This is huge. We now know that Bill Clinton stopped the CIA from killing Osama bin Laden while he was president even though the CIA insisted he was a real danger. Had he allowed them their way, there would not have been a 911, which means no war in Afghanistan or Iraq. It would also have prevented the rise of ISIS and the planting of Iranian troops in Iraq.
There were four separate times when the CIA identified the location of bin Laden but a letter from Clinton to the CIA strictly forbid them from killing him. Later Clinton only admitted to preventing the assassination one time when he insisted that it would have meant killing 300 innocent people. But he did not address the other times he could have been eliminated.
At the time Clinton, the State Department and other top administration officials did not believe that bin Laden posed a real threat. In fact they openly ridiculed those in the CIA who believed that he was. Instead, they allowed Al Qaeda to grow and get stronger until they got to the point where an attack on the United States was possible.
Clinton has discussed why he never took out bin Laden, saying he feared collateral damage in the form of civilian deaths. But the documentary
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said during a February 2016 debate that Clinton actually missed numerous opportunities to kill the terrorist.
“The responsibility of 9/11 falls on the fact that al Qaeda was allowed to grow and prosper and the decision was not made to take out their leader when the chance existed to do so. Not once but four times according to the 9/11 report. President Clinton has acknowledged that as a regret,” he said.
“The day before the Sept. 11 attacks,” The Washington Post reported in 2016, “Clinton told businessmen in Australia that he had decided against launching a strike in Kandahar out of concern for civilian casualties: ‘I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.’”