Pledging the United States would prevail in what could be a long war against global terrorism, President Clinton unleashed cruise missile attacks Thursday against a chemical factory in Sudan and terrorist training camps in Afghanistan linked to renegade Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden.
Clinton ordered the strikes after receiving what he termed “convincing evidence” that bin Laden, sheltered by Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Islamic regime, was behind the twin bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as “compelling information” that further attacks were planned against U.S. citizens and embassies.
“Our target was terror,” Clinton declared in an address to the nation. “Afghanistan and Sudan have been warned for years to stop harboring and supporting these terrorist groups.”
Reflecting worry about possible reprisals against targets inside the United States, the FBI issued an alert to all local law enforcement officials of heightened concern about terrorist attacks. The State Department issued a “worldwide caution” urging Americans overseas to take extra precautions and raised security measures at U.S. embassies.
Across the country, airports with international flights tightened their security procedures. At O’Hare International Airport, officials added foot patrols in the terminals, bomb-sniffing dogs and more tow trucks to remove unattended vehicles.
Clinton interrupted a family vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., to return to Washington to meet with national security advisers and to address the nation from the Oval Office.
The president called bin Laden’s outpost 94 miles south of Kabul, Afghanistan, “one of the most active terrorist bases in the world” and said the other target of the attack, the Shifa pharmaceutical plant on the outskirts of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, was producing chemicals used in making nerve gas.
U.S. officials said they did not know if bin Laden had been in his camp at the time of the attack. Afghanistan’s Taliban regime announced he was alive and well after the attack. The claim could not be verified.
The evidence against bin Laden and his network had been building for years, Clinton said, and only a few weeks ago, bin Laden had vowed to wage a terrorist war against America.
The president ticked off a detailed list of terrorist attacks that intelligence agencies had linked to bin Laden’s Islamic organizations: the deaths of American, Belgian and Pakistani peacekeepers in Somalia; plots to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Pope John Paul II; plans to bomb six U.S. Boeing 747 airliners over the Pacific Ocean; a bomb attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan, and attacks on foreign tourists in Luxor, Egypt.
“Terrorists must have no doubt that, in the face of their threats, America will protect its citizens,” Clinton said at a hastily arranged appearance before leaving Martha’s Vineyard. “Today we have struck back.”
But the administration was apparently under no illusion that bin Laden and his followers would retreat from the fight.
“In evaluating the risks, we’ve been very clear about the fact that the prospect of retaliation against Americans is very, very high,” said a senior intelligence official, who briefed reporters on the condition that he not be named. “I think people should understand that this is not a one-shot deal here. . . . We are engaged in a real war against terrorism.”
Congressional leaders expressed support for Clinton’s action.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), one of four top congressional leaders the president called before the strikes, said the military action was “the right thing to do at the right time.”
Gingrich said it was important to send a message to Afghanistan, Sudan and other nations “that if you house a terrorist, you become a target.”
Clinton telephoned foreign leaders only after his surprise morning announcement, among them British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mubarak and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose government apprehended key suspects in the Kenya Embassy bombings as they headed for Afghanistan.
But even as he acted as commander-in-chief, Clinton could not entirely escape the personal issue that has dogged him for months. The president announced the U.S. attacks just as White House intern Monica Lewinsky finished testifying for a second time before the grand jury investigating her relationship with Clinton.
Some Republicans alluded to the recent movie “Wag the Dog,” in which a presidential aide scripts a foreign policy crisis to distract from a sex scandal. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) suggested that Clinton may have acted hastily in an attempt to “focus attention away from his own personal problems.”
“The only motivation driving this action today was our absolute obligation to protect the American people from terrorist activities,” said Defense Secretary William Cohen. “There can be no safe haven for terrorists.”
Military details were sketchy, with Pentagon officials suggesting the possibility of further strikes. Informed sources said strikes were conducted by 75 to 80 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range of more than a 1,000 miles, launched from U.S. warships in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea.
The U.S. struck deeply into countries it said have provided havens for anti-American terrorists. Afghanistan had rejected U.S. appeals to expel bin Laden, while Sudan, although it expelled bin Laden under U.S. pressure in 1996, remains on the State Department’s terrorism list for serving as a haven, meeting place and training hub for radical Islamic groups.
Clinton, in an address from the Oval Office in late afternoon, said the U.S. had information that “key terrorist leaders” were expected to be at bin Laden’s camp.
“We acted to pre-empt future terrorist acts and to disrupt the activities of those planning for them,” said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Administration officials said they are unaware of bin Laden’s whereabouts following the strikes, and the extent of casualties at the Afghan camps was unknown, though as many as 600 people were reported to have been there.
In Sudan, television showed video of a building in flames, with a spokesman asserting that the plant made “not chemical weapons, only medicine.” Hundreds of rock-throwing protesters, shouting, “Down USA” stormed the empty U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, closed since January 1996.
In his Oval Office address, Clinton said the U.S. was striking against those who “wage a terrorist war against America” and that the strikes were “not aimed at Islam, the faith of hundreds of millions of good, peace-loving people all around the world.”
“Our actions were aimed at fanatics and killers who wrap murder in the cloak of righteousness and, in so doing, profane the great religion in whose name they claim to act.”
U.S. officials braced for a hostile reaction from the Islamic world. Earlier this week, the U.S. had evacuated most diplomatic personnel from Pakistan and had urged relief organizations to pull their personnel out of Afghanistan. Those actions fueled speculation in the Pakistani media of possible American military action, which was likely known by bin Laden and his followers.
Officials said planning for the attack was well under way a week ago, when Clinton led a mournful ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base for the diplomats killed in Nairobi, Kenya.
The simultaneous attacks were carried out at 12:30 p.m. CTD, which was 7:30 p.m. in Sudan and 10 p.m. in Afghanistan. The evening times were chosen to minimize the chances of civilian casualties, officials said.
The targets included what one senior intelligence official called a “terrorist university,” six sites used for planning and training by bin Laden and his allies.
National Security Adviser Samuel “Sandy” Berger said the Sudan chemical plant, in an industrial area near Khartoum, was making precursor chemicals for deadly VX nerve gas. The London-based Jane’s Intelligence review said UN weapons inspectors and U.S. intelligence believe equipment for production of VX nerve gas that had disappeared from Iraq has turned up in Sudan.
“We have convincing evidence that, for some time, the bin Laden network has been actively seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons for use against U.S. citizens and our interests around the world,” said Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
On Friday, CIA director George Tenet gave Clinton his conclusion that bin Laden was responsible and the president, at that point, approved in principle a military plan presented by Cohen and Shelton. Planning proceeded and, early Thursday, Clinton gave the order to go ahead with the strikes.
