24 December,2009 07:27 AM IST | | Agencies
Book claims the former US prez came within minutes of being killed in 1996
Bill Clinton came within minutes of being killed by Osama bin Laden in 1996 when a bomb was placed under a bridge during a trip to the Philippines, according to a new book.
The then US president was in Manila to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation meet.
The assassination was foiled when the Secret Service picked up coded radio messages using the words 'bridge' and 'wedding' a terrorist's code word for assassination just as Clinton was on his way to a meeting.
Clinton's route was diverted away from a bridge, which was later found to have been planted with explosives.
An investigation into the plot "revealed that it had been masterminded by a Saudi terrorist living in Afghanistan a man named Osama bin Laden''.
Secret Service mum
The claims are made in The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs Starr by Ken Gormley, an American
law professor.
Professor Gormley says the former director of the Secret Service was his source. The Secret Service has refused to comment on the claims.
Al-Qaeda members have admitted targeting Clinton in the 1990s, but this is the first time suggestions have emerged that Bin Laden was involved or that the terrorists came close to succeeding.
Professor Gormley says the plot was kept top secret until now.
Attempted bombings
Media reports about attempted bombings at the time were linked to local communist insurgents, not a bid by Islamic militants to kill the US president.
The report could have ramifications for the widely held assumption that the Bush regime could not have anticipated the September 11 attacks.
4
The number of US presidents who have been assassinated Abraham Lincoln(1865), James A Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901) and John F Kennedy (1963)
