“On Friday, August 14 [1998], a week after the attacks [on the U.S. embassies in Africa], [CIA Director George] Tenet delivered to the Small Group the CIA’s formal judgment that bin Laden and his senior Egyptian aides were responsible. ‘Intelligence from a variety of human and technical sources, statements of arrested suspects, and public statements by bin Laden’s organization left no doubt about its responsibilities,’ according to Paul Pillar, then deputy director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center. Recounting this moment to a colleague years afterward, [President Bill] Clinton called it ‘the first compelling evidence’ that bin Laden personally ‘had been responsible for the deaths of Americans.”
– Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Page 407