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Under Clinton, there were several opportunities to take out Bin Laden, but her refused to authorize them.
Shortly after September 11th, articles by the AP and the Philadelphia Inquirer charged that the Clinton administration had chances to take out bin Laden, but refused to authorize it.
In the waning days of the Clinton presidency, senior officials received specific intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and weighed a military plan to strike the suspected terrorist mastermind's location. The administration ultimately opted against an attack.
The information spurred a high-level debate inside the White House in December 2000 about whether the classified information provided the last best chance for President Clinton to punish bin Laden before he left office, the officials said.
"There were a couple of points, including in December, where there was intelligence indicative of bin Laden's whereabouts. But I can categorically tell you that at no point was it ripe enough to act," former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told The Associated Press.
In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.
Another golden opportunity to eliminate Bin Laden was after he had been expelled from Sudan. He flew in a plane to Afghanistan and his plane could have easily been taken out.
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic told the U.N. tribunal Tuesday that Osama bin Laden was in Albania in 2000 and that the Clinton Administration had discussed it with him.
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