The FBI declined to comment on the Manila assassination.
Washington:
As Air Force One carrying President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton arrived in Manila for the final time on November 23, 1996, U.S. Secret Service agents received alarming intelligence: on the convoy route into the Philippines An explosive device was planted in the capital.
Agents acted quickly to take an alternate route to the Clintons’ hotel, foiling an alleged al-Qaeda attempt to assassinate the US president just minutes after he arrived for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
As the convoy lumbered along an alternative route clogged with traffic, Philippine security agents discovered a powerful bomb on a bridge the convoy was supposed to pass and an abandoned vehicle nearby, four retired agents told Reuters. SUV with an AK-47 assault rifle inside.
The assassination attempt, which appeared to be one of Al Qaeda’s earliest attempts to attack the United States, was briefly mentioned in books published in 2010 and 2019.
Now, eight retired agents, seven of them in Manila, have given Reuters the most detailed account yet of the failed plot.
Reuters found no evidence of a U.S. government investigation into Clinton’s assassination. The news agency also could not independently determine whether the intelligence agency conducted a classified investigation.
For some Secret Service agents interviewed by Reuters, the events in Manila left unanswered questions.
“I’ve always wondered why I wasn’t left in Manila to oversee any investigation,” said Gregory Glode, chief Secret Service intelligence agent in Manila and one of the seven agents who spoke out for the first time. “Instead, they flew me away the day after Clinton left.”
“There was an incident,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. “It remains classified.” He declined to say what actions, if any, the United States had taken in response.
Clinton made repeated attempts to contact him through his spokesman and the Clinton Foundation but did not respond.
Leon Panetta, Clinton’s chief of staff at the time and a former CIA director, said he was unaware of the incident but that the attempt on the president’s life should be investigated.
“As a former chief of staff, I’m very interested in finding out if anyone set this information aside and failed to bring it to the attention of those who should have known something similar was happening.”
Under a 1986 law, it is a crime for foreign extremist groups to attempt to kill U.S. citizens abroad. Prosecution would require authorization from the Attorney General (the late Janet Reno in 1996), which would trigger an FBI investigation.
The FBI declined to comment on the Manila assassination.
Four former U.S. officials, including then-Ambassador to Manila Thomas Hubbard, confirmed the foiled attack to Reuters but said they were also unaware of any U.S. investigation or follow-up.
Thirteen years after Osama bin Laden’s death, Al Qaeda’s power has gradually waned. But a U.N. panel of experts cited pro-Hamas al-Qaeda propaganda in a Jan. 29 report, writing that Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel “mobilized people to radicalize within Europe’s Muslim communities.” and recruit new followers.”
ominous information
Glode said U.S. intelligence agencies later assessed that the plot was hatched at bin Laden’s behest by al-Qaeda operatives and the Abu Sayyaf Group, a group widely believed by Filipino Islamists to be an al-Qaida offshoot.
He declined to identify the agency. Reuters could not confirm that assessment and the CIA declined to comment.
According to a 2022 report from the International Crisis Group, the group is in chaos, with only a handful of leaders still alive.
The Philippine Presidential Office, Department of Foreign Affairs and National Police did not respond to requests for comment.
Four Secret Service agents interviewed by Reuters identified Ramzi Yousef, the al-Qaeda-linked mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, as a man in Manila and one of the 9 Nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an architect who trained Abu Sayyaf militants on 11 March. Days before Clinton’s 1994 visit.
Yousef was sentenced to life plus 240 years in a federal “supermax” prison in Colorado.
An FBI memo from the first interview with Yusef in 1995 after his arrest states that Yusef investigated locations in Manila where media reports Clinton would visit. Yusef “indicated that he was considering placing an improvised explosive device somewhere along the convoy’s route,” the statement said.
Yusuf ultimately concluded there were too many security measures and not enough time to attack, the memo said.
Three Secret Service agents said they believed Yusef was preparing for the 1996 attack, noting that the date for the APEC summit was known as early as late 1994.
“I knew he (Yosef) was an advance team,” said Glode, who is familiar with intelligence reports.
Yusef’s lawyer, Bernard Kleinman, told Reuters that while it was “conceivable” that Yusef began the 1996 foiled plot against Clinton in Manila in 1994, he had doubts. and called his client a braggart who “made himself greater” than he actually might be. “
The threat posed by Al Qaeda and Yusef was just one of the disturbing factors facing the Secret Service’s senior security team, three agents recalled.
The Philippines is battling communist and Islamic insurgencies. Days before the Clintons arrived, police discovered a bomb at Manila Airport and another at the Summit Convention Center in Subic Bay. A day before the first couple flew to Manila, the U.S. State Department warned U.S. diplomats in Manila of threats.
Glode told Reuters the Manila mission was “the worst development I’ve ever done in terms of (threat) intelligence.”
Retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Robert “Buzz” Patterson, a military aide who accompanied Clinton on the trip, said Clinton emphasized these dangers before the trip in the top-secret Presidential Daily Brief.
Equipment on the bridge
It was late afternoon when Clinton flew to Manila.
As Air Force One landed, Secret Service Agent Daniel Lewis forwarded intelligence to the Secret Service team at the airport about a “device on the bridge” on the main route to the Manila hotel.
Lewis Merletti, who led Clinton’s protection team and later became Secret Service director, sat in a seat outside Clinton’s cabin. A communication interception mentioned a “cross-bridge wedding.”
He said he recalled an intelligence report from several years ago that identified “Wedding” as “a codename for terrorist assassinations.” The planned motorcade route showed three bridges on the main route to the Clintons’ hotel.
“That’s it. We’re changing course,” he recalled telling Gloder over a secure radio link, who confirmed Meletti’s recollection of the incident.
Meletti, Lewis and Gloder, who retired from the Secret Service in 1998, 2003 and 2011 respectively, said the bomb intended for Clinton was found atop an electrical box on a bridge on the original route. Glode was rehired as a law enforcement instructor in 2017 and left in October 2023.
Reuters video of Clinton’s arrival showed bomb disposal experts attaching explosives to the side of an electrical box on the bridge and detonating it. No bomb is visible on the top of the box.
Philippine security agents also found a red Mitsubishi Pajero abandoned on the far side of the bridge, agents said. They said the AK-47 assault rifles found inside suggested the attackers planned to block the span with vehicles and open fire on the convoy.
The next morning, Glode and Meletti said a U.S. intelligence officer at the U.S. Embassy briefed them on the plot and showed them photos of the device.
They said it consisted of an armor-piercing rifle-propelled grenade with TNT on top of a box attached to a Nokia phone as a detonator. Lewis and Craig Ulmer, the special agent in charge of the Manila ground team, said they later saw the photos.
Retired State Department terrorism analyst Dennis Pluchinsky, who learned of the foiled 2020 plot while researching the history of anti-American terrorism, noted that Clinton issued Presidential Decision No. 39 in 1995 The directive pledges to “deter, defeat, and aggressively respond to all terrorist attacks” against Americans at home and abroad and to “apprehend and prosecute” those responsible.
It was not until al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 that killed 220 people that Clinton responded with cruise missile attacks.
These measures failed to prevent bin Laden from planning new attacks.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
