On August 20, 1998, “President [Bill] Clinton and all his principal advisers had agreed to strike Bin Ladin camps in Afghanistan near Khowst, as well as hitting al Shifa [a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, which, according to reports, was being financially backed by Bin Ladin to manufacture a precursor ingredient for nerve gas]…Later on […]
Category: quotes
8/20/1998
On August 20, 1998, “US adds bin Laden’s name to list of terrorists whose funds are targeted for seizure by US Treasury in order to shut down the financial pipelines that allegedly subsidize bin Laden’s terrorist activities.” – “Hunting Bin Laden; Who is Bin Laden & What Does He Want? A Chronology of His Political […]
8/20/1998
“On August 20 [1998], the United States retaliates against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda [for the African embassy bombings on August 7, 1998], sending cruise missiles into al-Qaeda training camps. Two hours prior to the attacks, Osama, his sons, and commanders left one of the training camps near Khost [Afghanistan] to travel to Kabul to […]
8/20/1998
“The August 20 [1998] meeting [of terrorist leaders at which the U.S. planned a cruise missile attack to kill bin Laden] was not much of a secret: It was known to Pakistani intelligence. Former ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] chief Hamid Gul later said that he provided the Taliban with advance warning of the American attack, according […]
8/20/1998
On August 20, 1998, one of the targets of Operation Infinite Reach, President Bill Clinton’s retaliatory strike for the August 7, 1998, African embassy bombings, was a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. It was supposedly tied to bin Laden and producing chemical weapons. “The plant was targeted based on a soil sample gathered by a CIA […]
8/20/1998
“Earlier, on August 20, 1998, as special prosecutor Ken Starr’s investigation of the president’s alleged indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky was reaching a climax, cruise missiles had been fired at the Sudan and Afghanistan, aimed at punishing Osama bin Laden for the bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa on August 7. They failed to hit […]
8/20/1998
The August 20, 1998, retaliatory attacks by the U.S. on bin Laden’s camp at Khost, Afghanistan and his chemical plant in Sudan “turned bin Laden from a marginal figure in the Muslim world into a global celebrity. …Maulana Sami ul-Haq, a corpulent cleric who runs what is probably Pakistan’s largest religious academy, explained that the […]
8/20/1998
“The Clinton administration has been criticized for not following up on its first missile attack [on August 20, 1998] with an all-out effort to get bin Laden. But former officials said that they lacked the ‘actionable intelligence,’ or precise information about bin Laden’s whereabouts, to launch another attack. ‘The main focus was location, location, location,’ […]
8/20/1998
National Security Advisor Sandy Berger answered the charge that there had been ambiguity about the CIA’s authorization to kill bin Laden: ” ‘We gave the CIA every inch of authorization it asked for. …There could not have been any doubt about what President [Bill] Clinton’s intent was after he fired 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at […]
8/20/1998
“…Pakistani officials, aware of the timing of the strike [President Bill Clinton’s retaliatory effort on August 20, 1998, for the African embassy bombings], had warned key Taliban and al Qaeda allies, even sending a senior ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] operative to personally tell bin Laden of the impending attack.” – Gerald Posner, Why America Slept, Page […]