US government chose not to deter bin Laden in 1996: newspaper

The Clinton administration in 1996 ignored warning of intelligence analysts that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would make him even more dangerous,

The New York Times said Wednesday.

In that summer, analysts at the State Department said in a top-secret assessment of bin Laden that "his prolonged stay in Afghanistan... could prove more dangerous to US interests in the long run," the newspaper quoted newly declassified intelligence documents as saying.

Two years after that assessment, operatives of al Qaeda linked to bin Laden's training and financial base in Afghanistan attacked two US embassies in East Africa, leading to failed military initiatives against him in Afghanistan.

And five years after the assessment, bin Laden's followers struck the United States in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

However, former Clinton administration officials argued that the newly disclosed documents should be viewed in the context of what was going on in 1996, rather than in the hindsight of events after the Sept. 11 attacks.

In 1996, "the question was getting him out of Sudan," said a former official.

Michael Scheuer, a former CIA supervisor who ran the agency's unit tracking down bin Laden, said the declassified document reflected the growing danger that analysts realized bin Laden posed if he were allowed to move to Afghanistan.

"The analytical side of the State Department had it exactly right," he said, adding that the CIA believed that it had a greater chance to catch bin Laden in Afghanistan than in Sudan.

"The thinking was that he (bin Laden) was in Afghanistan, and he was dangerous. But because he was there, we had a better chance to kill him," said Scheuer.

"But at the end of the day, we settled for the worst possibility -- he was there and we didn't do anything."

Source: Xinhua