Paraphrased sections are indented.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion
of the widespread hypocrisy and blatant bias of the leftist mainstream media.Los Angeles Times
December 5, 2001 Wednesday
Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize;
Sudan offered up the terrorist and data on his network. The then-president and his advisors didn't respond.
MANSOOR IJAZ
President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year.
I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.
From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief.
President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.
The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening.[Paraphrased section:]
Ijaz said that he's an American Muslim & a political supporter of bill clinton but he feels that clinton's and Berger's counter-terrorism policies helped Bin Laden rise from an ordinary man to a "Hydra-like monster."
February 1996: Ijaz said that Sudan's Bashir, realizing how Bin Laden was a cancerous problem that was growing, sent important/key intelligence officials to the US. Bashir told the US that he would arrest Bin Laden and then extradite him to Saudi Arabia, if possible. Another alternative would be to "baby-sit him" and -monitor all his activities and terrorist associates. But officials in Saudi officials didn't want Bin Laden back because they were afraid he would concoct a plot to overthrow them.
In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.
Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with him Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for Al Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.[Paraphrased section:]
Some of these terrorists we could have had in our custody (or received intelligence data on) are now on the FBI's 22 most-wanted list of terrorists.
Mohamed Atta & Marwan Al-Shehhi - two of the men who flew the planes into the WTC -- prayed in the same Hamburg mosque as did Salim and Mamoun Darkazanli. The Sudanese had compiled intelligence data of both Atta and Al-Shehhi.
Timeline of US authorities refusing Sudan's intelligence data:
First in February 1996 (mentioned in previous paraphrased section)
Again in August 1996 when Ijaz suggested that Sudan's religious ideologue, Hassan Turabi, write directly to Clinton, which he did.
Again in April 1997, when Ijaz persuaded Bashir to invite the FBI to come to Sudan and view the data
Again in February 1998, when Sudan's intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi, wrote directly to the FBI.
Gutbi had shown me some of Sudan's data during a three-hour meeting in Khartoum in October 1996. When I returned to Washington, I told Berger and his specialist for East Africa, Susan Rice, about the data available. They said they'd get back to me. They never did. Neither did they respond when Bashir made the offer directly. I believe they never had any intention to engage Muslim countries--ally or not. Radical Islam, for the administration, was a convenient national security threat.
And that was not the end of it.
[Paraphrased section:]
July 2000 (3 months before the USS Cole attack) -- Ijaz brought another offer to deal with Bin Laden, who was by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from a close Arab ally [country unnamed] approached Ijaz with a proposal to hand over Bin Laden. This official told Ijaz that he was "fed up with antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials." [I would be $100 he was referring to the arrogant Dick Clarke!]
The unnamed Arab country was offering to bring Bin Laden to their own country, then extradite him to the U.S. provided that Clinton would make a state visit to their country to personally request Bin Laden's extradition.
But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family--Clintonian diplomacy at its best. ["senior Clinton official" who sabotaged the offer = Dick Clarke again?]
Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.
------Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is chairman of a New York-based investment company.