In his Address to the Nation on August 20, 1998, President Clinton said: ” ‘Today I ordered our armed forces to strike at terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan because of the imminent threat they presented to our national security. …Our target was terror, our mission was clear–to strike at the network of radical groups […]
8/20/1998
“On August 20, 1998, [Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-] Zawahiri, speaking with the Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai by satellite phone, delivered this statement on bin Laden’s behalf [:] ‘Bin Laden calls on Muslims to continue jihad against Jews and Americans to liberate their holy places. In the meanwhile, he denies any involvement in the […]
8/20/1998
“The unsuccessful [U.S.] cruise missile strike against bin Laden raised the profile of al Qaeda’s leader. Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of Al Quds al Arabi newspaper, recalls this [in a June 2005 interview with Peter Bergen]: ‘It was [20] August 1998. …On my way from the airport to my office, Mohammed Atef [al Qaeda’s […]
8/20/1998
“Responding to very time sensitive intelligence information, President Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack [on August 20, 1998] on a training camp in Afghanistan where bin Laden was expected to meet with some of his cadres. The attack failed in its mission when bin Laden did not appear at the scene at the exact […]
8/20/1998
“When military action was finally taken against bin Laden, it proved to be ineffective and even counterproductive. On August 20, 1998, U.S. warships in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf fired a series of cruise missiles at four terrorist training camps. …The bombing of the terrorist training camps was carried out even though bin Laden […]
8/20/1998
“…the ability to intercept Osama bin Laden’s Inmarsat [satellite telephone] calls was lost shortly after America’s August [20] 1998 bombing strikes on Afghan terrorist training sites. One official told me [columnist Bill Gertz] that the link went silent after a report in the Washington Post quoted a former U.S. intelligence official as saying that the […]
8/20/1998
“The offer of Sudanese assistance [to arrest bin Laden] evaporated in August 1998 when President [Bill] Clinton ordered US military forces [on August 20, 1998] to destroy the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was suspected of being a chemical arms factory. …The Clinton administration turned down an official government offer of cooperation against terrorism in […]
8/20/1998
Regarding the August 20, 1998, attack on bin Laden, President Bill Clinton said: ” ‘…we were told he was going to be at that training site…and he left a couple of hours before [the missiles hit]. So what did I have? A 40 percent chance of knowing we could have hit it. But there were […]
8/20/1998
National Security Advisor Sandy “Berger was particularly rankled by an editorial in the [August 29, 1998, issue of] Economist that said that only the future would tell whether the U.S. missile strikes [which targeted, but failed to kill Bin Ladin on August 20, 1998] had ‘created 10,000 new fanatics where there would have been none.’ […]
8/20/1998
In a speech announcing the U.S. cruise missile strikes of August 20, 1998, on locations in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the August 7, 1998, African embassy bombings, President Bill Clinton said: ” ‘I want the world to understand that our actions today were not aimed against Islam, the faith of hundreds of millions of […]