At the same time, during his reelection campaign, Clinton's chief political advisor, Dick Morris, was worried about the nascent public perception that Clinton was soft on terrorism. He proposed a new initiative -- not because it was necessary to protect Americans, but because he feared Clinton's record on terrorism could be a political liability in the upcoming elections. Morris devised a mock attack ad against Clinton's anti-terrorist record to try to persuade the president to take the issue more seriously. Here's how the New York Times described Morris' pitch:

"'Out of control. Two airline disasters. One linked to terrorism,' the advertisement said. 'F.A.A. asleep at the switch. Terror in Saudi Arabia.' Mr. Morris said he told Mr. Clinton that he could neutralize such a line of attack by adopting tougher policies on terrorism and airport security. He said his polls had found support for tightening security and confronting terrorists. Voters favored military action against suspected terrorist installations in other countries. They backed a federal takeover of airport screening and even supported deployment of the military inside the United States to fight terrorism."

Clinton did little that was effective. The 1996 anti-terrorism bill, while modestly helpful, was focused on domestic terrorism after Oklahoma City and was still reactive, not proactive. Its key provisions -- enabling the death penalty for terrorist offenses and placing chemical tags in explosives -- were very weak weapons for dealing with the real threat, al-Qaida. More was politically unnecessary. Clinton had such a commanding lead over Bob Dole that the difficulties of corralling Congress, browbeating the bureaucracy, or mounting a sustained military campaign against terrorism didn't seem worth the effort. Notice that he was not actually constrained by public opinion. Morris' polling had shown such measures would actually have been popular. Instead, Clinton ordered his trusty vice president to chair a commission on airline safety and security. By February 1997, it recommended a whole slew of proposals, including a federalized airline screening service, computer cross-checks for different airlines to vet potential terrorists, and so on. The report was never implemented. If it had been, simple computer checks could have exposed two of the terrorists who boarded American Airlines flights under their own names on Sept. 11.

The Clinton White House also allowed new constraints to be placed on the CIA, forbidding it from hiring or using any undercover agents with dubious or criminal pasts. In fact, for the entire period of Clinton's presidency, there was not a single undercover agent in Afghanistan who could speak Arabic, a deficiency highlighted by former CIA Middle East specialist Reuel Marc Gerecht in the Atlantic, the Weekly Standard and elsewhere. To make matters worse, even as late as 1997, al-Qaida was not listed as an official terrorist organization by the U.S. government. This, despite the fact that a top-level defector had warned in late 1996 that al-Qaida was planning a direct attack on the United States. No one in the upper reaches of the administration seemed to take his warnings seriously.

In 1998, the gravity of the threat became clearer. The African embassy bombings showed beyond any shadow of a doubt the danger and professionalism of bin Laden's network. Hundreds were killed on sovereign American soil. Clinton responded not with an overhaul of security and intelligence or a coordinated military strategy to defeat al-Qaida but by lobbing cruise missiles at al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan. In these actions, the president bypassed normal command procedures in a way that clearly suggested he wanted a quick attack to distract from his own impeachment woes, rather than an earnest attempt to cripple al-Qaida. The strikes failed to wound bin Laden, missing him by an hour or so, helped cement al-Qaida's reputation as an elusive threat capable of attacking the United States and getting away with it, and made Clinton more nervous about taking the offensive in the future.

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