The staff reports found both administrations lacked the detailed "actionable" intelligence needed to strike directly at bin Laden and al-Qaeda, so they unsuccessfully sought a diplomatic solution to get the al-Qaeda leader out of Afghanistan so he could be captured.
That prompted some angry questioning from commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska. He asked former secretary of state Madeleine Albright why nearly a dozen attacks by radical Islamists against Americans from 1993 through 2001 weren't enough for Clinton officials to justify force.
"I keep hearing the excuse we didn't have actionable intelligence. Well, what the hell does that say to al-Qaeda?" Kerry said. "Basically, they knew -- beginning in 1993 it seems to me -- that there was going to be limited, if any, use of military and that they were relatively free to do whatever they wanted."
Albright responded: "We used every single tool we had in terms of trying to figure out what the right targets would be. I am satisfied that we did what we could given the intelligence that we had."
Former defense secretary William Cohen said the Clinton administration recognized the dangers posed by al-Qaeda and considered the US to be "at war" against the terrorist organization. Three times after the August 1998 al-Qaeda bombings on US embassies in Africa, Clinton officials considered using missile strikes to kill bin Laden. Each time it was decided the intelligence wasn't good enough to ensure success, he said.
Shortly before the attacks, the Bush administration was debating how to force bin Laden out. At a Sept. 10, 2001, meeting of second-tier Cabinet officials, officials settled on a three-phase strategy. The first step called for dispatching an envoy to talk to the Taliban. If this failed, diplomatic pressure would be applied and covert funding and support for anti-Taliban fighters would be increased.
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