From the 9/11 Commission Report:

“In 1996, as an organizational experiment undertaken with seed money, the CTC created a special ‚ÄúIssue Station‚Äù devoted exclusively to Bin Ladin. Bin Ladin was then still in Sudan and was considered by the CIA to be a terrorist financier. The original name of the station was ‚ÄúTFL,‚Äù for terrorist financial links. The Bin Ladin (UBL) Station was not a response to new intelligence, but reflected interest in and concern about Bin Ladin‚Äôs connections.

The CIA believed that Bin Ladin’s move to Afghanistan in May 1996 might be a fortunate development. The CIA knew the ground in Afghanistan, as its officers had worked with indigenous tribal forces during the war against the Soviet Union. The CIA definitely had a lucky break when a former associate of Bin Ladin walked into a U.S. embassy abroad and provided an abundance of information about the organization. These revelations were corroborated by other intelligence. By early 1997, the UBL Station knew that Bin Ladin was not just a financier but an organizer of terrorist activity. It knew that al Qaeda had a military committee planning operations against U.S. interests worldwide and was actively trying to obtain nuclear material. Although this information was disseminated in many reports, the unit’s sense of alarm about Bin Ladin was not widely shared or understood within the intelligence and policy communities. Employees in the unit told us they felt their zeal attracted ridicule from their peers.

In 1997 CIA headquarters authorized U.S. officials to begin developing a network of agents to gather intelligence inside Afghanistan about Bin Ladin and his organization and prepare a plan to capture him. By 1998 DCI Tenet was giving considerable personal attention to the UBL threat.

The CIA’s Afghan assets reported on about half a dozen occasions before 9/11 that they had considered attacking Bin Ladin, usually as he traveled in his convoy along the rough Afghan roads. Each time, the operation was reportedly aborted. Several times the Afghans said that Bin Ladin had taken a different route than expected. On one occasion security was said to be too tight to capture him. Another time they heard women and children’s voices from inside the convoy and abandoned the assault for fear of killing innocents, in accordance with CIA guidelines.

As time passed, morale in the UBL unit sagged. The former deputy chief told the Joint Inquiry that they felt like they were “buying time,” trying to stop UBL and “disrupting al Qaeda members until military force could be used.” In June 1999 National Security Adviser Berger reported to President Clinton that covert action efforts against Bin Ladin had not been fruitful.

Many CIA officers, including Deputy Director for Operations Pavitt, have criticized policymakers for not giving the CIA authorities to conduct effective operations against Bin Ladin. This issue manifests itself in a debate about the scope of the covert actions in Afghanistan authorized by President Clinton. NSC staff and CIA officials differ starkly here”

Back in 2004, Powerline Blog nailed it when they described the “atmopshere” during that time:

“The Washington Post is running a series by Steve Coll on the CIA’s unsuccessful efforts, prior to Sept. 11, 2001, to capture or kill bin Laden. This piece ran yesterday, along with this shorter one that focuses on the actions (or inaction) of Clinton’s White House security team. Taken together, these two pieces argue that “legal disputes over the hunt [for bin Laden] paralyzed Clinton’s aides.” Specifically, the Clintonistas, while willing to approve the capture or killing of bin Laden in principle, always used “compromise wording” with so much “ambiguity about how and when deadly force could be used” that the CIA became “paralyzed by fears of legal and political risks.” When the CIA did develop a plan to attack bin Laden, “members of the White House counterterrorism team reacted skeptically” because they feared that women and children would die, thus undermining U.S. interests in the Muslim world, while bin Laden might escape. In this environment, the CIA’s top leaders recommended against going forward. Two months later, two al Qaeda suicide teams attacked U.S. embassies in Africa, killing more than 200 people and wounding more than 4,000.”

The fact is that the Clinton Administration had more than ample opportunity to get Bin Laden. They can spin all they want, but the frustrations from many of those who were on the ground, poised to take him, but were thwarted by – for lack of a better word – criminal negligence, by Clinton, Berger and Albright, who seemed at the time (as they do now) with “What would the world think?”

The fact that the left has come out so strongly against this movie isn’t because they want to get the “fact straight”, but because they don’t want the facts to be known. On the eve of election 2006 America will get a first hand look at how Democrats handle terrorism – with indecision and ineptitude. Knowing that you can see why they have been trying (although it won’t work) to get the movie discredited.

Like I said, it won’t work.

More at Wizbang.