Warning Signs

"The Intelligence Community has strong indications that Bin Laden intends to conduct or sponsor attacks inside the United States."

-Classified document signed by President Clinton in December 1998

YESTERDAY, in the wake of President Clinton's interview on Fox News, Senator Hillary Clinton defended her husband's counterterrorism track record. Reacting to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's assertion that the Bush administration "was at least as aggressive" in the eight months preceding September 11, 2001 as the Clinton administration was in the years prior, the former first lady remarked:

"I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team."

Apparently referring to the August 6, 2001 presidential daily briefing, which was entitled "bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," Senator Clinton suggested that her husband did not receive the same type of warnings that President Bush did.

In fact, President Clinton signed a similar classified document--which contained an explicit warning from the U.S. Intelligence Community that bin Laden intended to strike inside the United States, more than two years prior to leaving office. And the U.S. intelligence community collected numerous pieces of intelligence concerning bin Laden's determination to strike inside the United States during President Clinton's tenure. In addition to the failed plot against the World Trade Center in 1993 and the failed al Qaeda plot against LAX airport in 1999, there were clear indications that bin Laden's terror empire intended to strike targets in the continental United States.

The warning signs collected during the Clinton administration are outlined in the bipartisan "Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001," which was jointly published by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in December 2002.

The Joint Inquiry outlines a number of U.S. government failures in the years leading up to September 11, 2001. Among the report's findings, the committees concluded that prior to September 11, 2001: The "U.S. Intelligence Community was involved in fighting a 'war' against Bin Laden largely without the benefit of what some would call its most potent weapon in that effort: an alert and committed American public."

The report goes on to list three examples of "information that was shared with senior U.S. Government officials, but was not made available to the American public because of its national security classification." This information was "explicit about the gravity and immediacy of the threat posed by Bin Laden" and included "a classified document" signed by President Clinton in December 1998, which read in part:

"The Intelligence Community has strong indications that Bin Laden intends to conduct or sponsor attacks inside the United States."

This conclusion was based on numerous threads of evidence. Beginning in 1998 the U.S. intelligence community received regular reporting concerning not only al Qaeda's determination to carry out attacks in the United States but that the terror group also planned to hijack civilian aircraft. Some of the reporting even specifically referenced the World Trade Center.

On page 124, for example, the Joint Inquiry lists six instances--all prior to 2001--in which the intelligence indicated al Qaeda was planning attacks on U.S. soil:

In June 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information from several sources that Osama Bin Laden was considering attacks in the United States, including against Washington, D. C. and New York;

In August 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to crash an explosive-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center;

In September 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information that Osama Bin Laden's next operation could possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport;

In October 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information that al-Qaeda was trying to establish an operative cell within the United States, and that there might be an effort underway to recruit U.S. citizen- Islamists and U.S.-based expatriates from the Middle East and North Africa;