“I Thought He Was Our Greatest Threat”: Clinton Explains Why Bin Laden Was Not Taken Out Before 9/11

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton revealed that he authorized the CIA to capture or kill Osama bin Laden before the September 11 attacks, but that the agency canceled a plan at the last minute that, he said, might have succeeded, out of concern that civilians could be harmed.

Clinton said in an interview: "I authorized the CIA to try to take him out." He said he preferred that bin Laden be captured alive, but stopping the al-Qaeda leader was, in his view, the central goal. "I was afraid, and I was angry because we had tried to get him earlier, and the CIA canceled at the last minute the plan that I thought certainly might have succeeded."

Clinton explained that agency officials feared the consequences of a failed operation: "They were afraid that if they missed, they would kill a lot of innocent civilians. They didn't want to take the risk." He said that at the time, he did not challenge the decision, but looking back, he added: "I wish we had done even more to get him. I always thought he was our greatest threat."

His comments take on added significance following the release of 71 CIA documents, 69 of which were made public for the first time. One of them, dated September 10, 1998, warned that bin Laden was considering attacking the United States using an airplane "loaded with explosives" and flown into an American city. The documents do not prove that Clinton himself read the report, and they did not include operational information about the timing or target of an attack.

The 9/11 Commission later documented several attempts to capture or kill bin Laden during the Clinton administration, including a 1998 CIA plan based on tribal fighters in Afghanistan that was abandoned because of the risk of failure.

Clinton said that when he watched the second plane strike the Twin Towers while he was in Australia, he immediately said: "Bin Laden did it." His daughter Chelsea was in Lower Manhattan at the time, and he and Hillary Clinton initially could not reach her.

Bin Laden was killed in May 2011 in a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during the Obama administration. Clinton warned that vigilance is still necessary today: "You only have to miss once."