CIA 'missed chance to kill bin Laden'

The CIA may have had the chance to kill or capture terror chief Osama bin Laden a year before the deadly September 11 attacks, it emerged today.

Secret spy footage taken from an unmanned drone over Afghanistan in Autumn 2000 shows what some intelligence analysts believe is bin Laden.

The tall figure, dressed in white robes, appears to be surrounded by guards at a known al Qaida training camp.

Although the footage was taken before September 11, bin Laden was already wanted by then over the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, which killed six people, and the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in Africa, which killed 224.

Some claim that the footage, beamed live to CIA agents in the US, represented a missed opportunity by the Clinton Administration to kill or capture bin Laden.

But the quality of the images make it impossible to be certain whether the figure dressed in white is the Saudi-born terrorist leader.

“It’s dynamite. It’s putting together all of the pieces, and that doesn’t happen every day,” said William Arkin, a former intelligence officer and now a military analyst.

The figure certainly could be bin Laden. The terror leader is 6ft 5in tall and the man on the film towers over those around him.

The footage was shot over Tarnak Farm, the walled compound where bin Laden was known to live.

He is also dressed strikingly in flowing white robes. The body language of those around him suggests they are subordinate.

The very existence of the spy footage proves that the CIA was aggressively tracking bin Laden in the year before September 11.

That has led to questions about why he able to escape after being “spotted”.

“We were not prepared to take the military action necessary,” retired General Wayne Downing told NBC.

“We should have had strike forces prepared to go in and react to this intelligence, certainly cruise missiles, either air or sea-launched.” Gary Schroen, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, added that the White House told the agency to capture rather than kill bin Laden.

That halved the odds “that we were going to be able to get him”, he said.

Former Clinton Administration officials defended their actions and said al Qaida was a top national security issue.

But one unnamed Cabinet official told the network: “We did a lot, but we did not see the gathering storm that was out there.”