- There are people in this country
who are furious at the federal government.
- They have a right to believe whatever they want.
They do not have the right to kill innocent Americans.
[explosion]
- There has been a massive explosion
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
- Police are descending upon Columbine High right now.
- We shouldn't lose vigilance, because the terrorist often
takes the path of least resistance and strikes
when and where we least expect them to.
- What are you future plans?
[translator] - You'll see them
and hear about them in the media...
God willing.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Terry Anderson is free.
He was the last of the American hostages held
by pro-Iranian terrorists in Beirut, Lebanon.
- In the beginning of the '90s, terrorism
was thought to be done.
People who were likely to use terrorism
to achieve political objectives were dead, in jail,
or part of a new peace process.
- A Syrian delegation is in Washington today,
ready to meet with Israel to talk about Middle East peace.
- We thought the '90s would be a time of peace.
Not only was the Cold War over, we had won.
- We have before us the opportunity
to forge a new world order,
a world where the rule of law governs the conduct of nations.
- The world was changing,
and it was an exciting time for those who really viewed America
as the nation that would embrace globalization.
But there were many people
who didn't like that changing America.
- In Naples, Idaho, about 40 miles from the Canadian border,
federal marshals are surrounding a cabin where a fugitive
white supremacist named Randy Weaver
is holed up with his family.
- Randy Weaver was a survivalist who lived out in the mountains
with his family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
Weaver was of interest
to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
because he had links to the Aryan Nations,
and they tried to pressure him to inform on his friends
in the movement, and he refused.
- Weaver is summoned to court for a weapons charge
that involves the selling of some sawed-off shotguns
to law enforcement.
- Now a force of 200 police, federal agents,
and the National Guard have surrounded the house.
- This is nothing more than a show of force to scare everybody
who lives up here in North Idaho.
We all have guns in our houses,
we all have guns buried someplace.
- Northern Idaho has become home for a lot of people,
like Randy Weaver,
who want to be away from the problems of civilization,
and from civilization itself.
- He's not a terrorist.
He's not endangering anybody.
Everybody that knows him personally has talked about him
as a good, loving, Christian family man.
- Never before has North Idaho witnessed this kind of firepower
from the federal government.
- What should have been a relatively routine arrest
went very badly wrong.
There was a shootout in which Weaver's 14-year-old son, Sammy,
and a dog and a US Marshall all ended up dead.
An FBI sharpshooter shot his wife dead
while she was carrying the baby in her arms.
- FBI agents are trained to shoot
only to protect themselves or others.
The rules of engagement for Ruby Ridge were rewritten.
- Decisions were made within the FBI which allowed the snipers
to shoot at anyone who was armed.
It was completely unjustifiable.
- Put a bullet in my head!
Hell, I'll make it easier, I'll turn my back on ya!
- You baby killers!
- Not everyone who lives around here says Randy Weaver
is in the right, but they say
none of this would have happened
if federal authorities had just left him alone.
- Ruby Ridge was not a story that was on the front page
of the national newspapers--
most people didn't know about it at all--
but it absolutely did energize the radical right.
- The siege ended at 12:15 when Randall Weaver
and his three children walked off the mountain after 11 days.
- There's all this tremendous ferment that's arising
precisely because of the end of the Cold War.
This mindset that the United States government
is the enemy breeds almost a decade of violence.
[helicopter whirring]
- In Langley, Virginia, today, right outside CIA headquarters,
a young man with a rifle opened fire on a number of people
who were in their cars.
- No one would ever think that a situation like a shooting
of CIA personnel would happen on their front doorstep.
The shooter escapes.
- Two CIA employees were shot to death in Virginia.
A Pakistani suspect is reported to be back in Pakistan.
- They figure out his name-- Mir Kansi--
but they don't know where to peg him.
Who's he working for? What organization?
- In the 1970s we were dealing with terrorist groups.
In this case there was no group that could be identified,
this was the actions of one single individual.
We did not realize that terrorism seemed to be moving
in a new direction.
[sirens wailing]
[people shouting]
- A mysterious explosion underground has spread fire
and smoke and terror
throughout the gigantic World Trade Center towers today.
- At 18 minutes after noon,
something terrible happened here in lower Manhattan.
- Counter-terrorism forces tell CNN
that they now suspect the explosion
was caused by a car bomb.
- The bombing was designed to bring down the North Tower,
and the North Tower then falling into the South Tower.
- It did not, of course, collapse the towers,
but it did kill six people and injure over a thousand more.
- I was very concerned.
Anything like that, any accident, tragedy,
anything of the moment,
you feel it very personally.
The thing that's most amazing is that more people weren't killed,
especially having occurred at the hour that it did
and in the place that it did.
- President Clinton had just come into office.
I was in New York as Ambassador at the United Nations.
There's no way to fully explain
how all of a sudden the mood changed.
- I will put the full resources of the federal government,
every conceivable law enforcement information resource
we can put to work on this we have.
I'm very concerned about it.
- Federal officials are beginning to focus more heavily
on the possibility of the explosion being the work
of foreign terrorists.
- The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was a signal of how
the extremist war that had been limited largely
to the Middle East was finally coming to American shores.
- Tonight, six days after the bombing
at the World Trade Center, one suspect is in custody,
more arrests are said to be coming.
- The investigators found the VIN number of the Ryder truck,
and it turned out that one of the collaborators
had returned there to ask for his $400 deposit back.
- Authorities have told ABC News that the man
has links to a radical Muslim group.
- They managed to capture most of the accomplices,
but the mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, fled.
- Ramzi Yousef is smart and he's radicalized.
His uncle is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
a man who would later become a leader
in an organization called Al-Qaeda.
- I have an office in that building.
I will lead my people back into that office.
That will be our message to whoever did this.
Whatever you were trying to achieve, you failed.
- For the FBI, the lesson was that these guys,
while dangerous, were not at the same
level as the terrorists of the late '80s.
They were wannabes.
That, of course, would be a complete misunderstanding.
- For the first time since the bombing,
Tower Two will reopen for business,
two weeks ahead of schedule.
And that, says New York's Mayor, is a testament to a city
that conquered the use of fear as a weapon.
The only ones who should be fearful now, he says,
are the terrorists themselves.
[dramatic music]
- Good morning, everybody, we begin this time around
outside of Waco, Texas, where dozens of federal agents
are surrounding the headquarters of a religious cult.
- February 28th I got a call saying, "Get down to Waco.
There's been some kind of shootout."
[men shouting, gunshots]
This religious group, the Branch Davidians, had this compound.
They had been buying parts that would convert
semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic weapons,
which were illegal.
The ATF decided that it was time to go in.
[gunshots]
- We got people shot-- get the hell out of here!
- Four federal agents died
in the Sunday morning shootout there in Texas,
16 others were wounded.
- Almost 100 heavily-armed cult members
remain inside the sprawling compound.
Cult leader David Koresh says the standoff will continue
until God tells him to come out.
- Koresh proclaimed himself to be a prophet.
"The Waco Tribune" began to publish a series of articles
about what they called the sinful messiah
who loves music and will drink a beer with you
and who also happens to have sex with underage girls
and who has a lot of weapons.
- It makes nobody's business whether we have a gun or not.
Guns are the right of Americans to have.
- Cult members continue fortifying their compound,
an indication there's no plan to surrender anytime soon.
- The showdown moves into its 18th day...
- This is day 20 of the standoff.
- This was day 32.
- Negotiations between the cult and FBI agents have stalled.
- It was all Waco, all the time.
Every newscast, every newspaper, every radio newscast
is filled with this showdown.
- David Koresh becomes a household name,
and many people are inspired by him.
He's taking it to the US government,
he's not gonna stand down,
and people drive to Waco to show their support.
- Things had reached a point
partly because of the publicity
that something had to give right away.
An update on the 51-day standoff.
Early this morning, armored vehicles
entered cult leader David Koresh's compound
and began punching large holes in the walls.
- A decision was made to inject CS gas,
a kind of tear gas on steroids.
All of America, along with all of law enforcement on the scene,
is waiting for the people to come out.
- Suddenly, out of one of the second floor windows,
flames burst forth, and as you can see,
it looks like at this point like the entire compound
is just engulfed.
I have never, in my life, seen anything burn that way.
It just went up in this massive fireball.
There are no signs at this point of any people
coming out of the building.
- The images are horrible.
You have the federal government of the United States
using a tank to deal with a compound that has children.
It's not what we do in the United States, and yet,
in many ways, the Clinton administration felt
that Koresh had left them no alternative.
- The offender there was David Koresh, and I do not think
the United States government is responsible for the fact
that a bunch of fanatics decided to kill themselves,
and I'm sorry that they killed their children.
- It was proved later
that the Davidians lit that building on fire themselves.
But there were literally millions of Americans
who absolutely believed
that the government had murdered those people.
- This whole situation started with violence--
it was not justified, not provoked
when the ATF went in there,
and it ended in violence
that was not justified and not provoked.
- Waco was proof positive to many of these people
that this was an aggressive, predatory federal government,
and now we have to fight back, like the Minutemen in 1776,
to bear arms, to defend their own rights.
[gunshots]
- This is the Michigan Militia,
a self-proclaimed fighting force of ordinary citizens
preparing to defend themselves against the federal government.
- You will be receiving live fire
over your heads this morning.
- There is also an armed militia here in Indiana,
and at least 20 other states.
- We had always had a radical right,
but in the '90s, it really entered the mainstream.
Gun shows became an extremely important venue
not just for selling guns, but they're selling
real-life Nazi literature along with survivalist handbooks
and all that kind of thing.
- So you're prepared for a conflict
with the federal government.
- Yes, we are prepared to defend our homes, our families,
our children, our lives, our property, yes.
- Americans are largely ignorant of what's happening
in the heartland with regard to this militia movement,
and there's this extremist element of this
which would not have been on anybody's radar,
and that's what made them so dangerous.
- We do have a special report from NBC News.
There has been a massive explosion
at a Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
- We have no way to tell at the moment
how many causalities there are,
though it was explosion felt 30 miles away.
[people shouting]
- Rescue workers are desperately trying to save
any remaining lives.
You can see the facade of the building is all down.
- On April 19th, when I got to Oklahoma City,
the building was still on fire
and there were a whole lot of cars around the building
that had also exploded.
It was unbelievable.
- Amid the horror of the bombing,
it's the dead and wounded children
that have stunned and angered the nation.
- The motive behind the madness is unknown at this hour.
The governor of Oklahoma says two things are known for sure--
those who did this knew what they were doing,
and whoever did it, the governor said, is some kind of animal.
- I am pleased to announce that one of the individuals
believed to be responsible for Wednesday's terrible attack
in Oklahoma City has been arrested.
Timothy McVeigh, age 27.
[shouting]
- The shock around the country was huge.
This was an act of terrorism
by one of our own citizens.
- A second man was charged today with blowing up
the Federal Building--
Terry Nichols, who has been in custody
since just after the bombing.
- Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols met in the army.
McVeigh had fought in the first Persian Gulf War.
- He left the military very disillusioned.
The one thing that sustained him was his reading about
the radical far right and in meeting like-minded people.
- Timothy McVeigh's alleged plot to blow up the Federal Building
took shape over the course of a secret
year-long odyssey across America.
- McVeigh visited militia groups throughout the country.
He went to the Waco compound when it was under siege.
On April 19th, two years to the date after the Waco incident,
Oklahoma City was bombed.
- Mr. President, there are tens--maybe more--
tens of thousands of men and women
dressing up on weekends in military garb,
going off for training because they're upset about Waco,
despite what you say.
We're talking about thousands and thousands of people
in this country who are furious at the federal government.
- Well, they have a right to believe whatever they want,
they have a right to say whatever they want,
they have a right to keep and bear arms,
they have a right to put on uniforms
and go out on the weekends.
They do not have the right to kill innocent Americans.
They do not have the right to violate the law.
- It's not like you can go to war against domestic terrorism--
they're ours.
This was our problem.
- We still don't know how much hate is growing now
near other scrub farmhouses, in other trailer parks.
That is, how many others there are
just like him.
[dramatic music]
- Good evening.
It is a terrifying and long-running mystery.
Somewhere in this country tonight there's a mad bomber
who has been sending deadly bombs to people
for 16 years now.
The FBI started investigating this bomber in 1978.
- A New Jersey advertising executive opened a piece of mail
in his home this weekend and it exploded, killing him.
- It was a horrifying scene.
I remember there was a cast iron skillet
with nails embedded in it from the force of the blast.
- This cold blooded murder is the latest deadly development
in a series of bombings code-named "Unabom."
- "Unabom" stands for "University Airline Bomber,"
that's because six universities, one commercial airliner,
and one airline executive have been among the victims.
- The FBI says it cannot find a pattern and admits
the long investigation has been frustrating.
- The '90s bring on a whole new challenge for law enforcement--
lone wolves.
It really was the proverbial needle in a haystack.
- All authorities have to go on is a composite sketch
of a white male believed to be in his 40s.
- He wasn't the only bomber we had investigated before,
but his long, solitary operation
as a serial bomber was so unique.
- Unabom hotline.
- So far thousands of tips phoned into
the San Francisco Unabom Task Force have led nowhere.
- We began an entirely new look at this,
an entirely new strategy.
We brought in a crew of analysts from FBI headquarters,
they worked 24-7, but sadly, it happened again.
[siren wailing]
- A mail bomb explodes
inside the California Forestry Association building.
- The killer known as the Unabomber says he will stop
mailing package bombs if the newspapers
will publish his political theories.
- When we received the manifesto,
we felt very strongly that we should publish this.
We think someone out there will actually recognize these words.
- "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences
have been a disaster for the human race,"
so begins a surprising eight-page addition
to "The Washington Post" this morning.
- If someone does recognize these crazed writings
and turns him in to the authorities...
- The longest and most intense manhunt in US history
has zeroed in on a prime suspect just outside Lincoln, Montana.
- The big concern was, are there booby traps,
are there explosives on the property?
So we had to be very careful.
We were knocking on the door of the cabin.
He started to close the door and say,
"Let me get my coat and come out,"
and as he did that, one of the agents pushed the door in,
and on the morning of April 3rd, Theodore Kaczynski
was taken out of his cabin.
- Sir, are you the Unabomber? - Are you the Unabomber?
- FBI agents today searched the home of a 53-year-old
former mathematics teacher named Theodore Kaczynski.
- The on-site investigation has yielded a cache of evidence.
- It was the most incredible moment.
We knew that this long journey of 18 years was over.
- Mike Wallace and I, together on "60 Minutes,"
interviewed Kaczynski's family,
who had turned him in.
- I was feeling something
I really didn't expect to feel at all,
which was a deep sense of unease, um, fear.
- Because of what you read. - Because of what I read.
- Because it sounded like Ted.
- Because it had sounded enough like him that I could not say
to myself or to Linda that this is not Ted's writing.
- What can you do?
You can't risk more lives.
Dave couldn't.
None of us could.
- Apparently, some lives were saved,
for when the FBI arrested Ted Kaczynski, they say
they found a live bomb wrapped under his bed,
ready for mailing.
The only thing missing was a name and address.
- Get your USA flags-- everybody needs to have a flag.
- Get your lemon chills! Three for one!
- Hats, pins, t-shirts!
Welcome to Atlanta!
- In July of 1996, when the Olympics
were being hosted in Atlanta,
there was a tremendous concern about terrorist attacks.
The security for the park was very carefully coordinated.
- It's all taking place in the midst of security
that an American of an earlier generation
could not have imagined.
- The extra police, the extra surveillance,
people searching their bags,
they're willing to put up with that.
- Nobody here is complaining about that,
and that's the point.
- There was one place that officials decided people
should be able to go
and not have to worry about check points,
and that was Centennial Olympic Park.
- 1:25 this morning thousands of revelers
at an open-air rock concert in Centennial Park.
[explosion]
[people shouting]
- All of a sudden I felt a big boom, a blast.
Heat came and then it knocked me off the wall
and blew my pants off here.
- Move up the street! [whistle blowing]
Everybody needs to move up the street!
- Authorities said the device appeared to be a pipe bomb
loaded with nails and screws,
designed to penetrate human flesh.
- More than 100 people have been injured, two are dead.
- Before this device explodes, security guard, Richard Jewell,
notices this backpack, alerts a law enforcement officer,
and they begin to evacuate the area.
If not for his quick thinking,
there probably would have been many more casualties.
- Jewell was hailed as a hero after the incident,
praised even by President Clinton for his swift action.
- The only thing I wish we could've done was, uh,
got everybody out of the area.
- FBI has a suspect. Read all about it.
- Almost immediately, Richard Jewell was suspected.
They thought he actually set the bomb so he could be the hero.
- Did you do it?
- No, sir, I didn't do this.
- The FBI agents arrived
at Jewell's apartment early this morning,
armed with a search warrant.
Agents brought in a dog and an evidence truck.
- In the hurly-burly of trying to understand what had happened,
Richard Jewell became the face of the Olympic Park bombing
until it was made clear that he wasn't,
but by then a lot of damage had been done.
- Despite their interest, they had not found
any physical evidence linking him to the crime scene.
- In their mad rush to fulfill their own personal agendas,
the FBI and the media almost destroyed me and my mother.
- Jewell was fed to the world's media wolves,
and the wolves obligingly fed on him for days.
It was as if he was offered up to us in the hopes
that the blood we draw would somehow help solve the crime.
- If Richard Jewell is no longer a suspect,
who planted the pipe bomb?
To be continued.
[dramatic music]
[helicopter whirring] - Once again, a bomb blast
in Atlanta.
- The explosion, at about 9:30 this morning,
blew out windows at the North Atlanta Family Planning Clinic.
- Following the Olympic bombing in July 1996,
it's quiet for a while.
By 1997, the same bomber strikes again.
- It only lasted for a few seconds,
so you're basically shocked,
you really didn't know what was going on at the time.
- Where were you in the building and where was the explosion?
[explosion, reporter shouts] Oh, my God!
- This second explosion, about an hour later,
injured a television photographer,
an ATF agent, and at least four others.
- Get back, get back!
- When the police and the EMTs arrived
there was a second bomb-- the intention, of course,
being to murder as many law enforcement people as possible.
- Second and third bombs are classic techniques
used by the Irish Republican Army and Middle East terrorists.
But this, apparently, is the first time it has been used
as a tactic in the United States.
- Another explosion--
the third major bombing in this city since last summer.
- Over time there's more bombings that are similar
to the Atlanta bombing-- same material,
same detonation devices--
abortion clinics, a lesbian nightclub.
- Federal agents went public today,
asking for help in locating this man,
31-year-old Eric R. Rudolph of Marble, North Carolina.
Not much is known about Rudolph.
Investigators describe him as an outdoors type
with no fixed job or address.
- Eric Rudolph is identified as an anti-abortion terrorist
who bombed the Olympics because he wanted a stage
to show his anti-abortion sentiment.
Eric Rudolph goes on the run.
♪ ♪
- As we started looking for him,
we became more and more convinced his comfort level
is in the place he was born and raised,
in the woods and mountains of North Carolina.
- This truck was found yesterday.
We believe that between Thursday and yesterday
this truck was being driven by Eric Robert Rudolph.
- I remember, during the hunt,
one of the military advisors said you could hide
a whole regiment in these mountains
and we would never find them.
- Agents are now systematically
picking their way through the hundreds of caves
that dot the area.
Agents report encountering spiders the size of a hand
and rattlesnakes as fat as a man's arm.
- American law enforcement discovers
that you can be on the FBI's Most Wanted list
and actually hide in this country.
This guy disappears for five years.
- Do you think that he's getting a big kick
out of outsmarting the Feds?
- Well, sure, I think he is,
I think it's part of his hide-and-seek game.
- And he thinks he's winning.
- He is winning.
- In the end, he got caught
in a sort of pathetic, little moment
where he's rummaging around in a dumpster
looking for something to eat, and some local,
rookie cop arrests him.
- There was a kind of unbelievable
quality to all of this.
Eric Rudolph was part of this internal terrorist moment.
It was like a worm that was eating away inside of us.
[newscast music]
- Welcome back, everybody, we want to bring you up to date
on a breaking story out of suburban Denver.
Apparently there's been a school shooting at a high school
in the town of Littleton.
- The '90s bring us the first mass school shootings.
There's something especially disturbing
about premeditated murder by young people.
- Police and law enforcement
are descending upon Columbine High right now.
- They do believe that at least two people are inside
with multiple automatic weapons and perhaps some pipe bombs,
we've heard, unconfirmed, again, from police.
- It hit local TV very quickly.
I happened to see this on television and got in my car.
I saw a ring of choppers, like vultures circling,
and I knew instantly this was so much worse than I had imagined.
- Masked gunmen in trench coats start shooting
into the school's cafeteria.
Kids scatter, shots ring off lockers and walls.
Students are hit.
- And they're just, like, spraying across?
- They just start shooting at anybody, walking, talking,
it didn't matter-- boom, they shot, they didn't care.
- You have blood on your hand.
- Everyone around me got shot,
and I begged him for ten minutes not to shoot me.
- It was horrific, it was beyond unthinkable.
And yet, we were watching it as it happened.
- You can see in the upper part of your screen a student,
a badly bloodied student, hanging out a window.
- The emotion was incredible.
It's hard for a parent to see the parents who came.
♪ ♪
- They went through the school, shooting classmates,
shooting teachers.
Thirteen people died and 21 were injured.
The police had arrived, they didn't want to be arrested,
so they took their own lives.
- Tomorrow morning's "Denver Post"
identifies the two suspects as 18-year-old Eric Harris
and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold.
Both reportedly died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
- Local authorities searched the homes of the two boys
and say they found the makings for pipe bombs
and other explosive devices.
- The gruesome but all too familiar dénouement begins.
The search for a motivation,
the calls for tighter gun control,
the counseling sessions at school,
and the endless, endless grief.
- There had been school shootings before,
but never one quite like this.
It put those school shootings in a whole new and darker category.
It also raised a flood of questions of,
what is happening to our youth?
- I believe some of these kids are drifting deeper and deeper
and deeper into rock music, violence, and that subculture.
- The biggest question is why did they do it?
They were completely different people,
opposite personalities, and opposite motives.
Dylan was suicidally depressed, he really wanted to die.
Eric Harris was the ringleader,
he wanted to show how powerful he was.
- On his internet page, Harris wrote,
"Pipe bombs are some of the easiest and deadliest ways
to kill a group of people."
- Columbine wasn't really intended as a school shooting.
It was primarily intended as a bombing.
- They were inspired by the Oklahoma City bombing.
They hoped that they would kill as many as 500 people.
In the end a lot of their homemade bombs did not detonate.
[school bell ringing]
- School bells have an ominous ring to them.
Is it about to happen in our schools?
- What Columbine did, in sort of the arc of terrorism,
was open a terrible Pandora's Box,
because terrorism was always used for political ends,
and what Eric and Dylan decided was like,
why don't we just do this terrorist stuff
for our own aggrandizement?
And they did, and that created a whole new template
of these spectacle murders.
We're giving them the platform to do this.
We provide the coverage.
They do the act and then we make them the stars.
[dramatic music]
- The White House has now confirmed
that Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the alleged mastermind
of the bombing of the World Trade Center,
has been arrested in Pakistan.
- About 11 hours of deliberation before the seven men
and five women unanimously sentenced McVeigh
to death by lethal injection.
- The FBI says the man wanted in a fatal shooting
outside CIA headquarters has been turned over to the US.
- The Unabomber now knows his sentence,
and it is life in prison.
- Over the course of the 1990s a lot of terrorism threats
were dealt with as law enforcement cases.
The Department of Justice and the FBI would find their guy
and they would prosecute him.
It isn't that that wasn't essential, that strategy.
It just meant that we weren't perceiving the threat
as something bigger.
- This is the new face of terror, Osama Bin Laden,
the 39-year-old renegade son of a Saudi billionaire,
an Islamic fundamentalist, elusive, mysterious.
- Bin Laden's academic training was in economics
and public administration,
so he brought the sensibilities of a businessman to terrorism
when he creates Al-Qaeda.
- Call it Terror, Inc.
Private jets, Swiss bank accounts--
he gives orders via the internet.
- When it comes to issues like motive, money, network,
he's one of the few in the world
who has all the various components.
Bin Laden, who had been a de facto ally
of the United States during the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan in the 1980s,
turned on the United States.
- He was angry at the lingering American presence
in Saudi Arabia.
I mean, the war with Saddam Hussein was over.
It was seen as this great insult,
to have non-Muslims in the country defending it.
- I first heard the name Osama Bin Laden in a story
in "The New York Times".
I went to my bosses at CNN,
saying let's try and meet this guy
and find out what his deal is.
- Amidst these remote mountains of Afghanistan
are the various hiding places
of one of the world's most wanted men--
Osama Bin Laden.
- Peter Arnett, the correspondent,
and Peter Jouvenal, the cameraman, and myself,
we travelled with Bin Laden's associates
into the mountains of Afghanistan,
which at that time was controlled by the Taliban.
- A year ago Bin Laden took refuge here in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is perhaps the only country in the world
that will accept him.
For his first television interview,
he figured he'd have a world audience.
Mr. Bin Laden, you have declared a Jihad
against the United States.
Can you tell us why?
[translator] - The arrogance
of the United States regime has reached the point
that they occupied Arabia, the holiest place of the Muslims,
who are more than a billion people in the world today.
- What are your future plans?
[translator] - You'll see them
and hear about them in the media...
God willing.
[people shouting, sirens wailing]
- On the eighth anniversary of the US deployment
in Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden's forces
bombed two American embassies in Africa.
- It was mid-morning in Nairobi when a powerful bomb
exploded outside the US embassy.
The building behind the embassy
crumbled into a tangle of concrete and steel,
turning the sidewalk red with blood.
A passing bus, its windows blown out, people onboard incinerated.
- Almost simultaneously,
415 miles away, another deadly blast.
The target? The US embassy
in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
- Simultaneous attacks become the hallmark of Al-Qaeda
demonstrating its power.
- The death toll now stands at 210.
5,000 people were injured.
- This attack is very sophisticated,
it is very coordinated.
This is an enemy that we were not prepared for.
- Overseas tonight Secretary of State Madeline Albright
spent the day in East Africa.
- I went to Kenya, I also went to Tanzania
to see what had happened,
basically still trying to collect the facts.
We began to be able to trace that to Osama Bin Laden.
We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage
by people who do not like what we stand for.
- Bin Laden's group is suddenly a real player.
And the Clinton administration
decides to do something about it.
- American military forces struck a series of targets
overseas in Sudan and Afghanistan.
[missiles whooshing]
- The unmanned Tomahawk missile
was the Pentagon's weapon of choice
for the surprise aerial attacks
aimed at sending a pointed message
to accused terrorist kingpin, Osama Bin Laden.
- America has battled terrorism for many years.
We have quietly disrupted terrorist groups
and foiled their plots.
But there have been, and will be times,
when our very national security is challenged,
and when we must take extraordinary steps
to protect the safety of our citizens.
- Within minutes of today's attacks in Afghanistan
and Sudan, some in Washington were openly questioning
the timing of it.
- It was the "wag the dog" question about the movie
where a president fakes a war to distract the country
from news of his sexual dalliances.
- There are quite a few people who believe that Clinton
is trying to distract Americans with a shiny object
from what really matters, which is his impeachment trouble.
For the remainder of his time in office,
he wouldn't authorize attacks unless the information
was absolutely perfect because he anticipated that criticism.
- We came within yards,
literally, of taking out Osama Bin Laden himself.
- And he got away, obviously.
- Well, like, you know, happenstance, luck.
- Bin Laden, at war with the United States
every second of every day,
according to counter-terrorism officials who tell NBC News
his terror network now operates in 50 countries,
training camps in 20.
- We had entered a different era.
You'd have an enemy that is completely amorphous.
They can be in Yemen, they can be in Saudi Arabia,
they can be in Paris, in London, they can be everywhere.
[dramatic music]
- What's the fear of Bin Laden today?
- If, in fact, he is trying to mount another attack,
and all the intelligence senior analysts have said publicly
before Congress and on television,
that they believe he is,
then you end up moving towards American symbols,
corporate symbols, or tourism,
or America stateside.
- By the end of the decade,
the American and other foreign intelligence agencies
were very much on guard.
The chatter on intercepts was that the turn of a century or,
in this case, a millennium,
this would be a great opportunity to be memorable.
- Tonight, a man in custody,
a man who came across the Canadian border
headed for Seattle with a truckload of explosives
and timing devices.
- Authorities say the suspect arrives at Port Angeles,
Washington, aboard the car ferry from Victoria, British Columbia,
but he's nervous, acting suspiciously.
- It was a border guard in Washington state,
she stopped the man who was the driver
and asked if she could look into his truck.
- Authorities fear he was part of a plot
to launch a New Year Eve's attack,
and that he was not acting alone.
There may be a connection to Saudi-born terrorist,
Osama Bin Laden.
But as one US official worries tonight,
there's still a lot we don't know.
- Ahmed Ressam in some respects was a new kind of terrorist.
In the past, Al-Qaeda operatives had been given
very specific orders and direct targeting instructions.
Ressam, though, is given $12,000 in seed money.
He's told to raise the rest of your funds,
recruit your own cell and bomb whatever you want.
- Two quart jars of nitroglycerine
and three garbage bags filled with the chemical urea
were found in the trunk.
- The explosive ingredients are the same used
in the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.
- His mission is to blow up one of the terminals at LAX,
Los Angeles airport, and he gets stopped.
- Even though the authorities appear to have gotten their man,
the threat may not yet be over.
- We ended the decade with the clear perception now
that we were engaged with a terrorist organization
that had declared war on us
and was determined to carry out more attacks.
His interest is in achieving a large body count,
that is the reality of today's terrorism.
- Fears of sabotage have also prompted
tighter security at airports, border crossings,
utilities and tunnels in many states.
- ABC News released results today from a poll that asked,
how concerned are you about the possibility
of a domestic terrorist attack?
73% said they weren't worried.
- The challenge is sustaining counter-terrorism
as a policy priority.
We shouldn't lose vigilance after January one--
we need to sustain these efforts because the terrorist
often takes the path of least resistance and strikes
when and where we least expect them to.
- The government and security people
all over the country have to be lucky every day.
Terrorists have to be lucky only once.
[explosions]
- If you look back at the '90s in their totality,
there was a lot of violence going on in the United States
on American soil.
- Seeing the 1990s whole, if you will,
and looking at major pivot points--
Columbine, the shooting in schools in Colorado,
the bombing in Oklahoma City, the Davidian compound in Waco--
they were indicative of something
deep within the country.
Something dark was moving in our society.
- As the year 2000 approaches,
groups that track the nation's militias say
hatred of the government and fear of martial law are growing.
- It's hard to think of any decade that comes close
to the 1990s in terms of the number
and the enormity of attacks
directed and designed to get back at the US government.
- These very powerful subterranean forces
were marshalling their strength
to really plunge us into a new era of violence
in the new millennium.
- It was bad enough
when all this horror happened somewhere else.
But now that the world's become a global village,
there is no somewhere else anymore.
Look out, America, terrorism's come home.
♪ ♪
- I think we are in for a long time, you know--
- Of things like this? - Of things like this.
This is the new, the war, the battles of the end
of this century and the beginning of the next one.
And this country, when we put our mind to it,
whether it was the first World War or the second World War
or the Cold War, we have an enemy, and the enemy
are the terrorists who do not believe in what we do,
open societies and freedom.
They are out to kill plain, innocent people,
and we have to understand... - It is a war.
- That this is a sustained effort.
♪ ♪