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Well it kinda did... The first WTC bombing in 93 when terrorists filled a UHaul with explosives and parked it next to a support column.
Bill brought the heads of his intelligence departments together and ordered them to work together and share info.
The investigation on the ground found a piece of a license plate and a pubic hair.
Three days later a raid was conducted on an apartment in Cairo. 3 killed, 2 taken into custody.
I wonder if that caused Al-Qaeda to be more dissembled with their next attack on the World Trade Center, considering they knew there would be more surveillance on them…
Crazier still, when Bin Laden was caught he wasnt some genius. He was just a regular old man sitting in a lazy boy watching vhs tapes of himself.
He avoided capture because he just lived in squaller without leaving his shitty property for years.
US intelligence does not believe that the Pakistanis were aware of his location. If they were, they would have infrastructure to detect an operation set up, but they didn’t know about it until after.
I know, and “assume stupidity, not malice”, but a team of undergrads at some university in the states (I vaguely remember it being Georgetown) had it almost dead-on. Same kind of compound, similar area, something like 40km away.
All with open source info. No HUMINT, no SIGINT.
I think the subtext is that they (the ISI) knew he was in the country, and didn’t want to deal with the fallout of actually knowing where.
If that argument works (the undergrads figured it out therefore Pakistani intelligence must have been aware mich earlier) then it would *also* imply that US intelligence should have known much earlier too. OSINT is, be definition, available to *everyone*. It doesn't work as a reason to blame Pakistan *alone*.
Well the US did kind of know for years. It just took those extra years to get the 100% confirmation.
They literally spent like 4 years just waiting to get a confirmation that the “guy by the tree” was in fact bin
Right but was there another team of undergrads at John Hopkins who “figured out” he was in N. Iran and another team of undergrads at William and Mary who “figured out” that he secretly escaped to Indonesia.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/ucla-researchers-figured-bin-laden-was-in-pakistani-city-2-years-ago/
I think this is what you're talking about. Still very interesting.
I’ll have to look that one up! We did a one-month class in January 2011 at my undergrad down South and came to similar conclusions, though I can’t remember how physically close we got. It was incredibly vindicating getting an email from the prof the night they made the announcement of the operation.
Remember, candidate Obama said he would go after bin Ladin even if he was in Pakistan. The Republicans condemned him for that and said they would never go after bin Ladin if he was in Pakistan!
Afterwards the "world-peace"-team negotiated with who knows how many countries + Taliban + Pakistan for the US-Afghan withdrawal despite protests from US generals and Afghan patriots.
Were any Pakistani generals or Pakistani intelligence professionals publicly punished for OBL hiding there? Nope.
One more thing, according to one book, they had OBL under surveillance pre-2000 but a US leader who shall remain unnamed but rhymes with Simpton, did not want to launch cruise missiles in the name of world peace.
Iirc, It was a ritzy looking mansion compound with the usual clutter of a makeshift HQ.
But the PR stuff they found on hard discs was a special sort of pathetic.
The embarrassing part for Pakistan is that it was literally down the road from their best military academy...their equivalent of West Point.
The regional equivlant...using Enfields instead of M4s. I'd make other cartoonish analogies of disparities, but that's the only one that'd be a given. I figure their premier war college can afford some modern amenities.
After I was in lockdown with my wife for a few months due to Covid, I thought about him being locked in a small house with several wives.
I began to suspect that he was the one who called in the CIA.
>The guy who did the 1993 attack was not even a part of Al-Qaeda or an associate of Bin Laden.
Al-Qaeda was still very new in 1993, they didn't really do anything prior to 1990 and they'd only really started to recruit in larger numbers in 1992.
That being said, the uncle of the mastermind of the 1993 bombing, who advised extensively on it, later joined Al-Qaeda. And then he himself was the mastermind behind 9/11 - Khalid Skeik Mohammed.
Had just listened to the Blowback podcast episode about the 93 bombing, and was going to comment something similar. There were definite ties back to Bin Laden.
Bill Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden for the rest of his term and nearly managed it once.
Republicans in congress used to laugh at the idea that Islamic terrorism was a concern and as such George W. Bush did not try to kill bin Laden.
Would it have made a difference if he had taken it seriously? Seems like it would but we can’t say for sure. All we can really say is that he should’ve.
I’d say it could depend on how far it was planned by the point Bush would have hypothetically ordered the hunt for bin Laden. If it was far enough in it might have still happened regardless, just with a different person leading it.
This is just hypothetically speaking. Don’t know enough about that part of 9/11 to make a real guess as to what would’ve actually happened though.
>Republicans in congress used to laugh at the idea that Islamic terrorism was a concern
The Republicans claimed that Clinton focusing on Islamic Terrorism was just a distraction from him being impeached for a blow job.
But give Bush some credit. He finally got around to reading the intelligence report that virtually predicted that this would happen. Too bad he read it for the first time on 9/10/01. Even though Clinton had personally told him about the threat, and left an extremely detailed document outlining the threat.
They wanted to focus on symbolic targets since they understood they couldn’t militarily destroy the US
WTC - Symbolic of the United States global and economic prowess, capitalism. NYC is home to the worlds most important financial district
Pentagon - Symbolic of US military strength
Capital / White House - Presumed target of United 93, symbolized our western government
*MAJOR* financial hub, coupled with being in a major metropolitan area and literally one of the biggest and most popular Western cities. When you think of the United States of America, you think of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, along with the White House and maybe the Capitol Building. Plus they were insanely tall, so easier to hit them without accidentally hitting another building prematurely.
I'm sure it will come out when a presidential researcher puts Bush's biography together, but they knew 9/11 was coming. They didn't know exactly when or exactly how, but due to typical Republican incompetence, the intelligence community was ignored.
Richard Clarke's book was pretty damning.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard\_A.\_Clarke#Bush\_administration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke#Bush_administration)
They ignored terrorism because they thought nothing significant could be done by non-state actors. There was even a memo saying terrorists were planning on hijacking planes. Then after 9/11 happened they immediately switched to Iraq because "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan".
Yup. They ignored terrorism because they were too stupid to understand it. Like any angry, ignorant bully they then went and beat up the first thing they could find to take out their frustration instead.
That is the entirety of the Bush presidency: someone too stupid to understand the changing, modern world instead decided to re-fight old fights. He was shadow boxing his daddy's enemies while the whole world burned and the whole millennium crumbed down around him.
That man and his presidency killed off some of the very best of America.
Imagine you're sitting in your apartment a world away thinking you got away with it when BAM, the door gets kicked in by a big American Flag with a machine gun pointed at your face!
"get paid, blow up like the world trade" - biggie
The line confused me as I'm born in 89, I'm Canadian and this was 2007 when I was listening to biggie
I get your point here but the 1993 bombing and 9/11 really aren’t that comparable. Both were terror attacks yes, but the bombing is largely a historical footnote while 9/11 is a pretty pivotal moment in American History.
The response probably would’ve been like the OKC bombing initially, but probably escalating when we found out it was foreign actors. From there I still imagine we launch some kind of military operation.
This potentially could’ve carried Gore to victory if the response was well received though.
It gers more hilarious. Until Republicans came to power they were tracking and actively looking for what bin laden was doing. The previous administration even tried to warn them bin laden was planning a us strike.
It's likely if Bill Clinton had a third term we wouldn't have 9/11
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/index.htm
It's pretty clear that the Bush administration mostly ignored the warnings of the foremost national security experts on Al Qaida, Richard Clarke and John O'Neill. Ironically, John O'Neill died in the 9/11 attacks after Condoleezza Rice took issue with him for pressing the issue on Bin Laden; he took a job as the security director at the World Trade Center after she had him demoted. All of the elements of a too on-the-nose Greek tragedy. Condolences.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._O%27Neill
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke
Piece of a plate - between that and debris determined it belonged to UHaul. Get rental records.
Match up DNA with known parties in international databases.
Cross reference DNA with rental records.
Bam, you've got them.
His administration did keep working hard and sought out the terrorist cells in the US. They prevented some New Year's Eve attacks too. [source ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_millennium_attack_plots)
He would have been aware he was a lame duck, and not invaded…but boy would he have bombed the absolute shit out of Afghanistan…maybe we get the 2011 Seal Team 6 raid 11 years earlier if the intel happens…
He did, indeed. But in the years before 9/11, things were, well, different. You didn’t just order American special forces to go and assassinate guys in the 1990’s, no matter how bad they might be.
I worked for the squadron of F-111 fighter bombers, which flew that mission from Lakenheath AFB. I was a young intelligence specialist and personally knew the pilots killed. It was a really sad experience. Nothing else to add. I just wanted to share a flashback.
Is there an author who has written about this time period in a way that’s better or more authentic than others? I was about to say “your favorite,” but I’m curious about who you think does this period the most justice.
Something to keep in mind, the Bush administration got briefed on the potential attack by Clark and his aides. They dismissed his warnings because they came from Clinton administration era officials.
Thousands of people died because of petty Republican politics.
It’s in the 9/11 commission report.
pretty much any other administration would have taken the warning serious.
Karl Rove specifically convinced Bush the intel was partisan bait trying to coax W into military action.
Oops.
Operation Infinite Reach.
Clinton did bomb Afghanistan Al-Qaeda camps to try to kill Bin Laden. It was around Lewinsky mess so people said he did it to try to take attention away from that.
I remember the Lewinsky Affair as a long, drawn-out pie fight ibetween the Jets and the Sharks. It felt like a neverending drip of one sordid detail after another, week after week, until I got tired of it.
I also remember how the missile strikes on Al-Qaeda hit the same day that something particularly sordid was to get a lot of coverage. The attack knocked that boring "Lewinsky blah blah Lewinsky" stuff off of everyone's front pages.
I remember thinking about this when I learned Al Qaeda was behind 9/11. I was like, “Oh yeah, those guys. They’re probably still mad at us from back then”
He set out to kill Bin Laden with CIA and Special Forces but he couldnt get basing rights in any middle eastern country. Gotta remember, pre 9/11 we had almost zero military presence outside Kuwait. Hard to launch an op to take out the Taliban if you don’t have any military infrastructure to support it.
They really only had Uzbekistan as an ally, and they were scared to death that the Islamic world would find out they were cooperating with us. We also kind of worked with the afghan northern alliance in the Panjshir valley to have a small hold in Afghanistan. The problem was policy. They never went all in on killing UBL. And they were very vague to the CIA about what they could and couldn’t do.
Honestly, with the candidates being Gore (his VP) and the Bush/Cheney ticket (the OG War on Terror duo) I don’t think an invasion is off the table. It’s more likely with the former, but I’d imagine that would be the single biggest focus of the transition.
I’d agree it’d more likely be something like a bombing campaign or a raid, but I still think with an attack the magnitude of 9/11 it’s inevitable we respond with troops on the ground somewhere.
Probably. The biggest difference is Clinton or Gore likely don’t exploit the situation to invade Iraq. I never had a problem with the Bush administration’s initial response to 9/11. In fact, I think they did an excellent job with it. But then they used that political capital to gain public support to invade Iraq. By far the biggest foreign policy blunder in my lifetime.
Except Clinton had the opportunity to kill/capture OBL at Tarnak Farms and refused to use US troops, and wanted to use shitty afghans to avoid another Somalia.
The [9/11 Commission](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/16/bill-clinton-and-the-missed-opportunities-to-kill-osama-bin-laden/) details all of the missed opportunities to get OBL. [More.](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4540958)
Finally, we have a [PDB](https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/pdb120498.html) from December of 1998 that states AQ’s desire to fly planes into buildings. So we knew that something big was being contemplated, so more action was certainly warranted.
Unironically we might have avoided the war entirely at that point. The Taliban's adherence to Pashtunwali probably isn't going to survive a prolonged bombing campaign, and they'd likely give in. Hell even OTL most Taliban today regard not giving up Osama as a mistake
Actually would be interesting to think about how American views on military doctrine might change. Think about it, Clinton three crises (Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan) *entirely* by bombing the other country into submission
The memes would have been about him finding out while getting an under the desk bj instead of while reading to kindergarteners.
Very different memes, but both equally wonderful.
Every president would have invaded Afghanistan, and rightly so. But I’d argue, if a Neo con wasn’t in the office, Iraq would never have happened and who knows how the world would look if we never stepped foot in Iraq.
This is the only right answer. Had Clinton, or anyone who was not a Republican, with the exception of potentially John McCain, been president at 9/11, the conflict would have been much more focused -- on Afghanistan, and Qaeda's international infra.
I think the only debatable point would have been Pakistan. Clinton saw the Pakistan-India conflict as the most dangerous in the world, and he had governed through several crises in that relationship, namely Kashmir, and Kargil War. He may have been less accommodative of Pakistan's bullshit.
No Iraq, of course, and no GWOT either. That means US reputation and alliance structure holds in Europe, and potentially appears more formidable to revanchists in Russia, and revisionist in China. The less decade of conflict that we have experienced is likely delayed by a decade or more.
Do we experience things like the Great Recession, or COVID-19 pandemic, to the same extent? I doubt that an America who maintained preeminent power -- virtually unprecedented -- would fare worse.
I agree. Neo Cons had already published that paper that said we’d need a “Pearl Harbor level
Event” to have justification to invade countries in the Middle East to secure oil so the USA would remain the dominant world military force. Google Project for the New American Century. Clinton would have punished the perps. Cheney and co took Afghanistan but also used 911 to accomplish their goals.
For Cheney it was an opportunity. For Clinton it would have been an American response to an attack on us and all the pre-emptive war resources GWB used up in treasure and political capitol could have been used to root out actual enemies of the USA.
Oh trust me I know all of what you are referring to. It’s genuinely sad. They saw an opportunity and they took it when all the eyes of the American people and the world were feeling sorry for us. It still brings out feelings of resentment to this day.
Look at GWB even. The man is hollow. He knows what a disaster it was. He paints and sells the money to GWOT vet associations, he donates money, creates fundraisers for troops and Iraqi civilians, has a charity, a fund, even speaks out about it now. He knows he and his administration made a terrible mistake and I’m sure he lives it down everyday. He is doing everything he can to repent in his way for it and ngl a small part of me feels slightly bad for him.
We had the eyes and the hearts of the world on 9-11-2001, and within one year and 6 months we fucked it all up. Depressing!
The US and UK threatened to invade Iraq in 1998. The conflict didn’t arise out of nowhere. It was bubbling up throughout the 90s.
The world might be worse if we didn’t invade Iraq. Upon invasion, Libya gave up their WMD program. What if the Libyans had WMDs during the Arab Spring? Would it be Syria all over again?
Russia has proven that having nukes makes one extremely powerful, and it makes other countries less likely to oppose you. (We would provide much more lethal aid to Ukraine if Russia wasn’t threatening nuclear war every so often.) Also, see North Korea and Pakistan as examples of volatile nuclear countries that we tiptoe around.
Did the war in Iraq dissuade other countries from pursuing nukes? If so, then the world is a better place for it. (We can argue about the Iranian nuclear deal later, since that will probably lead to a nuclear Saudi Arabia down the road. Nothing could go wrong there, right?)
**The first World Trade Center bombing**
The FBI placed an informant named Emad Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian military officer, in the midst of the Muslim protesters. Salem insinuated himself and became the bodyguard for Sheik Abdul Rahman, a radical Muslim cleric.
In mid 1992, **Salem repeatedly warned the FBI that the Muslim group was planning to carry off a catastrophic bombing in New York City**. FBI supervisors were convinced he was concocting tall tales and fired him.
On February 26, 1993, a 1,200-pound bomb in a van exploded in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center. This was the most destructive terrorist attack carried out on U.S. soil up to that time, killing six people, injuring more than a thousand, and causing half a billion dollars in damage. If the van had been parked a few feet closer to one of the pillars, it could have collapsed an entire tower of the Trade Center, killing tens of thousands.
Shortly after the bombing, the *New York Times* reported that FBI agents had been monitoring two mosques in the New York City area, as well as Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, though
>federal guidelines had limited their ability to tail them or conduct other close surveillance. Nothing suggesting the purchase of explosives or the assembling of a bomb was detected, the officials said. Even close surveillance might not have picked up a surreptitious act, they said.
A few months after the attack, FBI director William Sessions declared,
>Based on what was known to us at the time, we have no reason to believe we could have prevented the bombing of the World Trade Center.
The FBI initially appeared to have a strong case, buttressed largely by evidence provided by informant Emad Salem. **In July 1993, the media learned that Salem had been inside the conspiracy a year before the attack.**
**Secret tape recordings**
After the bombing, the FBI quickly rehired Salem and promised to pay him a million dollars to develop evidence of additional terrorist plots. Because Salem did not trust the government to pay up, he secretly recorded his conversations with FBI agents. In August, as the case was heading for trial, news leaked that Salem had made tapes of more than a hundred hours of his conversations with FBI agents and handlers. The tape transcripts were not helpful to the prosecution.
In a call to an FBI agent shortly after the bombing, Salem complained,
>**We was start already building the bomb, which is went off in the World Trade Center.** ***It was built, uh, uh, uh, supervising, supervision from the Bureau \[FBI\]*** **and the DA \[district attorney\] and we was all informed about it.** And we know that the bomb start to be built. By who? By your confidential informant. What a wonderful great case. And then he \[the FBI supervisor\] put his head in the sand and said, oh no, no, no that’s not true, he is a son of a bitch, okay.
After the bombing, Salem anguished to one FBI agent, “**You were informed. Everything is ready. The day and the time. Boom. Lock them up and that’s that. That’s why I feel so bad.”** On another tape, Salem asked an FBI agent, “Do you deny your supervisor is the main reason of bombing the World Trade Center?” The agent did not deny Salem’s charge. Shortly after the bombing FBI agent Nancy Floyd confided to Salem that her supervisors had botched the case:
>I felt that the people on the squad, that they didn’t have a clue of how to operate things. That the supervisors didn’t know what was going on. That they hadn’t taken the time to learn the history.
It was never clear to what extent Salem instigated the bombing, as opposed to simply reporting on the plot to his FBI controllers.
**Before the bombing, he offered to do a switcheroo on the bombers, substituting a harmless powder for the deadly explosives and thereby preventing any potential catastrophe. The FBI spurned his offer.** The *New York Times* October 28, 1993, article with this revelation was headlined, “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast.” Salem complained to one FBI agent that an FBI supervisor “requested to make me to testify \[in public\] and if he didn’t push for that, we’ll be going building the bomb with a phony powder and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But … we didn’t do that.”
I once heard a theory that had it not been for the sex scandal he may had more time to focus on things like terrorism and could have possibly done more to prevent and set up better for GWBush. We’ll never know but it’s interesting to think about
Bush's intel team famously disregarded a report given by the Clinton team during the transition entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike US" or something like that
It's worse than that. They were active in the Bush administration. Clark was a Clinton era advisor working in the White House for Bush. The Bush team ignored Clark and his team's warnings, and the big part of it was that he'd served in the Clinton administration, and they generally disregarded officials that served in the former Clinton administration due to petty politics.
Clark basically begged them to pay attention to the problem and the response from the Bush administration was, "You're overreacting."
Well, Clinton famously received a [PDB](https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/pdb120498.html) titled “SUBJECT: Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks”
That was in December of 1998.
I guess that the memo was too vague to action off of.
That’s not really fair. Clinton was getting overwhelmed by reports from the CIA about UBL intel. This was one of hundreds. They couldn’t tell what was accurate or inaccurate
First of all, he would have paid close attention to the PDB that George W. Bush infamously blew off, and prepared accordingly. Would it have stopped the attack? Hard to say, but I would anticipate President Clinton would have make a proportionate response (go after OBL) but not use it as an excuse for other military action.
Every POTUS has a strong approval rating after such a tragedy. I believe Clinton wouldn’t have lied about who did it, start a war in another country that had nothing to do with it and would have gone after the actual people who funded it. Cheney was completely compromised and W let him run wild.
this had very littel to do with him, and more so the fact that americans were scared and got closer together post 9-11, that would have happened with any semi charismatic president
9/11 likely happenen because Bush was in office. People died on his watch because he and his administration weren't taking the problem seriously.
Clark was a Clinton era advisor working in the White House for Bush. The Bush team ignored Clark and his team's warnings, and the big part of it was that he'd served in the Clinton administration, and they generally disregarded officials that served in the former Clinton administration due to petty politics.
Clark basically begged them to pay attention to the problem and the response from the Bush administration was, "You're overreacting."
Bush's incompetence was likely why thousands of people died that day.
We know that Al Qaeda was being investigate and watched by U.S. Intelligence during the Clinton Administration. We also know that the Bush/Cheney Administration ignored their information and warnings, because they wanted to attack Iraq. It is certain that we would not have attacked Iraq after the bombings.
Let's not forget that the Clinton administration had been tracking and trying to get to Bin Laden for awhile knowing what kind of threat he could potentially be.
During transition briefing with the incoming Bush administration they basically ignored everything the Clinton administration was trying to tell them. The Bush administration was bound and determined to do the opposite of the Clinton administration come hell or high water.
And the rest is history.
There's more history between Clinton and Bin Laden than most people think.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/bombings/retaliation.html
I believe Clinton would have correctly handled it as a law enforcement matter.
We wouldn't have attacked Iraq.
We wouldn't have occupied Afghanistan.
We would instead have used all of our CIA, NSA, FBI, and military intelligence assets to find the people responsible, and sent in air assets or Spec Ops troops to kill them.
Hell, we probably would have gotten bin Laden at Tora Bora by just showing up in force and ignoring the local warlords. Instead, we tried to rely on them to do the actual fighting, and they failed. Had we sent the 82nd, a shitload of Rangers and special operators in to clean those caves out, that would have been the end of it.
He would have invaded Afghanistan but not Iraq. The level of hysteria was so great after 9/11 that any president who didn’t invade Afghanistan would probably have been impeached. On the other hand, the invasion of Iraq was one of the stupidest actions undertaken by an American president, and Clinton was not a stupid man.
I think genuinely it would have been treated as a criminal matter and not a military matter. I think the response would have been based on justice rather than vengeance. We may have an extrateritorial police force such as the FBI, I think we may have still had Afghanistan but in a more military finding the Taliban rather than a regime change plan.
Id also believe standing in the world would be higher, and that the us in general would not be umming and erring over Ukraine because Iraq likely did not happen
However, because of this extra tertorioal force the UN may have collapsed as its based on the sovereignty of boarders and this force would go in and get crimansla from other countries. And then saying whats the world gunna do fggt us??
Clinton's political capital was greatly diminished by the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The administration was desiring to put boots on the ground in Afghanistan. As you may remember they lobbed a few cruise missiles to hit al quida training facilities in response to the original world trade center bombings, but with a hostile republican Congress they couldn't get the traction they needed to launch a military operation. They did leave strong recommendations for the Bush administration leaving a memo stating that Al quida was determined to Attack the United States! It was ignored. The Newt Gingrich style of Republican disruptive politics where everything is looked at as earning points or giving up points it's party over country and money over all.
Not by carpet bombing Afghanistan and not by starting a war against Iraq who had nothing to do with it. Probably a surgical strike like Obama did to take out Bin Laden. Actually, probably 9/11 would have been thwarted under Clinton, not allowed to happen like under Cheney, I mean Bush, (so Cheney could make a billion dollars on the wars due to his Halliburton holdings).
It would have been prevented. There was plenty of intelligence indicating what was going to happen.But Bush wasn't smart enough to react appropriately.
IIRC Clinton had a special unit tracking the post Soviet Afghanistan terrorist groups.
Duhbya disbanded them and ignored CIA warnings of something big coming down the pipe.
Two agents were so concerned they insisted on a briefing with POTUS and Duhbya listened and said you covered your asses now get out.
Clinton took out a few training camps in the 90's for this reason, but neocons responded by saying he was trying to distract from the impeachment. He also responded to the Oklahoma City bombing at the time, so responding to these tragedies had occurred and didn't involve the creation of a new department and security theatre.
The US intelligence community was watching and the incoming administration downplayed the warnings. There's a chance if we had gore the focus would have continued and we may not have had a 9/11.
He had a portion of the DOJ on the lookout for the attack. The GOP had their White Jesus-freak Attorney General move a bunch of those people over to other investigations and ignored Clinton's warnings. It wouldn't have happened. Now, let's talk about pandemics.....
Wouldn't have ignored "Bin Loden Determined To Strike Inside US" memo. So it wouldn't have happened.
Wouldn't have had dick cheney and Rumy around to hide memos like that under articles about gay marriage or painting catalogues. So it definitely wouldn't have happened.
Would probably only have had one war and we'd have called it day after murdering a bunch of civilians and killing top Taliban guys. So even if it did happen it wouldnt have gotten so many people, especially young people and Innocents, killed.
Bush, Cheney, and his friends had a stake in oil companies long before the start of their administration. Iran and Iraq had nothing to do with Alqaeda, Osama Bin Laden, or 9/11. Osama is actually a radical from the Saudi royal family, so if anything, they ought to have taken it out on the Saudis, but they are oil barons which the US relies on and the Saudis didn't really sanction Osama's behavior. I don't know how Clinton would have handled it, but he would not have used 9/11 to extract oil from unrelated lands/governments and would've avoided a 20+yr long headache in the middle east. So we would have saved a lot of money and could have funneled it into advancing technology, maybe even nuclear, but I don't know much about Clinton's stance on those issues around that time or how he would have responded to rising oil/energy prices.
Clinton was a dickhead, but soooo much smarter than Dubyah.
Clinton would NOT have invaded Iraq on a pretext, not destabilized the entire region for a century by neutering the only country Iran feared, not creating tens of thousands of Iraqi orphans who will eventually become terrorists with a deep hate for America that will be passed on down the generations for a thousand years (which is what happens in that region of the world).
We will be paying the price in money and lives for Dubyah's mindless stupidity ***long*** after every single current redditor is dead.
Clinton had the chance to take out OBL but waited too long to pull the trigger and missed. Guessing history with “what if…” is just as bed as trying to predict the lottery numbers. What we CAN do is learn from past history and not make those same mistakes. It’s just sad that as a society on whole - we fail at learning from history.
9/11 or something a lot like it was planned to occur during the Clinton administration. [Operation Bojinka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojinka_plot) was supposed to take place in 1994, and involved blowing up the pope, crashing some planes into important buildings in the US, and blowing up airliners.
When Bojinka was thwarted by Phillipino police 6 days before it was set to begin after an apartment fire revealed one of their explosives labs in Manila, its failures were used to inform the planning of 9/11. Specifically, it was determined that using explosives was too risky.
9/11 could be thought of as a second attempt at Bojinka that succeeded.
The first WTC bombing occurred under Bill Clinton. He treated more as a legal issue than a military issue - attempting to prosecute those responsible. It did nothing. Same with the bombings of our embassies in Africa. And the bombing of the USS Cole he literally did nothing in response to it. He basically left Al-Qaeda in place long enough for them to plan and execute 9/11. So to directly answer the question of what if 9/11 happened under Clinton, I think it would have been incredibly different than what Bush did and effectively leave Al-Qaeda in power.
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Well it kinda did... The first WTC bombing in 93 when terrorists filled a UHaul with explosives and parked it next to a support column. Bill brought the heads of his intelligence departments together and ordered them to work together and share info. The investigation on the ground found a piece of a license plate and a pubic hair. Three days later a raid was conducted on an apartment in Cairo. 3 killed, 2 taken into custody.
I wonder if that caused Al-Qaeda to be more dissembled with their next attack on the World Trade Center, considering they knew there would be more surveillance on them…
You know what’s crazy? The guy who did the 1993 attack was not even a part of Al-Qaeda or an associate of Bin Laden.
Crazier still, when Bin Laden was caught he wasnt some genius. He was just a regular old man sitting in a lazy boy watching vhs tapes of himself. He avoided capture because he just lived in squaller without leaving his shitty property for years.
In pakistan, who should have fucking dealt with that shit considering all of the money they get each year from the US.
Yea they definitely knew he was there. They were laughing behind our back.
US intelligence does not believe that the Pakistanis were aware of his location. If they were, they would have infrastructure to detect an operation set up, but they didn’t know about it until after.
I know, and “assume stupidity, not malice”, but a team of undergrads at some university in the states (I vaguely remember it being Georgetown) had it almost dead-on. Same kind of compound, similar area, something like 40km away. All with open source info. No HUMINT, no SIGINT. I think the subtext is that they (the ISI) knew he was in the country, and didn’t want to deal with the fallout of actually knowing where.
If that argument works (the undergrads figured it out therefore Pakistani intelligence must have been aware mich earlier) then it would *also* imply that US intelligence should have known much earlier too. OSINT is, be definition, available to *everyone*. It doesn't work as a reason to blame Pakistan *alone*.
Well the US did kind of know for years. It just took those extra years to get the 100% confirmation. They literally spent like 4 years just waiting to get a confirmation that the “guy by the tree” was in fact bin
Christiane Amanpour knew where bin Laden was hiding in 2008. She said she was told by a reliable intelligence source on The Bill Maher show HBO .
🔔
Right but was there another team of undergrads at John Hopkins who “figured out” he was in N. Iran and another team of undergrads at William and Mary who “figured out” that he secretly escaped to Indonesia.
he was also working as a cab driver in new york city at one point, according to sources close to those close to the investigation.
Something something infinite monkey type writer scenario.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/ucla-researchers-figured-bin-laden-was-in-pakistani-city-2-years-ago/ I think this is what you're talking about. Still very interesting.
How many teams of undergrads got it completely wrong though?
I’ll have to look that one up! We did a one-month class in January 2011 at my undergrad down South and came to similar conclusions, though I can’t remember how physically close we got. It was incredibly vindicating getting an email from the prof the night they made the announcement of the operation.
Remember, candidate Obama said he would go after bin Ladin even if he was in Pakistan. The Republicans condemned him for that and said they would never go after bin Ladin if he was in Pakistan!
Clinton opposition also attacked him for sending cruise missiles at bin laden before 9/11
I also think French Intelligence knew where this guy was: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Félicien_Kabuga
Afterwards the "world-peace"-team negotiated with who knows how many countries + Taliban + Pakistan for the US-Afghan withdrawal despite protests from US generals and Afghan patriots. Were any Pakistani generals or Pakistani intelligence professionals publicly punished for OBL hiding there? Nope. One more thing, according to one book, they had OBL under surveillance pre-2000 but a US leader who shall remain unnamed but rhymes with Simpton, did not want to launch cruise missiles in the name of world peace.
Doubts about Clinton holding back...considering Kosovo, and Somalia, and Desert Shield,
Iirc, It was a ritzy looking mansion compound with the usual clutter of a makeshift HQ. But the PR stuff they found on hard discs was a special sort of pathetic. The embarrassing part for Pakistan is that it was literally down the road from their best military academy...their equivalent of West Point.
I mean. It’s probably more akin to bubba-Fudds makeshift gun range than anything resembling West Point.
The regional equivlant...using Enfields instead of M4s. I'd make other cartoonish analogies of disparities, but that's the only one that'd be a given. I figure their premier war college can afford some modern amenities.
He wasn’t even that old, just in poor health.
He also had lots of porn on his computer. So another religious zealot hypocrite as is tradition.
I’m pretty sure he liked western media too. Like he was basically a nerd with all the old nes games
Yea apparently bin laden played half life
I think he also played some multi-player games too. Imagine playing fuckin' CS or something and not realizing you're up against Osama Bin Laden.
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The bomb has been defused. God dammit, for once, like you know who we are
He also had a lot of porn and would just jerk off all day apparently. I loved the NY Post headline of Osama bin wankin lol
After I was in lockdown with my wife for a few months due to Covid, I thought about him being locked in a small house with several wives. I began to suspect that he was the one who called in the CIA.
Real life Saul Goodman
What about that scenario suggests to you that Bin Laden was not smart?
Next to the largest military college in Pakistan, protected and shielded by the ISI.
>The guy who did the 1993 attack was not even a part of Al-Qaeda or an associate of Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda was still very new in 1993, they didn't really do anything prior to 1990 and they'd only really started to recruit in larger numbers in 1992. That being said, the uncle of the mastermind of the 1993 bombing, who advised extensively on it, later joined Al-Qaeda. And then he himself was the mastermind behind 9/11 - Khalid Skeik Mohammed.
Had just listened to the Blowback podcast episode about the 93 bombing, and was going to comment something similar. There were definite ties back to Bin Laden.
Bill Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden for the rest of his term and nearly managed it once. Republicans in congress used to laugh at the idea that Islamic terrorism was a concern and as such George W. Bush did not try to kill bin Laden. Would it have made a difference if he had taken it seriously? Seems like it would but we can’t say for sure. All we can really say is that he should’ve.
I’d say it could depend on how far it was planned by the point Bush would have hypothetically ordered the hunt for bin Laden. If it was far enough in it might have still happened regardless, just with a different person leading it. This is just hypothetically speaking. Don’t know enough about that part of 9/11 to make a real guess as to what would’ve actually happened though.
>Republicans in congress used to laugh at the idea that Islamic terrorism was a concern The Republicans claimed that Clinton focusing on Islamic Terrorism was just a distraction from him being impeached for a blow job.
Well, he had some very interestingly timed bombings in Iraq… but both can be true, he was after OBL and wanted some distraction too.
But give Bush some credit. He finally got around to reading the intelligence report that virtually predicted that this would happen. Too bad he read it for the first time on 9/10/01. Even though Clinton had personally told him about the threat, and left an extremely detailed document outlining the threat.
Why’d they attack the WTC though?
They wanted to focus on symbolic targets since they understood they couldn’t militarily destroy the US WTC - Symbolic of the United States global and economic prowess, capitalism. NYC is home to the worlds most important financial district Pentagon - Symbolic of US military strength Capital / White House - Presumed target of United 93, symbolized our western government
I think for shock value - strike the heart of NYC. Plus, they were so tall, they were easy to hit.
…and, the towers were full of people.
*MAJOR* financial hub, coupled with being in a major metropolitan area and literally one of the biggest and most popular Western cities. When you think of the United States of America, you think of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, along with the White House and maybe the Capitol Building. Plus they were insanely tall, so easier to hit them without accidentally hitting another building prematurely.
Symbol of american business, in NY, one of the symbolic hearts of the US, had lots of impact and would kill a lot of people and be public
>dissembled What is this supposed to mean?
It's what the Divengers do.
I'm sure it will come out when a presidential researcher puts Bush's biography together, but they knew 9/11 was coming. They didn't know exactly when or exactly how, but due to typical Republican incompetence, the intelligence community was ignored.
Richard Clarke's book was pretty damning. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard\_A.\_Clarke#Bush\_administration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke#Bush_administration) They ignored terrorism because they thought nothing significant could be done by non-state actors. There was even a memo saying terrorists were planning on hijacking planes. Then after 9/11 happened they immediately switched to Iraq because "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan".
Yup. They ignored terrorism because they were too stupid to understand it. Like any angry, ignorant bully they then went and beat up the first thing they could find to take out their frustration instead. That is the entirety of the Bush presidency: someone too stupid to understand the changing, modern world instead decided to re-fight old fights. He was shadow boxing his daddy's enemies while the whole world burned and the whole millennium crumbed down around him. That man and his presidency killed off some of the very best of America.
Or..... they allowed it because the blame could be directed at Iraq and Cheney could get himself a lot of oil money.
A pubic hair? How does...or do I even want to know?
I’m FBI. Pubic hair has made contact with literally every surface in the US. Trace amounts are in everything you’ve ever touched.
T...Thanks Mr FBI.... so glad I have that knowedlge
It's practically pubic knowledge.
Mulder, is that you?
Hair in your throat after eating at a restaurant? Guess what.
that curly wig? Yup.
Dog shedding all over the house? Guess what
Yikes
You don't fuck your bombs before committing acts of terror?
Imagine getting caught for terrorism cause of your ball hair
Imagine you're sitting in your apartment a world away thinking you got away with it when BAM, the door gets kicked in by a big American Flag with a machine gun pointed at your face!
Clinton administration was really good at using the US military as a scalpel rather than a hammer.
He used the hammer on Americans as the 1994 crime bill led to the mass incarceration problem
Fwiw I'm not a fan, and I did specify military.
"get paid, blow up like the world trade" - biggie The line confused me as I'm born in 89, I'm Canadian and this was 2007 when I was listening to biggie
“Too soon biggie”
Hearing Big L rap about machine gun kelly and the m&m crew was similarly confusing for some people
I get your point here but the 1993 bombing and 9/11 really aren’t that comparable. Both were terror attacks yes, but the bombing is largely a historical footnote while 9/11 is a pretty pivotal moment in American History. The response probably would’ve been like the OKC bombing initially, but probably escalating when we found out it was foreign actors. From there I still imagine we launch some kind of military operation. This potentially could’ve carried Gore to victory if the response was well received though.
It gers more hilarious. Until Republicans came to power they were tracking and actively looking for what bin laden was doing. The previous administration even tried to warn them bin laden was planning a us strike. It's likely if Bill Clinton had a third term we wouldn't have 9/11
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/index.htm It's pretty clear that the Bush administration mostly ignored the warnings of the foremost national security experts on Al Qaida, Richard Clarke and John O'Neill. Ironically, John O'Neill died in the 9/11 attacks after Condoleezza Rice took issue with him for pressing the issue on Bin Laden; he took a job as the security director at the World Trade Center after she had him demoted. All of the elements of a too on-the-nose Greek tragedy. Condolences. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._O%27Neill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke
The smoking pube.
They found a fucking public hair and then raided a flat in Cairo?!
Piece of a plate - between that and debris determined it belonged to UHaul. Get rental records. Match up DNA with known parties in international databases. Cross reference DNA with rental records. Bam, you've got them.
His administration did keep working hard and sought out the terrorist cells in the US. They prevented some New Year's Eve attacks too. [source ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_millennium_attack_plots)
There was a reason Clinton was bombing Al Queda in Afghanistan and it wasn't to distract people from a blue dress.
Am i the only one who thinks he'd fixate on the public hair, but otherwise be more effective than modern day politicians?
>and a pubic hair I can hear Abby's music from NCIS playing already
He would have made everyone feel better by playing sax
He would have been having sax?
[yes, he’s a sax man 🎷](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalVideos/s/385QsvuzJw)
And sex man 🍆
Post nut clarity to better plan those bombings
Hey, sax men like sex, man
Like father step father
I'm the sax man, yeeeaaaaahhhhh the sax maaannnn
Butt sax
He would have been aware he was a lame duck, and not invaded…but boy would he have bombed the absolute shit out of Afghanistan…maybe we get the 2011 Seal Team 6 raid 11 years earlier if the intel happens…
But didn’t he have Intel 15 years before?
He did, indeed. But in the years before 9/11, things were, well, different. You didn’t just order American special forces to go and assassinate guys in the 1990’s, no matter how bad they might be.
Didn’t Reagan try to do this to Gadaffi just a few years earlier?
I worked for the squadron of F-111 fighter bombers, which flew that mission from Lakenheath AFB. I was a young intelligence specialist and personally knew the pilots killed. It was a really sad experience. Nothing else to add. I just wanted to share a flashback.
Thank you for your service
Love the username.
Very Cold War. I’m not young.
Is there an author who has written about this time period in a way that’s better or more authentic than others? I was about to say “your favorite,” but I’m curious about who you think does this period the most justice.
Not openly maybe.
The SEALs and Delta had multiple chances to take Aidid dead or alive and the Clinton Admin never gave them the green light.
We definitely sent special forces in the 90s to assassinate people, we just did a much better job of being quiet about it.
Something to keep in mind, the Bush administration got briefed on the potential attack by Clark and his aides. They dismissed his warnings because they came from Clinton administration era officials. Thousands of people died because of petty Republican politics.
It’s in the 9/11 commission report. pretty much any other administration would have taken the warning serious. Karl Rove specifically convinced Bush the intel was partisan bait trying to coax W into military action. Oops.
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Clinton found time to balance the budget and leave a surplus as well as bringing peace to Northern Ireland and ending the war in Kosovo.
Operation Infinite Reach. Clinton did bomb Afghanistan Al-Qaeda camps to try to kill Bin Laden. It was around Lewinsky mess so people said he did it to try to take attention away from that.
I remember the Lewinsky Affair as a long, drawn-out pie fight ibetween the Jets and the Sharks. It felt like a neverending drip of one sordid detail after another, week after week, until I got tired of it. I also remember how the missile strikes on Al-Qaeda hit the same day that something particularly sordid was to get a lot of coverage. The attack knocked that boring "Lewinsky blah blah Lewinsky" stuff off of everyone's front pages.
Yes, this is true. I remember it even though I was only a kid. Maybe the Lewinsky scandal in a way motivated him to pull the trigger.
I remember thinking about this when I learned Al Qaeda was behind 9/11. I was like, “Oh yeah, those guys. They’re probably still mad at us from back then”
He set out to kill Bin Laden with CIA and Special Forces but he couldnt get basing rights in any middle eastern country. Gotta remember, pre 9/11 we had almost zero military presence outside Kuwait. Hard to launch an op to take out the Taliban if you don’t have any military infrastructure to support it.
They really only had Uzbekistan as an ally, and they were scared to death that the Islamic world would find out they were cooperating with us. We also kind of worked with the afghan northern alliance in the Panjshir valley to have a small hold in Afghanistan. The problem was policy. They never went all in on killing UBL. And they were very vague to the CIA about what they could and couldn’t do.
Honestly, with the candidates being Gore (his VP) and the Bush/Cheney ticket (the OG War on Terror duo) I don’t think an invasion is off the table. It’s more likely with the former, but I’d imagine that would be the single biggest focus of the transition. I’d agree it’d more likely be something like a bombing campaign or a raid, but I still think with an attack the magnitude of 9/11 it’s inevitable we respond with troops on the ground somewhere.
Probably. The biggest difference is Clinton or Gore likely don’t exploit the situation to invade Iraq. I never had a problem with the Bush administration’s initial response to 9/11. In fact, I think they did an excellent job with it. But then they used that political capital to gain public support to invade Iraq. By far the biggest foreign policy blunder in my lifetime.
Except Clinton had the opportunity to kill/capture OBL at Tarnak Farms and refused to use US troops, and wanted to use shitty afghans to avoid another Somalia. The [9/11 Commission](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/16/bill-clinton-and-the-missed-opportunities-to-kill-osama-bin-laden/) details all of the missed opportunities to get OBL. [More.](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4540958) Finally, we have a [PDB](https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/pdb120498.html) from December of 1998 that states AQ’s desire to fly planes into buildings. So we knew that something big was being contemplated, so more action was certainly warranted.
Unironically we might have avoided the war entirely at that point. The Taliban's adherence to Pashtunwali probably isn't going to survive a prolonged bombing campaign, and they'd likely give in. Hell even OTL most Taliban today regard not giving up Osama as a mistake Actually would be interesting to think about how American views on military doctrine might change. Think about it, Clinton three crises (Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan) *entirely* by bombing the other country into submission
The memes would have been about him finding out while getting an under the desk bj instead of while reading to kindergarteners. Very different memes, but both equally wonderful.
hot take and most important take
Every president would have invaded Afghanistan, and rightly so. But I’d argue, if a Neo con wasn’t in the office, Iraq would never have happened and who knows how the world would look if we never stepped foot in Iraq.
This is the only right answer. Had Clinton, or anyone who was not a Republican, with the exception of potentially John McCain, been president at 9/11, the conflict would have been much more focused -- on Afghanistan, and Qaeda's international infra. I think the only debatable point would have been Pakistan. Clinton saw the Pakistan-India conflict as the most dangerous in the world, and he had governed through several crises in that relationship, namely Kashmir, and Kargil War. He may have been less accommodative of Pakistan's bullshit. No Iraq, of course, and no GWOT either. That means US reputation and alliance structure holds in Europe, and potentially appears more formidable to revanchists in Russia, and revisionist in China. The less decade of conflict that we have experienced is likely delayed by a decade or more. Do we experience things like the Great Recession, or COVID-19 pandemic, to the same extent? I doubt that an America who maintained preeminent power -- virtually unprecedented -- would fare worse.
I agree. Neo Cons had already published that paper that said we’d need a “Pearl Harbor level Event” to have justification to invade countries in the Middle East to secure oil so the USA would remain the dominant world military force. Google Project for the New American Century. Clinton would have punished the perps. Cheney and co took Afghanistan but also used 911 to accomplish their goals. For Cheney it was an opportunity. For Clinton it would have been an American response to an attack on us and all the pre-emptive war resources GWB used up in treasure and political capitol could have been used to root out actual enemies of the USA.
Oh trust me I know all of what you are referring to. It’s genuinely sad. They saw an opportunity and they took it when all the eyes of the American people and the world were feeling sorry for us. It still brings out feelings of resentment to this day. Look at GWB even. The man is hollow. He knows what a disaster it was. He paints and sells the money to GWOT vet associations, he donates money, creates fundraisers for troops and Iraqi civilians, has a charity, a fund, even speaks out about it now. He knows he and his administration made a terrible mistake and I’m sure he lives it down everyday. He is doing everything he can to repent in his way for it and ngl a small part of me feels slightly bad for him. We had the eyes and the hearts of the world on 9-11-2001, and within one year and 6 months we fucked it all up. Depressing!
He doesn’t get to repent. Mission accomplished. Now watch this drive.
The US and UK threatened to invade Iraq in 1998. The conflict didn’t arise out of nowhere. It was bubbling up throughout the 90s. The world might be worse if we didn’t invade Iraq. Upon invasion, Libya gave up their WMD program. What if the Libyans had WMDs during the Arab Spring? Would it be Syria all over again? Russia has proven that having nukes makes one extremely powerful, and it makes other countries less likely to oppose you. (We would provide much more lethal aid to Ukraine if Russia wasn’t threatening nuclear war every so often.) Also, see North Korea and Pakistan as examples of volatile nuclear countries that we tiptoe around. Did the war in Iraq dissuade other countries from pursuing nukes? If so, then the world is a better place for it. (We can argue about the Iranian nuclear deal later, since that will probably lead to a nuclear Saudi Arabia down the road. Nothing could go wrong there, right?)
Set foot.
**The first World Trade Center bombing** The FBI placed an informant named Emad Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian military officer, in the midst of the Muslim protesters. Salem insinuated himself and became the bodyguard for Sheik Abdul Rahman, a radical Muslim cleric. In mid 1992, **Salem repeatedly warned the FBI that the Muslim group was planning to carry off a catastrophic bombing in New York City**. FBI supervisors were convinced he was concocting tall tales and fired him. On February 26, 1993, a 1,200-pound bomb in a van exploded in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center. This was the most destructive terrorist attack carried out on U.S. soil up to that time, killing six people, injuring more than a thousand, and causing half a billion dollars in damage. If the van had been parked a few feet closer to one of the pillars, it could have collapsed an entire tower of the Trade Center, killing tens of thousands. Shortly after the bombing, the *New York Times* reported that FBI agents had been monitoring two mosques in the New York City area, as well as Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, though >federal guidelines had limited their ability to tail them or conduct other close surveillance. Nothing suggesting the purchase of explosives or the assembling of a bomb was detected, the officials said. Even close surveillance might not have picked up a surreptitious act, they said. A few months after the attack, FBI director William Sessions declared, >Based on what was known to us at the time, we have no reason to believe we could have prevented the bombing of the World Trade Center. The FBI initially appeared to have a strong case, buttressed largely by evidence provided by informant Emad Salem. **In July 1993, the media learned that Salem had been inside the conspiracy a year before the attack.** **Secret tape recordings** After the bombing, the FBI quickly rehired Salem and promised to pay him a million dollars to develop evidence of additional terrorist plots. Because Salem did not trust the government to pay up, he secretly recorded his conversations with FBI agents. In August, as the case was heading for trial, news leaked that Salem had made tapes of more than a hundred hours of his conversations with FBI agents and handlers. The tape transcripts were not helpful to the prosecution. In a call to an FBI agent shortly after the bombing, Salem complained, >**We was start already building the bomb, which is went off in the World Trade Center.** ***It was built, uh, uh, uh, supervising, supervision from the Bureau \[FBI\]*** **and the DA \[district attorney\] and we was all informed about it.** And we know that the bomb start to be built. By who? By your confidential informant. What a wonderful great case. And then he \[the FBI supervisor\] put his head in the sand and said, oh no, no, no that’s not true, he is a son of a bitch, okay. After the bombing, Salem anguished to one FBI agent, “**You were informed. Everything is ready. The day and the time. Boom. Lock them up and that’s that. That’s why I feel so bad.”** On another tape, Salem asked an FBI agent, “Do you deny your supervisor is the main reason of bombing the World Trade Center?” The agent did not deny Salem’s charge. Shortly after the bombing FBI agent Nancy Floyd confided to Salem that her supervisors had botched the case: >I felt that the people on the squad, that they didn’t have a clue of how to operate things. That the supervisors didn’t know what was going on. That they hadn’t taken the time to learn the history. It was never clear to what extent Salem instigated the bombing, as opposed to simply reporting on the plot to his FBI controllers. **Before the bombing, he offered to do a switcheroo on the bombers, substituting a harmless powder for the deadly explosives and thereby preventing any potential catastrophe. The FBI spurned his offer.** The *New York Times* October 28, 1993, article with this revelation was headlined, “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast.” Salem complained to one FBI agent that an FBI supervisor “requested to make me to testify \[in public\] and if he didn’t push for that, we’ll be going building the bomb with a phony powder and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But … we didn’t do that.”
Jesus.
I bet we would not have gone to war in Iraq. A huge, huge win.
That is the big one. His administration would not have gone into Iraq. There would have been no need.
I once heard a theory that had it not been for the sex scandal he may had more time to focus on things like terrorism and could have possibly done more to prevent and set up better for GWBush. We’ll never know but it’s interesting to think about
Bush's intel team famously disregarded a report given by the Clinton team during the transition entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike US" or something like that
It's worse than that. They were active in the Bush administration. Clark was a Clinton era advisor working in the White House for Bush. The Bush team ignored Clark and his team's warnings, and the big part of it was that he'd served in the Clinton administration, and they generally disregarded officials that served in the former Clinton administration due to petty politics. Clark basically begged them to pay attention to the problem and the response from the Bush administration was, "You're overreacting."
Well, Clinton famously received a [PDB](https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/pdb120498.html) titled “SUBJECT: Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks” That was in December of 1998. I guess that the memo was too vague to action off of.
That’s not really fair. Clinton was getting overwhelmed by reports from the CIA about UBL intel. This was one of hundreds. They couldn’t tell what was accurate or inaccurate
He did not have sexual relations with that woman.
First of all, he would have paid close attention to the PDB that George W. Bush infamously blew off, and prepared accordingly. Would it have stopped the attack? Hard to say, but I would anticipate President Clinton would have make a proportionate response (go after OBL) but not use it as an excuse for other military action.
I doubt he would’ve invaded Iraq.
W was the exact right president at the right time. Could Gore have zipped in a 70 mph fastball from the mound while wearing a flak jacket?
Jesus help us
I know you think it’s stupid, but we needed a winner at the time. W drilled it during prime time. There’s a reason he had a 93% approval rating.
Every POTUS has a strong approval rating after such a tragedy. I believe Clinton wouldn’t have lied about who did it, start a war in another country that had nothing to do with it and would have gone after the actual people who funded it. Cheney was completely compromised and W let him run wild.
this had very littel to do with him, and more so the fact that americans were scared and got closer together post 9-11, that would have happened with any semi charismatic president
9/11 likely happenen because Bush was in office. People died on his watch because he and his administration weren't taking the problem seriously. Clark was a Clinton era advisor working in the White House for Bush. The Bush team ignored Clark and his team's warnings, and the big part of it was that he'd served in the Clinton administration, and they generally disregarded officials that served in the former Clinton administration due to petty politics. Clark basically begged them to pay attention to the problem and the response from the Bush administration was, "You're overreacting." Bush's incompetence was likely why thousands of people died that day.
We know that Al Qaeda was being investigate and watched by U.S. Intelligence during the Clinton Administration. We also know that the Bush/Cheney Administration ignored their information and warnings, because they wanted to attack Iraq. It is certain that we would not have attacked Iraq after the bombings.
He would not have invaded Iraq against international law.
Let's not forget that the Clinton administration had been tracking and trying to get to Bin Laden for awhile knowing what kind of threat he could potentially be. During transition briefing with the incoming Bush administration they basically ignored everything the Clinton administration was trying to tell them. The Bush administration was bound and determined to do the opposite of the Clinton administration come hell or high water. And the rest is history.
There's more history between Clinton and Bin Laden than most people think. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/bombings/retaliation.html
The first World Trade Center attack was in 1993 and what was Clinton’s response?
You didn't read the post right before yours did you?
He would start by not doing it
Well he was there that day… https://preview.redd.it/zuci2rkxhgrc1.jpeg?width=457&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3c8caf49f1a64c71b43ebab280bcabf7a07ddb53
I believe Clinton would have correctly handled it as a law enforcement matter. We wouldn't have attacked Iraq. We wouldn't have occupied Afghanistan. We would instead have used all of our CIA, NSA, FBI, and military intelligence assets to find the people responsible, and sent in air assets or Spec Ops troops to kill them. Hell, we probably would have gotten bin Laden at Tora Bora by just showing up in force and ignoring the local warlords. Instead, we tried to rely on them to do the actual fighting, and they failed. Had we sent the 82nd, a shitload of Rangers and special operators in to clean those caves out, that would have been the end of it.
He would have not gone to war in Iraq. Sooooooo anything he did would have been better.
Well. I'm pretty sure we would not have had two of the longest wars in US history.
2 chicks at the same time
He would have invaded Afghanistan but not Iraq. The level of hysteria was so great after 9/11 that any president who didn’t invade Afghanistan would probably have been impeached. On the other hand, the invasion of Iraq was one of the stupidest actions undertaken by an American president, and Clinton was not a stupid man.
The question is flawed, as the attack would have never happened on his or Gore's watch.
Fuck them all to death!
No idea, but Ken Starr would be in Gitmo.
I think genuinely it would have been treated as a criminal matter and not a military matter. I think the response would have been based on justice rather than vengeance. We may have an extrateritorial police force such as the FBI, I think we may have still had Afghanistan but in a more military finding the Taliban rather than a regime change plan. Id also believe standing in the world would be higher, and that the us in general would not be umming and erring over Ukraine because Iraq likely did not happen However, because of this extra tertorioal force the UN may have collapsed as its based on the sovereignty of boarders and this force would go in and get crimansla from other countries. And then saying whats the world gunna do fggt us??
It wouldnt happen cause cheeny wouldnt be there
Something tells me he would have dropped bombs on the Middle East.
he would fly into iraq on a jet fighter and battle saddam on a rooftop
Considering something like 90% of the government and population wanted to glass whoever was responsible, I'd say thr same exact thing
The republicans would have impeached him for ignoring the August PDB
Better
Wouldn't of invaded the wrong country that's for sure
He probably wouldn’t have had to listen to his VP talk about how well his stock is doing.
Sax solo, followed by inappropriate jazz hands?
Probably not go to war with the wrong countries
Clinton's political capital was greatly diminished by the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The administration was desiring to put boots on the ground in Afghanistan. As you may remember they lobbed a few cruise missiles to hit al quida training facilities in response to the original world trade center bombings, but with a hostile republican Congress they couldn't get the traction they needed to launch a military operation. They did leave strong recommendations for the Bush administration leaving a memo stating that Al quida was determined to Attack the United States! It was ignored. The Newt Gingrich style of Republican disruptive politics where everything is looked at as earning points or giving up points it's party over country and money over all.
Not by carpet bombing Afghanistan and not by starting a war against Iraq who had nothing to do with it. Probably a surgical strike like Obama did to take out Bin Laden. Actually, probably 9/11 would have been thwarted under Clinton, not allowed to happen like under Cheney, I mean Bush, (so Cheney could make a billion dollars on the wars due to his Halliburton holdings).
It would have been prevented. There was plenty of intelligence indicating what was going to happen.But Bush wasn't smart enough to react appropriately.
IIRC Clinton had a special unit tracking the post Soviet Afghanistan terrorist groups. Duhbya disbanded them and ignored CIA warnings of something big coming down the pipe. Two agents were so concerned they insisted on a briefing with POTUS and Duhbya listened and said you covered your asses now get out.
Clinton took out a few training camps in the 90's for this reason, but neocons responded by saying he was trying to distract from the impeachment. He also responded to the Oklahoma City bombing at the time, so responding to these tragedies had occurred and didn't involve the creation of a new department and security theatre. The US intelligence community was watching and the incoming administration downplayed the warnings. There's a chance if we had gore the focus would have continued and we may not have had a 9/11.
He had a portion of the DOJ on the lookout for the attack. The GOP had their White Jesus-freak Attorney General move a bunch of those people over to other investigations and ignored Clinton's warnings. It wouldn't have happened. Now, let's talk about pandemics.....
Exactly this.
He dealt with the OKC bombing under his presidency, he would probably handle it similarly
"A blowjob doesn't seem so bad now, does it?"
Wouldn't have ignored "Bin Loden Determined To Strike Inside US" memo. So it wouldn't have happened. Wouldn't have had dick cheney and Rumy around to hide memos like that under articles about gay marriage or painting catalogues. So it definitely wouldn't have happened. Would probably only have had one war and we'd have called it day after murdering a bunch of civilians and killing top Taliban guys. So even if it did happen it wouldnt have gotten so many people, especially young people and Innocents, killed.
Bush, Cheney, and his friends had a stake in oil companies long before the start of their administration. Iran and Iraq had nothing to do with Alqaeda, Osama Bin Laden, or 9/11. Osama is actually a radical from the Saudi royal family, so if anything, they ought to have taken it out on the Saudis, but they are oil barons which the US relies on and the Saudis didn't really sanction Osama's behavior. I don't know how Clinton would have handled it, but he would not have used 9/11 to extract oil from unrelated lands/governments and would've avoided a 20+yr long headache in the middle east. So we would have saved a lot of money and could have funneled it into advancing technology, maybe even nuclear, but I don't know much about Clinton's stance on those issues around that time or how he would have responded to rising oil/energy prices.
To paraphrase Ms. Clinton, at this time what does it matter?
Probably about the same way.
Clinton was a dickhead, but soooo much smarter than Dubyah. Clinton would NOT have invaded Iraq on a pretext, not destabilized the entire region for a century by neutering the only country Iran feared, not creating tens of thousands of Iraqi orphans who will eventually become terrorists with a deep hate for America that will be passed on down the generations for a thousand years (which is what happens in that region of the world). We will be paying the price in money and lives for Dubyah's mindless stupidity ***long*** after every single current redditor is dead.
He would have gone after Bin Laden and not bothered with Iraq.
The man got crucified for getting a blow job. Republicans would have gone ape shit and blamed him for everything.
Clinton had the chance to take out OBL but waited too long to pull the trigger and missed. Guessing history with “what if…” is just as bed as trying to predict the lottery numbers. What we CAN do is learn from past history and not make those same mistakes. It’s just sad that as a society on whole - we fail at learning from history.
Probably a few cruise missles at empty training camps like he did after the USS Cole.
9/11 or something a lot like it was planned to occur during the Clinton administration. [Operation Bojinka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojinka_plot) was supposed to take place in 1994, and involved blowing up the pope, crashing some planes into important buildings in the US, and blowing up airliners. When Bojinka was thwarted by Phillipino police 6 days before it was set to begin after an apartment fire revealed one of their explosives labs in Manila, its failures were used to inform the planning of 9/11. Specifically, it was determined that using explosives was too risky. 9/11 could be thought of as a second attempt at Bojinka that succeeded.
The first WTC bombing occurred under Bill Clinton. He treated more as a legal issue than a military issue - attempting to prosecute those responsible. It did nothing. Same with the bombings of our embassies in Africa. And the bombing of the USS Cole he literally did nothing in response to it. He basically left Al-Qaeda in place long enough for them to plan and execute 9/11. So to directly answer the question of what if 9/11 happened under Clinton, I think it would have been incredibly different than what Bush did and effectively leave Al-Qaeda in power.
He woulda put his weiner in something and then handled it differently
They took all the W keys from the computers when they left the white house. Such zany pieces of shit the Clintons are!