Clinton stopped CIA from killing Osama and preventing 9/11 because he 'wasn't a threat', reveal ex-agents
Former agents of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have revealed that they were prevented from killing Osama Bin Laden shortly before 9/11 because of a bill signed by former President Bill Clinton. The revelation was made in a new documentary titled 'The Longest Wars', which details how the agency could have killed the al-Qaeda chief way before he orchestrated and executed the deadly 9/11 crash.
Bin Laden, who would constantly move around to avoid detection, was at times spotted and the US would confirm his location so they could launch a strike. Afghanistan's local tribal leaders at the time told the agents to bury explosives underneath crossroads and blow it up when his convoy passed through it.
The agents, however, said that they could not kill the terrorist because of the Memorandum of Notification, which was enacted by President Clinton in August, 1998. The legislation meant that the agents were forbidden from taking direct deadly action and could only engage in "lethal activity". The officials and agents during the Clinton presidency, however, also added that Bin Laden at the time was not considered much of a threat.
"The CIA had a so-called 'lethal finding' [bill] that had been signed by President Clinton that said that we could engage in 'lethal activity' against Laden, but the purpose of our attack against Laden couldn't be to kill him," Bob Grenier, then CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, explained in a Showtime documentary that aired on Sunday, April 19.
"We were being asked to remove this threat to the United States essentially with one hand tied behind our backs," Grenier added, who was the CIA station chief in Islamabad in 1990s. He explained how "bin Laden was constantly moving, and we were using Afghan tribal networks to report on his travels and his whereabouts." However, when they did eventually narrowed his probable location in Kandahar, they had to decline a missile attack at the location on December 20, 1998, the Daily Mail reported.
"Our tribal contacts came to us and said, 'Look, he's in this location now. When he leaves, he's going to have to go through this particular crossroads.' And so what they proposed was to bury a huge cache of explosives underneath those crossroads so that when his convoy came through they could simply blow it up," Grenier said.
"And we said absolutely not. We were risking jail if we didn't tell them that."
The language of the memorandum was altered the following day suggesting that the CIA could kill Bin Laden if there was no other way to catch him alive.
However, a series of decisions were subsequently made to not carry out attacks on Bin Laden's camp in 1999 and 2000. The memorandum was also downgraded again in 1999, which contained "capture not kill" instructions.
A CIA counterterrorism officer at the time, Marty Martin, in the film, said that the al-Qaeda leader posed a "real" threat at the time, however, the US missed multiple opportunities to prevent thousands from dying in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"And if President Clinton had taken action and killed Osama bin Laden, there wouldn't have been a 9/11," Martin continued. "And if there wouldn't have been a 9/11 there wouldn't have been an Afghanistan, and if there wouldn't have been an Afghanistan there wouldn't have been an Iraq. What would the world be like?"