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Ladin.Was this just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary ter-
rorist threat America had lived with for decades, or was it radically new, pos-
ing a danger beyond any yet experienced?
Even after the embassy attacks, Bin Ladin had been responsible for the deaths
of fewer than 50 Americans, most of them overseas. An NSC staffer working
for Richard Clarke told us the threat was seen as one that could cause hun-
dreds of casualties, not thousands.
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Even officials who acknowledge a vital
threat intellectually may not be ready to act on such beliefs at great cost or at
high risk.
Therefore, the government experts who believed that Bin Ladin and his net-
work posed such a novel danger needed a way to win broad support for their
views, or at least spotlight the areas of dispute.The Presidential Daily Brief and
the similar, more widely circulated daily reports for high officials--consisting
mainly of brief reports of intelligence "news" without much analysis or con-
text--did not provide such a vehicle. The national intelligence estimate has
often played this role, and is sometimes controversial for this very reason. It
played no role in judging the threat posed by al Qaeda, either in 1998 or later.
In the late summer and fall of 1998, the U.S. government also was worrying
about the deployment of military power in two other ongoing conflicts. After
years of war in the Balkans, the United States had finally committed itself to sig-
nificant military intervention in 1995­1996. Already maintaining a NATO-led
peacekeeping force in Bosnia, U.S. officials were beginning to consider major
combat operations against Serbia to protect Muslim civilians in Kosovo from
ethnic cleansing.Air strikes were threatened in October 1998; a full-scale NATO
bombing campaign against Serbia was launched in March 1999.
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In addition, the Clinton administration was facing the possibility of major
combat operations against Iraq. Since 1996, the UN inspections regime had
been increasingly obstructed by Saddam Hussein.The United States was threat-
ening to attack unless unfettered inspections could resume. The Clinton
administration eventually launched a large-scale set of air strikes against Iraq,
Operation Desert Fox, in December 1998. These military commitments
became the context in which the Clinton administration had to consider open-
ing another front of military engagement against a new terrorist threat based
in Afghanistan.
A Follow-On Campaign?
Clarke hoped the August 1998 missile strikes would mark the beginning of a
sustained campaign against Bin Ladin. Clarke was, as he later admitted,
"obsessed" with Bin Ladin, and the embassy bombings gave him new scope for
pursuing his obsession. Terrorism had moved high up among the President's
concerns, and Clarke's position had elevated accordingly.The CSG, unlike most
standing interagency committees, did not have to report through the Deputies
Committee. Although such a reporting relationship had been prescribed in
RESPONSES TO AL QAEDA'S INITIAL ASSAULTS
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