The CIA is reported to have trained and armed around 60 Pakistani commandos to carry out a secret plan for them to go into Afghanistan and kill or capture Osama bin Laden.
The clandestine operation in 1999 was sponsored by the Clinton administration less than 12 months after US cruise missile strikes against Bin Laden's training camps in the country, according to the Washington Post.
In return, the newspaper said, Pakistan was promised economic aid and the lifting of sanctions imposed after it tested nuclear weapons. The assassination plan was abandoned later in 1999 when Nawaz Sharif was ousted by the military as Pakistan's prime minister. According to the Washington Post, the plan was part of a more robust effort by the United States to get at Bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.
Broader military action, including massive bombing raids and assaults by US special forces, were under consideration.
The news coincided with a report that the CIA also worked with the government of Sudan in the early spring of 1996 after the country offered to arrest Bin Laden and place him in Saudi custody.
The scheme failed 10 weeks later because the administration was unable to persuade Saudi Arabia to take him. The US lacked sufficient evidence to charge and try him at the time.
But in the early summer of the same year, Bin Laden was expelled from Sudan, where he had become too big a liability.
Both failures have been studied closely by the Bush administration in working out where and how to hit Bin Laden and his network now.
An official close to the Clinton administration told the Washington Post that the Pakistani commando team was ready to strike by October 1999. "It was an enterprise. It was proceeding," he said.
But General Pervez Musharraf, who overthrew Mr Sharif on October 12, pointedly refused to continue with it.
Gen Musharraf, now Pakistan's president, is currently playing the tricky role of ally in Washington's plans to track down Bin Laden and destroy al-Qaida.
While Pakistan has a great deal of information on what is going on in Afghanistan, the Taliban too has its sources on what the Pakistani leadership is up to, through its links with Pakistani intelligence.
When the Clinton administration retaliated against Bin Laden in August 1998 for the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania it launched cruise mis sile attacks against his camps in Afghanistan.
Sources told the Washington Post that President Clinton decided to use missiles so no American lives were put in jeopardy. They now believe - after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - that stronger and more risky action should have been taken.
A senior defence official said: "I wish we'd recognised it then and started the campaign then that we've started now."
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