Investor's Business Daily, September 7,2006
As Clinton guru Dick Morris relates, this first missed chance to capture or kill bin Laden came in February 1998, when "Clinton's aides scuttled a CIA plot that had been eight months in the planning to kidnap Osama." The plan would have used Afghan tribesman to capture the al-Qaida leader for a later trial in the U.S.
Believe it or don't, Clinton's aides worried that bin Laden might be killed in the process, making it look like a political assassination.
According to the 9-11 commission report, they were worried of "recriminations" in the event "that bin Laden, despite our best intentions and efforts, did not survive."
The second chance came on Aug. 20, 1998, in the famous "wag the dog" attack at the height of le affaire Lewinsky, when cruise missiles were actually fired at a bin Laden encampment in Afghanistan. The problem was that Clinton ordered that the Pakistanis be told of the attack, lest they think it was an attack from India.
The news was leaked, and bin Laden dodged our bullets.
The final missed chance came in May 1999 when the CIA reported bin Laden would be in Kandahar, Afghanistan. As the 9-11 commission report said: "If this intelligence was not 'actionable,' working-level officials said at the time and today, it was hard for them to imagine how any intelligence could meet that standard."