Les Jones

News > Richard Clarke May Have Tipped Off Osama

J.D. Hayworth (a Republican Congressman from Arizona) outlines the case that Clinton appointee Richard Clarke tipped off Osama Bin Laden when we had intelligence about his location in 1999.

From the 9/11 Commission report:

Even after Bin Ladin's departure from the area, CIA officers hoped he might return, seeing the camp as a magnet that could draw him for as long as it was still set up. The military maintained readiness for another strike opportunity. On March 7, 1999, Clarke called a UAE official to express his concerns about possible associations between Emirati officials and Bin Ladin. Clarke later wrote in a memorandum of this conversation that the call had been approved at an interagency meeting and cleared with the CIA. When the former Bin Ladin unit chief found out about Clarke's call, he questioned CIA officials, who denied having given such a clearance. Imagery confirmed that less than a week after Clarke's phone call the camp was hurriedly dismantled, and the site was deserted. CIA officers, including Deputy Director for Operations Pavitt, were irate. 'Mike' (the CIA's Bin Ladin unit chief) thought the dismantling of the camp erased a possible site for targeting Bin Ladin.