We Play Research Assistant To Atrios

Atrios, the energetic and effective lefty blogger, gives us an interesting history lesson from February 2001:

I wonder why this is never mentioned alongside the "Sudan Bin Laden offer" that Clinton was supposed to have turned down;

The Ottawa Citizen

February 5, 2001 Monday FINAL EDITION

DATELINE: KANDAHAR

BODY:
The Taliban authorities will consider sending Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist behind the World Trade Center bombing, to a third country if the West will recognize them as Afghanistan's legitimate government.

"We hope the new American administration will be more flexible and engage with us," said Abdul Wakil Muttawakil, the Taliban foreign minister, as new UN sanctions begin to squeeze the hardline group...

And, because Atrios is crafty like the fox, a sensible disclaimer:

I have no idea if there was a reasonable workable deal or if officially recognizing the Taliban in exchange for it would have been a good idea, but all those basic caveats apply to the bogus "Clinton could have had Bin Laden" nonsense we always hear.

But the seed is planted, and his comments section tends to be caveat-free; the first comment captures the spirit:

There you go again, cluttering up our minds with facts instead of Condi's fantasies.

Facts. Well, Atrios didn't think so, and neither do we. Here is a (lame) link to the original story, and here is a bit of follow-up, dated four days later and cleverly hidden at ABC News:

The London Times said Taliban authorities were considering exiling the accused terrorist kingpin if Western governments would recognize them as Afghanistan's legitimate government.

...The Times quoted Abdul Wakil Muttawakil, the Taliban foreign minister, as saying: "We hope the new American administration will be more flexible and engage with us." The newspaper also said Muttawakil has written to President Bush.

So far, so good. But wait...

The Taliban foreign minister has since firmly denied making an offer to expel bin Laden.

He reacted angrily to the Times' report and denied having given an interview or made any offer. He said there had been no change in Taliban policies on core issues.

...Experts were also skeptical of reports of the Taliban offer.

"Until I see something cut and dry, some specific statement from [the Taliban's supreme leader] Mullah Muhammed Omar, I'd treat this with a certain grain of salt," said Stanley Bedlington, a former senior analyst in the CIA's counter-terrorism center, and now a political consultant on the Middle East.

Leaving us where? Well, Atrios quit looking for info when he found something he liked, as did I; maybe further effort will tilt the scales to his side. Not that he actually had a side, of course, since he admitted that maybe this meant nothing. Now, when Glenn links to a post and says something non-committal like "Isn't this interesting", a noticeable fraction of the left blogosphere break their spell-checkers with words like "disingenuousness", and then collapse in a swoon. Whether these truth-seekers will have a similar reaction in the current instance is not something we can predict.

MORE: The London Times on the bogus "Clinton could have had Bin Laden" nonsense we always hear. The rabidly right wing LA Times prints an account by Mansoor Ijaz of one of the three strikes; and for Fairness, Balance, and Accuracy in News Reporting, we have a AIM piece which clips (we hope reliably) other news services. Former Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice denies everything. This article tries to sort out the differences between Vanity Fair and Ms. Rice. This bit stands out, for my purposes anyway:

At one "back channel" meeting with Sudanese intelligence officials in a Rosslyn, Virginia hotel early in the spring of 1996, CIA officials sought to have Osama Bin Laden expelled from Sudan.

..."Our interest was in getting him out of Sudan," said one U.S. diplomat involved with African issues who was worried that Bin Laden was behind many of the violent Islamist incursions into Ethiopia, Kenya and Eritrea.

...The United States asked Saudi Arabia to take Bin Laden, hoping, some said, that they would summarily execute him. But the Saudis refused. Sudan, reportedly puzzled that the United States had not asked for extradition, expelled Bin Laden on May 18, 1996, and he went instead to Afghanistan, where he is said to have planned the 1998 embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and the near-sinking of the USS Cole in 1999. U.S. officials say they did not have enough evidence to ask for his extradition to the United States from Sudan.

That is one of the three misses described in the London Times.

Comments

[Jon H]

One thing that occurs to me about the Taliban denial is that it's exactly the sort of CYA statement you'd expect from someone who'd offered to betray a very powerful and dangerous ally.

[TM]

Good point. The London Times claims to have Taliban sources for this, and I doubt it was pure invention on their part.

I know in Washington, we have the "trial baloon" leak,and the "death by premature exposure" leak; presumably, similar games can be played in Kandahar.

Maybe there were divisions within the Taliban over what to do about Bin Laden - someone leaks this (not yet actually made) proposal with the hope that it will acquire momentum; or, someone leaks this true but opposed proposal, knowing publicity will kill it. In neither case would the correct conclusion seem to be "Bush blew it".

I haven't checked the WH press briefings for that time period, but it seems like, if there were a letter with such a proopsal, it would be a Maureen Dowd talking point be now. Or, maybe next week, depending on the breadth of the Atrios readership.

[TM]

Down memory lane with Ari: here we are on Feb 27, 2001, which seems a few weeks late:

Q Ari, according to India Globe, the Taliban in Afghanistan, they have offered that they are ready to hand over Osama bin Laden to Saudi Arabia if the United States would drop its sanctions, and they have a kind of deal that they want to make with the United States. Do you have any comments?

MR. FLEISCHER: Let me take that and get back to you on that.

And for a real confidence boost, here is Ari F. on February 5, 2001:

Q Ari, the embassy bombing trial just got started in New York today. I wonder what the President's expectations are for the trial's outcome, and also, since two of the suspects are charged with worldwide conspiracy associated with Osama bin Laden to kill Americans and to destroy American property; so I wonder what steps President Bush is going to take to counter terrorism?

MR. FLEISCHER: I'm going to, for the moment, refer that question to Mary Ellen, to the Department of Defense.

While America Slept.

[HH]

Well, Mansoor Ijaz and others came forward to say the (multiple) offers to Clinton were serious... it's been over 2 years and we have no one saying this offer was serious in any respect... Atrios will need a little more than that. Interesting that he doesn't deny the seriousness of the Clinton offers either.

[HH]

Another difference is you basically had Clinton admitting it...

[Crank]

1. This isn't that different from the Taliban's initial dithering on giving up bin Laden after September 11.

2. If Atrios genuinely "ha[s] no idea if . . . officially recognizing the Taliban in exchange for it would have been a good idea," he's even further gone than I thought. The Taliban and Al Qaeda were basically one and the same; these guys were as involved in terrorism as a fish is involved in water.