteran-"WE WERE SOLDIERS" Battle of IA DRANG-1965 http://www.lzxray.com

NEVER FORGET

.

220 posted on 04/09/2004 9:41:29 PM PDT by ALOHA RONNIE (Vet-Battle of IA DRANG-1965 http://www.LZXRAY.com)

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794