In the hours before President Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike on suspected terrorist strongholds last month, U.S. intelligence had information that the alleged mastermind of the recent embassy bombings would be in the line of fire.
Military planners had reason to believe that Osama bin Laden would be at a training camp in eastern Afghanistan on Aug. 20, the day the missiles flew, according to a senator who participated in a closed briefing Tuesday and a U.S. intelligence official."It was fully possible he would have been there," Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., said after the briefing for more than 25 senators by CIA Director George Tenet, Defense Secretary William Cohen and Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The briefing in a secure room on the fourth floor of the Capitol also addressed questions about the legitimacy of the other target in the strike, the Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant in Khartoum, Sudan.
Several senators of both parties said they were satisfied with the evidence linking the pharmaceutical plant to bin Laden.
"The attack was justified both at the plant and the terrorist camp," said Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H.
Some remained skeptical.
"I am more satisfied with the rationale behind the Afghan site than I am with the pharmaceutical plant," said Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah.
Tenet described how a field operative recruited by the CIA got into the plant grounds in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, evaded guards, went to a predetermined location and scooped up a soil sample from a specific part of the complex. That sample, when examined by a private U.S. laboratory that regularly works for the CIA, showed 21/2 times what would be considered a "trace" presence of the chemical EMPTA, a substance with no known use other than as a key ingredient in the deadly nerve agent VX.