(ObL's) Driver told FBI agents U.S. could have killed bin Laden

[babylonsister]

Driver told FBI agents U.S. could have killed bin Laden
By Carol Rosenberg | McClatchy Newspapers


GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — In his seventh month of U.S. captivity, Osama bin Laden's driver told a pair of FBI agents that it was America's fault that the al Qaida leader was alive.

The message was, ''You had these opportunities, America. You didn't do anything,'' FBI agent George Crouch Jr. testified Friday at Salim Hamdan's war crimes trial.

The United States could have killed bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, before he moved to Afghanistan in 1996, Hamdan told his interrogators. They could have killed him after al Qaida's 1998 twin bombings at the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Or after the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, at the port of Aden in Yemen, which left 17 U.S. sailors dead.

Instead, ''Bin Laden was emboldened.'' So he struck with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, leaving nearly 3,000 dead.

Crouch was paraphrasing a portion of a nearly two-week interrogation he conducted here at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, in June 2002, around the time that an Arabic-speaking FBI agent, Ali Soufan, arranged Hamdan's first call home.

The agents let the Yemeni captive make the five-to 10-minute call with a satellite phone outside an interrogator trailer at Camp Delta. For the first time, he told his wife that he was alive. Then he cried.

Through much of Friday's testimony, the driver watched rapt.

Thursday's session had ended 30 minutes early because guards passed a note to the military judge that Hamdan was running a fever. He went from the court to the prison camps' hospital where he was found ''in good health, with no acute medical conditions,'' said Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum, a Pentagon spokeswoman. Then he was returned for the night to his solitary steel and cement cell.

Crouch cast the June 2002 telephone call as a turning point.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/45642.html

[liberal N proud]

1. The US Government didn't want to kill the bogey man

Without bin Laden the war on terror wouldn't be where it is today. No TSA, No Homeland Security (Gestapo) and no spying on Americans.

[Overseas]

2. See guys -- it is all Clinton's fault ! Bush gets a pass ! Thank Heaven !

[Frances]

5. How believable is it that this man gave what is essentially

Republican talking points? The Republicans have always said that 9/11 was Bill Clinton's fault and this "confession" just underlines those points.

I don't think Osama's driver would be thinking this way at all.

[gatorboy]

8. Such an informative driver!

Imagine the information Osama's florist must have! :rofl:

[TexasObserver]

3. I believe he told them whatever they induced him by torture to say.

Those are all GOP memes, designed to shift responsibility away from Bush.

I don't believe a word of it.

[Gabi Hayes]

6. why do hate this hero?

[TexasObserver]

7. Exactly. We recognize our own soldiers break under torture.

But at GITMO, they only tell the truth to their torturers, and their torturers don't ever try to get them to admit something that isn't true!

I don't believe a word of anything the Bush administration puts out on any of this. All these tales about what they have "learned" from tortured subjects is completely unreliable.

[Uncle Joe]

4. I would be willing to bet this man was tortured prior to

having an attorney, a phone call, pizza, subs or cold french fries.

One other point they did try to kill Osama Bin Laden after the embassy bombings with missiles strikes, missing him by a few minutes. As I recall the Republicans in control of Congress at the time said it was all about "Monica" or tail wagging the dog and such.

My guess is the driver didn't remember or know that part or the paraphrasing by Agent Crouch forgot to mention it.

One more other point the attack on the Cole happened within weeks before the "election" of 2000 and evidence hadn't been established as to guilt at that time, but apparently Cheney/Bush forgot about it after they came to power and Bush didn't seem too motivated to read his Presidential Daily Briefings while he also downgraded Richard Clarke's status.

However Cheney/Bush did seem motivated to begin illegally wiretapping the American People without judicial review six-seven months prior to 9/11.

[boomerbust]

9. How convenient

I wonder if he mentioned that OBL was trapped in Tora Bora. Just sayin!