Mansoor Ijaz, now a New York City-based investment banker who traveled to Sudan more than a half dozen times in the mid-1990s, says he repeatedly relayed offers from the Sudanese government to the Clinton White House to share intelligence on bin Laden. In one case, the president of Sudan offered to arrest and extradite bin Laden and turn over information about global terrorist networks, Ijaz says.
The Clinton administration declined to take him up on the offer, Ijaz has argued in a Los Angeles Times commentary, in the pages of the January issue of the magazine Vanity Fair, and on national television shows.
http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/news/story123493.html
I thought what Mansoor Ijaz had to say in December 2001 was bad until I found Richard Minter's book Losing bin Laden and Dereliction of Duty by Robert Patterson. For a man who thought Osama bin Laden was the biggest threat to the nation, Clinton certainly did a whole lot of nothing about it.
I wonder what that "warning" he supposedly gave President Bush was like? I'd like to know exactly what he said. I wonder if, as the meeting was ending, Clinton turned back at the door and said something like this:
"Oh hey, by the way, George... I left a few things for y'all to deal with. I couldn't be bothered to make that Kim Jong Il fellow keep his promises; you'll have to take care of that. Same thing goes for Saddam Hussein... I tossed a couple of cruise missiles over there in Iraq, as you know, but I didn't want to risk my popularity by insisting that the UN inspectors be allowed back in after that, to see whether we actually hit anything, y'know? Oh, one more thing... people keep trying to get me to arrest this Osama bin Laden guy, they say he's dangerous... Hell, Sudan even offered to send him to where we could pick him up easy, but I didn't like their lack of socially progressive programs, so I just told 'em 'no'. I had other fish to fry, y'know what I mean? But I'm sure you'll be able to wrap up these here loose ends soon as you finish fixing up the economy. It started tanking in May of 2000, you know, but I managed to gloss over it long enough to skate outta here looking good, didn't I? That's the key... make sure no one can make anything stick to you, and you'll leave a good legacy. Well, George, it's been real fun meeting ya'll like this, but I have a few more pardons to sign before I leave."
"Oh hey, by the way, George... I left a few things for y'all to deal with. I couldn't be bothered to make that Kim Jong Il fellow keep his promises; you'll have to take care of that. Same thing goes for Saddam Hussein... I tossed a couple of cruise missiles over there in Iraq, as you know, but I didn't want to risk my popularity by insisting that the UN inspectors be allowed back in after that, to see whether we actually hit anything, y'know? Oh, one more thing... people keep trying to get me to arrest this Osama bin Laden guy, they say he's dangerous... Hell, Sudan even offered to send him to where we could pick him up easy, but I didn't like their lack of socially progressive programs, so I just told 'em 'no'. I had other fish to fry, y'know what I mean? But I'm sure you'll be able to wrap up these here loose ends soon as you finish fixing up the economy. It started tanking in May of 2000, you know, but I managed to gloss over it long enough to skate outta here looking good, didn't I? That's the key... make sure no one can make anything stick to you, and you'll leave a good legacy. Well, George, it's been real fun meeting ya'll like this, but I have a few more pardons to sign before I leave."