Did Clinton nod
to Mubarak overthrow?
Book suggests foreign policy goof led to Luxor terror massacre
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.comA secret deal between the Clinton administration and terrorists linked with Osama bin Laden led directly to the senseless slaughter of some 70 West European tourists and the wounding of hundreds, according to a book written by a former congressional terrorism expert.
According to Yossef Bodansky, author of "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America," a Central Intelligence Agency operative dealing with Islamic terrorists on matters of security for the U.S. forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina led them to believe President Clinton would look the other way at attempts to overthrow Egypt's Hosni Mubarak.
"If senior Islamicist terrorist leaders are to be believed, the Clinton administration was willing to tolerate the overthrow of the Mubarak government in Egypt and the establishment of an Islamist state in its stead as an acceptable price for reducing the terrorist threat to U.S. forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina," states the 1999 book, which has been rushed into a new printing.
The tradeoff was reportedly raised in discussions between Egyptian terrorist leader Ayman al-Zawahiri – Osama bin Laden's right-hand man – and an Arab-American, Abu-Umar al-Amriki, known as a CIA emissary.
Mubarak, writes Bodansky, was convinced of the accuracy of the information and took steps to address the potential abandonment by the U.S. – but, apparently, not soon enough or drastic enough.
"Arab Islamist observers stress that the horrendous terrorist strike in Luxor on November 17, 1997, was actually a test of the credibility of Abu-Umar al-Amriki," Bodansky writes.
In that attack, terrorists wielding machine guns and knives massacred nearly 70 tourists, most of them Swiss. For about 45 minutes, the attackers mowed down unarmed, unsuspecting tourists in an attempt to show the world that visitors were not safe in Mubarak's Egypt.
In addition to leading to the attack on the tourists, Bodansky writes, the secret deal between the Clinton administration and the bin Laden terrorist cell drove Mubarak into de facto cooperation with the Islamist terror-sponsoring states against the United States. Shortly afterwards, early in 1998, Egypt withheld support for the use of force by the U.S. against Iraq.
The CIA operative conveying these signals to the terrorists also suggested to Zawahiri that he, bin Laden's top confidant, would need "$50 million to rule Egypt."
"At the time, Zawahiri interpreted this assertion as a hint that Washington would tolerate his rise to power if he could raise this money," Bodansky writes.
As soon as Egypt became aware of this secret deal between the U.S. and the Islamic terrorists, Mubarak made a rapprochement with the Sudanese regime – a radical Islamic government and a key supporter of bin Laden.
"This was a dramatic, swift reorientation in the strategic outlook of a regional major power – and it went virtually unnoticed in Washington, now solely preoccupied with the elusive Iraqi weapons of mass destruction," Bodansky writes. "By late January 1998, the Abu-Umar al-Amriki episode had already had a devastating impact on Mubarak's Cairo because it confirmed what President Mubarak wanted to believe – that the United States would betray Egypt if it could get what it wanted from the Islamists in the Balkans. Mubarak resolved to mend his ties with Tehran, the key to which was joining the drive to undermine the U.S. presence and influence in the Middle East, including the reversal of the peace process and the beginning of preparations for a possible military confrontation with Israel."
While the deal between the U.S. and the terrorists may have headed off imminent attacks on U.S. forces in Bosnia, it also backfired because the warming relations between Egypt and Sudan led directly, Bodansky reports, to Sudan's decision to launch an attack on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania – attacks, once again, planned and executed by bin Laden under Khartoum's sponsorship.
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