U.S. Was Foiled Multiple Times in Efforts To Capture Bin Laden or Have Him Killed

Paul Quaglia, then the CIA station chief in Khartoum, had led a campaign to pull out all Americans after he and his staff came under aggressive surveillance and twice had to fend off attacks, one with a knife and one with claw hammers. Now Carney was instructed, despite his objections, to withdraw all remaining Americans from the country.

Carney and David Shinn, then chief of the State Department's East Africa desk, considered the security threat "bogus," as Shinn described it. Washington's dominant decision-makers on Sudan had lost interest in engagement, preparing plans to isolate and undermine the regime. The two career diplomats thought that was a mistake, and that Washington was squandering opportunities to enlist Sudan's cooperation against radical Islamic groups.

One factor in Washington's hostility was an intelligence tip that Sudan aimed to assassinate national security adviser Anthony Lake, the most visible administration critic of Khartoum. The Secret Service took it seriously enough to remove Lake from his home, shuffling him among safe houses and conveying him around Washington in a heavily armored car. Most U.S. analysts came to believe later that it had been a false alarm.

Taha, distressed at the deteriorating relations, invited Carney and Shinn to dine with him that Tuesday night. He asked what his country could do to dissuade Washington from the view, expressed not long before by then-United Nations Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright, that Sudan was responsible for "continued sponsorship of international terror."

Carney and Shinn had a long list. Bin Laden, as they both recalled, was near the top. So, too, were three members of Egypt's Gamaat i-Islami, Arabic for Islamic Group, who had fled to Sudan after trying to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Sudan also played host to operatives and training facilities for the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

"It was the first substantive chat with the U.S. government on the subject of terrorism," Carney recalled.

Taha mostly listened. He raised no objection to the request for bin Laden's expulsion, though he did not agree to it that night. His only rejoinders came on Hamas and Hezbollah, which his government, like much of the Arab world, regarded as conducting legitimate resistance to Israeli occupation.

Sudanese President Bashir, struggling for dominance over the fiery cleric Hassan Turabi, had already made overtures to the West. Not long before, he had delivered the accused terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal" to France. Less than a month after Taha's dinner, he sent a trusted aide to Washington.

Maj. Gen. Elfatih Erwa, then minister of state for defense, arrived unannounced at the Hyatt Arlington on March 3, 1996. Using standard tradecraft, he checked into one room and then walked to another, across Wilson Boulevard from the Rosslyn Metro.

Carney and Shinn were waiting for him, but the meeting was run by covert operatives from the CIA's Africa division. The Washington Post does not identify active members of the clandestine service. Frank Knott, who was Africa division chief in the directorate of operations at the time, declined to be interviewed.

In a document dated March 8, 1996, the Americans spelled out their demands. Titled "Measures Sudan Can Take to Improve Relations with the United States," the two-page memorandum asked for six things. Second on the list -- just after an angry enumeration of attacks on the CIA station in Khartoum -- was Osama bin Laden.

"Provide us with names, dates of arrival, departure and destination and passport data on mujahedin [holy warriors] that Usama Bin Laden has brought into Sudan," the document demanded. The CIA emissaries told Erwa that they knew of about 200 such bin Laden loyalists in Sudan.