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 **FLASHBACK** Bin Laden may be planning attack on Washington, New York Agence France Presse December 14, 1998 17:11 GMT Suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden may be planning strikes on Washington or New York to avenge a US missile strike on his Afghan headquarters in August, Time magazine reported Sunday. "We've hit his headquarters, now he hits ours," the magazine quotes a State Department aide as saying. US Attorney General Janet Reno organised an exercise at FBI headquarters in Washington on October 14 to plan for a possible terror attack by bin Laden, the weekly said. The 200 Washington policemen at the exercise, code-named "Poised Response," discussed four scenarios including an assassination attempt on Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a car bombing, a chemicals weapon strike on a Washington Redskins football game and an explosive device in a federal building. The magazine's report, to be published in its December 21 issue and available on newsstands Monday, also reported that a bin Laden ring that had been planning an attack on the US embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan was broken up three months ago. But US agencies are questioning whether they could have prevented the August 7 twin bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that bin Laden is believed to have orchestrated. Some 224 people, including 12 Americans died in the atrocities. The United States responded by attacking suspected terrorist camps run by bin Laden in Afghanistan. By August 1997, the CIA had evidence that bin Laden had agents operating in Nairobi, Kenya, but it believed that bin Laden would strike in a Persian Gulf country, where the US had a presence, not East Africa. Two separate inquiries by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general (CIA) and by a State Department Accountability Review Board have questioned whether clues were missed. Time also chronicles a four-year campaign to contain and control bin Laden's activities, including attempts to bring him to justice in the United States. In 1996, the CIA was planning to snatch bin Laden from a foreign country and bring him to trial in the United States, but he avoided travelling to those countries. The investigation also revealed that intelligence officials discovered in 1993 that bin Laden was shopping for nuclear weapons. But bin Laden agents scouring former Soviet republics for enriched uranium and weapons components were offered unusable low-grade reactor fuel or radioactive garbage. X X X X X TERROR WARNING FOR N.Y. AND D.C. Daily News (New York) December 14, 1998, Monday Terror kingpin Osama Bin Laden may be preparing to bomb New York or Washington to avenge the U.S. attack on his secret bases in Afghanistan, according to a new report. "We've hit his headquarters, now he hits ours," a State Department official tells Time magazine in this week's issue. "The game is tilted in Osama's favor until he's gone." The CIA as far back as 1996 was planning to "snatch" Bin Laden and bring him to the U.S. for trial. But the Saudi millionaire foiled the plot by staying away from countries eyed by the CIA, Time reports. Bin Laden has been linked to bombings in Somalia in October 1993 that killed 18 U.S. troops and at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7 that killed 223 people. His family owners of Saudi Arabia's richest construction firm disowned him and the Saudis stripped him of his citizenship after he turned radical in 1990. Bin Laden fled to the Sudan, then to Afghanistan. American missiles struck and destroyed two of his Afghan bases Aug. 21 in retaliation for the embassy attacks. He has been in hiding since. Bin Laden was indicted in New York last month on charges of masterminding the embassy slaughter, prompting a worldwide search and a $ 5 million reward for his capture. Time says Attorney General Janet Reno invited 200 Washington metro policemen to FBI headquarters in October to map a simulated response to a terrorist attack. Among the exercises were four scenarios: a car bombing, a chemical-weapons strike at a Redskins football game, an explosive device in a federal building and an assassination attempt on Secretary of State Albright. But the war games quickly deteriorated into interagency squabbling, disturbing Reno greatly, the magazine said. Apparently, a Bin Laden terrorist ring planned an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, but was successfully broken up three months ago, according to the magazine. end |
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