By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Air Power One with President Invoice Clinton and First Girl Hillary Clinton aboard was on its remaining strategy to Manila on Nov. 23, 1996, when their U.S. Secret Service element obtained alarming intelligence: an explosive machine had been planted on the motorcade route into the Philippines capital.
Performing swiftly, the brokers switched to a back-up path to the Clintons’ resort, foiling a suspected al Qaeda try and assassinate the president of america minutes after his arrival for the annual Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation summit.
Because the motorcade crawled alongside the traffic-clogged alternate route, Filipino safety officers recovered a robust bomb on a bridge the convoy would have taken and an SUV deserted close by containing AK-47 assault rifles, 4 retired brokers informed Reuters.
The assassination try, which seems to be certainly one of al Qaeda’s earliest makes an attempt to strike the U.S., was talked about briefly in books printed in 2010 and 2019.
Now, eight retired secret service brokers – seven of whom had been in Manila – have given Reuters probably the most detailed account so far of the failed plot.
Reuters discovered no proof of a U.S. authorities investigation into the try on Clinton’s life. The information company additionally couldn’t independently decide if intelligence companies carried out categorised probes.
For a few of the Secret Service brokers interviewed by Reuters, the occasions in Manila have left unanswered questions.
“I at all times puzzled why I wasn’t saved again to remain in Manila to observe any investigation,” mentioned Gregory Glod, the lead Secret Service intelligence agent in Manila and certainly one of seven brokers who spoke out for the primary time. “As a substitute, they flew me out the day after Clinton left.”
“There was an incident,” mentioned Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. “It stays categorised.” He declined to say what, if any, actions america took in response.
Clinton didn’t reply to a number of makes an attempt to succeed in him via his spokesperson and the Clinton Basis.
Former CIA director Leon Panetta, who was Clinton’s chief of employees on the time, mentioned he was unaware of the incident however that an try and kill a president needs to be investigated.
“As a former chief of employees, I might be very inquisitive about looking for out whether or not any person put this info to the facet and did not convey it to the eye of people that ought to have been conscious that one thing like that occurred.”
Below a 1986 legislation it’s a crime for a international extremist group to try to kill any U.S. nationwide abroad. Prosecution requires authorization from the legal professional normal – the late Janet Reno in 1996 – which might then set off an FBI investigation.
The FBI declined to touch upon the Manila assassination try.
4 former U.S. officers, together with the ambassador in Manila on the time, Thomas Hubbard, confirmed the foiled assault to Reuters however mentioned they had been additionally unaware of any U.S. investigation or follow-up actions.
13 years after Osama bin Laden’s loss of life, al Qaeda is a diminished drive. However the October 7 assaults on Israel by Hamas “mobilized efforts to radicalize and recruit new followers inside Muslim communities in Europe,” a U.N. panel of consultants wrote in a Jan. 29 report, citing al Qaeda propaganda supporting Hamas.
OMINOUS INTELLIGENCE
Glod mentioned a U.S. intelligence company later assessed that the plot was arrange at bin Laden’s behest by al Qaeda operatives and the Abu Sayyaf Group, Filipino Islamists broadly thought of an arm of al Qaeda.
He declined to determine the company. Reuters was unable to substantiate the evaluation and the CIA declined to remark.
In response to a 2022 Worldwide Disaster Group report, the group is in disarray, with solely a handful of its leaders nonetheless alive.
The workplace of the Philippines’ president, Division of International Affairs and the Nationwide Police didn’t reply to requests for remark.
4 of the Secret Service brokers who spoke to Reuters famous that Ramzi Yousef – the al Qaeda-linked mastermind of the primary World Commerce Middle assault in 1993 and a nephew of September 11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who had skilled Abu Sayyaf militants – was in Manila days earlier than a 1994 go to by Clinton.
Yousef is serving a life sentence plus 240 years in a federal “supermax” jail in Colorado.
An FBI memorandum of its first interview with Yousef after his 1995 arrest famous that he surveyed websites in Manila that media reported Clinton would go to. Yousef “indicated that he thought of inserting an improvised explosive machine in a location alongside the motorcade route,” it mentioned.
Yousef finally concluded there was an excessive amount of safety and inadequate time for an assault, the memo mentioned.
Three of the Secret Service brokers mentioned they believed that Yousef as an alternative was getting ready for the 1996 assault, mentioning that the date of the APEC summit was identified in late 1994.
“I knew he (Yousef) was type of an advance workforce,” mentioned Glod, citing his familiarity with intelligence reviews.
Yousef’s lawyer, Bernard Kleinman, informed Reuters that whereas “it is conceivable” that Yousef was in Manila in 1994 to start the foiled 1996 plot towards Clinton, he doubted that he did, describing his consumer as a bragger who made “himself a lot, a lot higher than he could have really been.”
The risk posed by al Qaeda and Yousef was simply one of many unsettling parts confronting the Secret Service’s advance safety workforce, the three brokers recalled.
The Philippines was battling communist and Islamist insurgencies. Police found a bomb at Manila airport and one other on the summit convention middle in Subic Bay a number of days earlier than the Clintons’ arrival. The U.S. State Division warned of threats towards American diplomats in Manila the day earlier than the First Couple flew in.
Glod informed Reuters the Manila project was “the worst advance I had ever performed by way of (risk) intel.”
The hazards had been highlighted for Clinton earlier than the go to in top-secret President’s Every day Briefs, in line with a army aide, retired U.S. Air Power Lt. Colonel Robert “Buzz” Patterson, who accompanied Clinton on the journey.
DEVICE ON A BRIDGE
It was late night when Clinton flew into Manila.
As Air Power One descended, Secret Service agent Daniel Lewis relayed the intelligence to the Secret Service workforce on the airport a few “machine on a bridge” on the principle path to The Manila Resort.
Buckled into his seat exterior the Clintons’ cabin, Lewis Merletti, who led Clinton’s protecting element and later grew to become Secret Service director, mentioned he got here to the identical conclusion after a name from a U.S. intelligence officer whose identify he did not know disclose warning of a communications intercept mentioning a “wedding ceremony throughout a bridge.”
He mentioned he recalled an intelligence report a number of years earlier that recognized “wedding ceremony” as “terrorist code for an assassination.” The deliberate motorcade route confirmed three bridges on the principle path to the Clintons’ resort.
“That is it. We’re altering the route,” he remembered saying over a safe radio hyperlink to Glod, who confirmed Merletti’s recollection of the occasion.
The bomb supposed for Clinton was discovered atop {an electrical} field on a bridge alongside the unique route, mentioned Merletti, Lewis and Glod, who retired from the Secret Service in 1998, 2003 and 2011, respectively. Glod was rehired in 2017 as a legislation enforcement teacher earlier than leaving in October 2023.
Reuters video footage of Clinton’s arrival reveals bomb disposal consultants wiring an explosive to the facet of {an electrical} field on a bridge and detonating it. No bomb is seen atop the field.
Filipino safety personnel additionally recovered a crimson Mitsubishi Pajero deserted on the far finish of the bridge, the brokers mentioned. They mentioned the AK-47 assault rifles discovered inside advised that the attackers deliberate to dam the span with the car and fireplace on the motorcade.
The following morning, Glod and Merletti mentioned they had been briefed on the plot by a U.S. intelligence official on the U.S. embassy and proven pictures of the machine.
It comprised armor-piercing rifle-propelled grenades atop a field containing TNT wired to a Nokia telephone rigged as a detonator, they mentioned. Lewis and Craig Ulmer, who was the agent answerable for the Manila floor workforce, mentioned in addition they later noticed the pictures.
Dennis Pluchinsky, a retired State Division terrorism analyst who realized of the foiled plot in 2020 whereas researching a historical past of anti-U.S. terrorism, famous that in 1995 Clinton issued Presidential Determination Directive 39 committing to “deter, defeat and reply vigorously to all terrorist assaults” towards People at house or overseas, and “apprehend and prosecute” these accountable.
It was not till after 220 folks died in al Qaeda bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 that Clinton responded with cruise missile strikes.
These didn’t cease bin Laden from planning contemporary assaults.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay, Further reporting by Karen Lema in Manila; Modifying by Don Durfee and Suzanne Goldenberg)
