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Crap. I knew this would happen.
From the 9/11 Commission Report:
“In 1996, as an organizational experiment undertaken with seed money, the CTC created a special “Issue Station” 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 “TFL,” for terrorist financial links. The Bin Ladin (UBL) Station was not a response to new intelligence, but reflected interest in and concern about Bin LadinÂ’s connections.
The CIA believed that Bin LadinÂ’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 unitÂ’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 CIAÂ’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 childrenÂ’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”
http://www.macsmind.com/wordpress/2006/09/07/the-911-commission-report-and-those-pesky-facts/