This morning's (London) Daily Telegraph has a pretty explosive revelation--bin Laden came very close to assassinating Bill Clinton in 1996.
Former President Bill Clinton came within minutes of being assassinated in the Philippines by terrorists controlled by Osama bin Laden, a new book has revealed.
The US leader was saved shortly before his car was due to drive over a bridge in Manila where a bomb had been planted.
The foiled attack came during Mr Clinton's visit to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in the city in 1996.
Clinton was on his way to visit a local politician when the Secret Service got word from intelligence sources that there was due to be an attack along the original route.
The account comes from Ken Gormley's new book, The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs Starr. While it's made headlines so far for revelations that prosecutors were about to indict Bill and Hillary, this assassination attempt makes that revelation look minor league.
A few months later, Clinton retaliated by ordering missile attacks on al-Qaeda bases. However, the assassination attempt was never made public until now. At the time, the bombs were pinned on the Huk insurgency rather than al-Qaeda.
It's not entirely surprising that al-Qaeda took a run at Clinton. Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad have admitted to trying to kill Clinton back in the 1990s. But until now, we didn't know that bin Laden was personally involved in any attempts.
This is pretty revealing on two counts. Not only does it show how bold bin Laden was even then, but it also blows apart the assumption Bush couldn't have anticipated 9-11.