Missed opportunity
By Wolf Blitzer
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Tuesday's testimony before the 9/11 commission revealed a previously unknown opportunity in 1999 to kill Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
"The lead CIA official in the field felt intelligence reporting in this case was very reliable. The UBL unit chief at the same agrees. The field official believes today that this was a lost opportunity to kill bin Laden before 9/11," said Philip Zelikow, executive director, 9/11 commission.
But CIA officials told the commission that Clinton administration officials feared so-called collateral damage -- namely, that a strike against bin Laden could also kill a prince from the United Arab Emirates and others who were hunting with bin Laden at the time.
Zelikow says there were other missed opportunities as well during the Clinton administration, resulting in this exchange between former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, a 9/11 commission member, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Kerry asked, "I keep hearing the excuse we didn't have actionable intelligence. Well what the hell does that say to al Qaeda?"
The former secretary of state replied, "We used every single tool we had in terms of trying to figure out what the right targets would be, and how to go about dealing with what we knew to be a major threat."
Outside the hearing, the Bush administration has also come under sharp criticism for failing to appreciate the al Qaeda threat before 9/11, including explosive allegations from former Bush counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who will testify before the panel on Wednesday.
For the first time since Clarke has come forward with his charges, President Bush has now responded. "[CIA Director] George Tenet briefed me on a regular basis about the terrorist threat to the United States of America. And had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11, we would have acted."
The White House also came under fire during the hearing for refusing to allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify before the commission in public and under oath.
