“At 5:30 am on August 7, 1998, [President] Bill Clinton was awakened unexpectedly by National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. It was the eighth anniversary of the arrival of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia leading up to the Gulf War…To mark the occasion, Osama bin Laden had struck his most violent blows yet against the United States, setting off massive car bombs in front of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, at 10:30 a.m. local time, and then at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, 450 miles away, just five minutes later. The carnage was unparalleled in the history of terrorism. In Nairobi, the explosion…incinerated dozens of people in buses passing by, and left more than a dozen pedestrians dismembered…Altogether, about 260 people were killed. Roughly 5,000 people were wounded in the twin attacks…Counterterrorism analysts knew immediately who was behind it. For the first time, the eyes of the world turned on Osama bin Laden as master terrorist and public enemy number one.”
– Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Pages 183-184