Clinton Turned Down Bin Laden?!? Where Is The Press?!?

24 Sep, 2002 by John Hawkins

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Clinton Turned Down Bin Laden?!? Where Is The Press?!?: I have a request — no — a challenge for the Blogosphere. There is a HUGE story that should have been page 1 on every paper in America when it broke in December that has been almost totally ignored by the mainstream press. That story needs to be gotten out to the general public.

You see in 1996, Bill Clinton was offered Osama Bin Laden by Sudan and he said, “no thanks.” Yes, five years before 9/11, Bill Clinton allowed al-Queda’s #1 guy to walk away. Now, don’t you think that’s something that people should know about? With all the petty things that have made huge headlines since 9/11 (example: Bush was told terrorists might want to hijack planes), wouldn’t you think this would qualify as big news?

As far as I can tell, the story was originally broken in the editorial pages of the LA Times (no direct link available) on Dec 5, 2001 in an editorial called ‘Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize’ by Mansoor Ijaz. In that article Ijaz claimed that,

“From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger and Sudan’s president and 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 deafening.

As an American Muslim and a political supporter of Clinton, I feel now, as I argued with Clinton and Berger then, that their counter-terrorism policies fueled the rise of Bin Laden from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster.

Realizing the growing problem with Bin Laden, Bashir sent key intelligence officials to the U.S. in February 1996.

The Sudanese offered to arrest Bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or, barring that, to “baby-sit” him–monitoring all his activities and associates.

But Saudi officials didn’t want their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them.

In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.”

Ijaz also claimed that he set up a deal that could have delivered Bin Laden into Clinton’s hands in 2000 as well but let’s stick to the 1996 deal because there is proof that Ijaz was telling the truth about it. What proof? Why the comments of Bill Clinton himself. Here’s the transcript of Bill Clinton’s comments to a February business luncheon on New York’s Long Island…

“Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan.

“And we’d been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start meeting with them again – they released him.

“At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.

“So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, ’cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn’t and that’s how he wound up in Afghanistan.”

Newsmax was there and they recorded & transcribed Clinton’s comments and they also have an MP3 available if you want to actually hear Clinton say the words.

Now don’t you think every American should at least KNOW that Bill Clinton was offered Osama Bin Laden and TURNED HIM DOWN? This is a big story that’s getting spiked by the mainstream media and the blogosphere should do something about it. What can you do? Mention this story on your blog. I don’t care if you link RWN, Newsmax, or don’t link anyone at all, mention the story and put the mainstream media on the spot for ignoring it. All it will take to get this story on the national radar screen is one or two big newspapers splashing it on their front page — then the rest will have to follow.

So if you think this a big story that the American public deserves to know about, make some noise, write about it, and get it on so many radar screens that the mainstream media will have to report on it…