To his credit, Clinton approved three subsequent attempts to kill bin Laden, none of which took place because of faulty intelligence (in part a result of the new restrictions placed on the CIA). He also launched an attempt to target al-Qaida's financial apparatus, but a serious effort to cripple al-Qaida's finances was shot down by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, according to anonymous Clinton officials cited in the New Yorker. Rubin allegedly believed it was impossible to isolate the terrorist financial networks without disrupting the markets and spooking international investors. The administration soon became frustrated by the options available. Once the Clinton administration had allowed bin Laden to flee the Sudan and set up a proto-terrorist state in Afghanistan, the options became far more difficult and required far more of a military commitment. Clinton was nervous, especially in his scandal-ridden state, that he could never marshal public support for such an ambitious undertaking. So he hoped it would go away, or that assassination efforts requiring minimal intelligence might work. Clinton's own State Department terrorism expert, Michael Sheehan, knew that more was necessary -- pressure on Pakistan and the Taliban and a broader global offensive against a terrorist network that could operate independently of its leader. But no greater effort was expended. "Our reaction was responsive, almost never proactive," Sheehan told the Times.

The administration made fitful attempts to maintain surveillance of bin Laden, and Clinton himself pressed for assassination. But intelligence was never good enough, and al-Qaida prospered. Spy planes were sent over Afghanistan, to no avail. Still, home-front security was an option, and the National Commission on Terrorism reported that the United States was dangerously vulnerable. The commission proposed a swath of measures -- from immigration to law enforcement to airline security -- to ameliorate the terrorist threat. It was prescient enough to have a picture of the World Trade Center on its cover, with crosshairs superimposed over the upper floors. Civil liberties groups whined and the bureaucracies complained. A writer in this magazine described the commission's warnings of a domestic terrorist attack as "a con job with roughly the veracity of the latest Robert Ludlum novel." James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, described the commission's recommendations as reminiscent of "the darkest days of the McCarthy era." (Full disclosure: In a broader context, I also worried in print about some of the Clinton administration's record on civil liberties.) Spooked by the opposition, and running low on political capital, the Clinton administration let the proposals die in the Congress. Even the bombing of the USS Cole did not lead to a major bombing campaign of bin Laden's terrorist camps or a resuscitation of the commission's proposals. And when at the end of 1999 a terrorist was apprehended bringing vast amounts of explosives into the United States, the sense of urgency didn't measurably increase.

"That was a wake-up call," a senior law enforcement officer told the New York Times, "not for law enforcement and intelligence, but for policy makers."

"If you understood al-Qaida, you knew something was going to happen," Robert M. Bryant, deputy director of the FBI, told the Times. "You knew they were going to hit us, but you didn't know where. It just made me sick on Sept. 11. I cried when those towers came down."

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