| Subject: Uh, are you talking about the SUDAN offer? LOL. |
Author:
The Veeckster
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Date Posted: 12:14:21 06/29/02 Sat
Author Host/IP: 67.25.98.187
In reply to:
Way to go, libs!
's message, "Somalia offers Bin Laden to US in 96. Clinton says, "no thanks, too busy."" on 11:06:28 06/29/02 Sat
(I know, all those funny S countries tend to run together...)
OK Kenny. These are the actual FACTS about that episode.
Cheers!
Diplomacy and Politics
A Growing Effort Against bin Laden
As Mr. Clinton prepared his re-election bid in 1996, the administration made several crucial decisions. Recognizing the growing significance of Mr. bin Laden, the C.I.A. created a virtual station, code-named Alex, to track his activities around the world.
In the Middle East, American diplomats pressed the hard-line Islamic regime of Sudan to expel Mr. bin Laden, even if that pushed him back into Afghanistan.
To build support for this effort among Middle Eastern governments, the State Department circulated a dossier that accused Mr. bin Laden of financing radical Islamic causes around the world.
The document implicated him in several attacks on Americans, including the 1992 bombing of a hotel in Aden, Yemen, where American troops had stayed on their way to Somalia. It also said Mr. bin Laden's associates had trained the Somalis who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu in 1993.
Sudanese officials met with their C.I.A. and State Department counterparts and signaled that they might turn Mr. bin Laden over to another country. Saudi Arabia and Egypt were possibilities.
State Department and C.I.A. officials urged both Egypt and Saudi Arabia to accept him, according to former Clinton officials. ''But both were afraid of the domestic reaction and refused,'' one recalled.
Critics of the administration's effort said this was an early missed opportunity to destroy Al Qaeda. Mr. Clinton himself would have had to lean hard on the Saudi and Egyptian governments. The White House believed no amount of pressure would change the outcome, and Mr. Clinton risked spending valuable capital on a losing cause. ''We were not about to have the president make a call and be told no,'' one official explained.
Sudan obliquely hinted that it might turn Mr. bin Laden over to the United States, a former official said. But the Justice Department reviewed the case and concluded in the spring of 1996 that it did not have enough evidence to charge him with the attacks on American troops in Yemen and Somalia.
In May 1996, Sudan expelled Mr. bin Laden, confiscating some of his substantial fortune. He moved his organization to Afghanistan, just as an obscure group known as the Taliban was taking control of the country.
Clinton administration officials counted it as a positive step. Mr. bin Laden was on the run, deprived of the tacit state sponsorship he had enjoyed in Sudan.
''He lost his base and momentum,'' said Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser in his second term.
In July 1996, shortly after Mr. bin Laden left Sudan, Mr. Clinton met at the White House with Dick Morris, his political adviser, to hone themes for his re-election campaign.
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