The 9/11 Commission Report: The Attack On The USS Cole

President Clinton was deeply concerned about Osama Bin Ladin. He and his national security advisor, Samuel “Sandy” Berger, ensured they had a special daily pipeline of reports feeding them the latest updates on Bin Ladin’s reported location. In public, President Clinton spoke repeatedly about the threat of terrorism, referring to terrorist training camps but saying little about Bin Ladin and nothing about al Qaeda. He explained to us that this was deliberate—intended to avoid enhancing Bin Ladin’s stature by giving him unnecessary publicity. His speeches focused especially on the danger of nonstate actors and of chemical and biological weapons. As the millennium approached, the most publicized worries were not about terrorism but about computer breakdowns—the Y2K scare.Some government officials were concerned that terrorists would take advantage of such breakdowns.

The 9/11 Commission Report: From Threat To Threat: The Attack On The USS Cole