“…while [CIA Director George] Tenet can be blamed for not putting money and people where his mouth was [upon issuing his ‘declaration of war’ on Osama bin Laden on December 3, 1998], the real problem is simply the nature of the post-Cold War world. …When the Soviet Union collapsed, the giant bull’s-eye disappeared and was […]
12/3/1998
“[CIA Director George] Tenet’s ‘declaration of war’ [on Osama bin Laden, on December 3, 1998] was so low-key that not even the assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division had even heard of it. Neither had senior officials in the Pentagon or the U.S. military. And despite his order that ‘I want no resources or […]
12/3/1998
“Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet finally came to the same conclusion [as President Bill Clinton] and declared war on bin Laden. In an internal memorandum to senior CIA managers [on December 3, 1998], he exclaimed: ‘We must now enter a new phase in our effort against bin Laden…We are at war…I want no resources […]
12/2/1998
After his meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on December 2, 1998, President Bill “Clinton made clear that he expected his aides to follow up on the offer [from Sharif to assist in capturing bin Laden], to put the plan in motion. ‘We tried to get the Pakistanis involved in this, realizing that it […]
12/1/1998
“On December 1 [1998], an intelligence community assessment of bin Laden [UBL] warned, ‘UBL is actively planning against U.S. targets…Multiple reports indicate UBL is keenly interested in striking the U.S. on its own soil…Al Qaeda is recruiting operatives for attacks in the U.S. but has not yet identified potential targets.’ ” – James Bamford, A […]
11/16/1998
“John C. Gannon, then chairman of the National Intelligence Council, defended the [August 20, 1998] strikes [against terrorist camps in Afghanistan and the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan] in a speech at Stanford University on November 16, 1998. ‘We found solid evidence of CW [chemical weapons] activity at Shifa in Khartoum. Sophisticated tests […]
11/16/1998
At a November 16, 1998 conference on biological and chemical weapons at Stanford University, the Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council John C. Gannon said: “…terrorist groups seeking to develop or acquire chemical and biological weapons are ‘proliferating’. The threat, he adds, ‘is real and growing,’ and ‘agents of increasing lethality are being developed […]
11/15/1998
“The [assassination] operation against bin Laden in November 1998 involved American technology and know-how in concert with Saudi finance and manpower, thus avoiding any difficult questions in the US Congress about state-sponsored assassinations. The attack, which bin Laden apparently blames on Saudi Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, the governor of Riyadh, involved an assassin called Siddiq […]
11/15/1998
“In November 1998, the intelligence community obtained information that the Turkish Kaplancilar, an Islamic extremist group, had planned a suicide attack to coincide with celebrations marking the death of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. The conspirators, who were arrested, planned to crash an airplane packed with explosives into Ataturk’s tomb during a ceremony. The […]
11/15/1998
In November 1998, “the Lebanese newspaper Al-Watan Al-Arabi reported that Chechens and the Russian mafia had sold nuclear weapons to al Qaeda. According to these accounts, for a price of $30 million in cash plus $70 million in heroin, al Qaeda had acquired more than twenty warheads, which it was storing at a secret base […]