The planning and plotting by the hijackers was done on Bill Clinton's watch
and executed eight months into the Bush administration, which refused to
heed warning signs that an attack was imminent. A wealth of information and
evidence about the laxness of the Clinton administration can be found by
Googling "Clinton failures to catch terrorists and bin Laden." Some postings
are from what might be regarded as "right-wing" Web sites, but others are
from such left-wing sources as The Los Angeles Times.
In a Dec. 5, 2001 op-ed for that newspaper, Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations and chairman of an investment company in New
York, wrote, "President Clinton and his national security team ignored
several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist
associates. Š I know because I negotiated more than one of the
opportunities."
Ijaz says that from 1996 to 1998 he opened unofficial channels between Sudan
and the Clinton administration, including National Security Adviser Sandy
Berger and Sudan's president and national intelligence chief, "President
Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan
lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of bin Laden and detailed
intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic
Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
"Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial
airliners into the World Trade Center. The silence of the Clinton
administration in responding to these offers was defeaning."
When considering whether to take Bill Clinton's outrage seriously, it is
helpful to revisit his notorious finger wagging when he forcefully denied
having had sex with Monica Lewinsky. The Web site YouTube.com has juxtaposed
the latest finger wagging with the previous one. Viewers can judge for
themselves whether Clinton's latest claim and blame should be believed
anymore than his previous denial of extramarital sex with an intern.