4.2 CRISIS:AUGUST 1998
On August 7, 1998, National Security Advisor Berger woke President Clinton
with a phone call at 5:35 A.M. to tell him of the almost simultaneous bombings
of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Suspicion
quickly focused on Bin Ladin. Unusually good intelligence, chiefly from the
yearlong monitoring of al Qaeda's cell in Nairobi, soon firmly fixed
responsibility on him and his associates.37
Debate about what to do settled very soon on one option: Tomahawk cruise
missiles. Months earlier, after cancellation of the covert capture operation,
Clarke had prodded the Pentagon to explore possibilities for military action. On
June 2, General Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had
directed General Zinni at Central Command to develop a plan, which he had
submitted during the first week of July. Zinni's planners surely considered the
two previous times the United States had used force to respond to terrorism, the
1986 strike on Libya and the 1993 strike against Iraq. They proposed firing
Tomahawks against eight terrorist camps in Afghanistan, including Bin Ladin's
compound at Tarnak Farms.38 After the embassy attacks, the Pentagon
offered this plan to the White House.
The day after the embassy bombings, Tenet brought to a principals meeting
intelligence that terrorist leaders were expected to gather at a camp near
Khowst, Afghanistan, to plan future attacks. According to Berger, Tenet said
that several hundred would attend, including Bin Ladin. The CIA described the
area as effectively a military cantonment, away from civilian population centers
and overwhelmingly populated by jihadists. Clarke remembered sitting next to
Tenet in a White House meeting, asking Tenet "You thinking what I'm
thinking?" and his nodding "yes."39 The principals
quickly reached a consensus on attacking the gathering. The strike's purpose was
to kill Bin Ladin and his chief lieutenants.40
Berger put in place a tightly compartmented process designed to keep all
planning secret. On August 11, General Zinni received orders to prepare detailed
plans for strikes against the sites in Afghanistan. The Pentagon briefed
President Clinton about these plans on August 12 and 14.Though the principals
hoped that the missiles would hit Bin Ladin, NSC staff recommended the strike
whether or not there was firm evidence that the commanders were at the
facilities.41
Considerable debate went to the question of whether to strike targets outside
of Afghanistan, including two facilities in Sudan. One was a tannery believed to
belong to Bin Ladin. The other was al Shifa, a Khartoum pharmaceutical plant,
which intelligence reports said was manufacturing a precursor ingredient for
nerve gas with Bin Ladin's financial support. The argument for hitting the
tannery was that it could hurt Bin Ladin financially. The argument for hitting
al Shifa was that it would lessen the chance of Bin Ladin's having nerve gas for
a later attack.42
