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Another headache was al-Qaida’s relationship with the Taliban. A July 1998 report stored in the computer details what seems to have been a near rupture in relations between Afghanistan’s then leaders and bin Laden’s network. Addressed to Ayman — apparently Zawahri — the report describes an angry meeting between the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and “Abu Abdullah.” This could be a reference to bin Laden, since that was one of his aliases. The report blames the quarrel on a “bankrupt failure to achieve any real external victory.” It warns that Arabs operating in Afghanistan risk losing access to their training camps, just as they were earlier expelled from Sudan, bin Laden’s main base until 1996.

This confirms a report I read earlier that, just before Clinton bombed the aspirin factory in Khartoum and the bin Laden camps in Afghanistan in August 1998, the Taliban were engaged in serious negotiations with Saudi Arabia about handing bin Laden over to the Saudis.

According to that report, one of the effects of Clinton's bombing of those camps was to derail those negotiations and solidify the relationship between bin Laden and the Taliban. I believe that this was one of the results of the bombing that Clinton intended. I remember reading reports of the evacuation of U.S. embassy dependents from Pakistan and of non-governmental organization people from Pakistan and Afghanistan in the day or two before that bombing, because an imminent American attack was expected (our embassies in East Africa had been bombed two weeks before.) I read those reports in the Indian and Pakistani press on line. Surely Clinton was well aware that bin Laden would be well away from those camps.

Particularly encouraging, the letter in the computer files said, was a home-brew nerve gas made from insecticides and a chemical additive that would help speed up penetration into the skin. The writer said Khabab had supplied a computer disk that gave details of “his product” in a WinZip file, and “my neighbor opened it by God’s will.”

Cropdusters come to mind anyone? And remember how Atta or others asked how much "poison" the planes could hold???

...one of the effects of Clinton's bombing of those camps was to derail those negotiations and solidify the relationship between bin Laden and the Taliban. I believe that this was one of the results of the bombing that Clinton intended. ...I read those reports in the Indian and Pakistani press on line. Surely Clinton was well aware that bin Laden would be well away from those camps.

I can believe that Clinton should have known bin Laden would be away from Afghanistan, but ordered the strikes anyway because his priority was to be in the news doing something about terrorism. But you seem to be saying Clinton was protecting bin Laden by making sure he stayed with the Taliban.

Am I understanding you correctly? This is quite an accusation, even for Clinton.