The al Qaeda plot to kill Bill Clinton that history nearly forgot
Air Force One with President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton aboard was on its final approach to Manila on Nov. 23, 1996, when their U.S. Secret Service detail received alarming intelligence: an explosive device had been planted on the motorcade route into the Philippines capital.
Acting swiftly, the agents switched to a backup route to the Clintons’ hotel, foiling a suspected al Qaeda attempt to assassinate the president of the United States minutes after his arrival for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
As the motorcade crawled along the trafficclogged alternate route, Filipino security officers recovered a powerful bomb on a bridge the convoy would have taken and an SUV abandoned nearby containing AK-47 assault rifles, four retired agents told Reuters.
The assassination attempt, which appears to be one of al Qaeda’s earliest attempts to strike the U.S., was mentioned briefly in books published in 2010 and 2019.
Now, eight retired secret service agents – seven of whom were in Manila – have given Reuters the most detailed account to date of the failed plot.
Reuters found no evidence of a U.S. government investigation into the attempt on Clinton’s life. The news agency also could not independently determine if intelligence agencies conducted classified probes.
For some of the Secret Service agents interviewed by Reuters, the events in Manila have left unanswered questions.
“I always wondered why I wasn’t kept back to stay in Manila to monitor any investigation,” said Gregory Glod, the lead Secret Service intelligence agent in Manila and one of seven agents who spoke out for the first time. “Instead, they flew me out the day after Clinton left.”
“There was an incident,” said Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. “It remains classified.” He declined to say what, if any, actions the United States took in response.
Clinton did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him through his spokesperson and the Clinton Foundation.
Former CIA director Leon Panetta, who was Clinton’s chief of staff at the time, said he was unaware of the incident but that an attempt to kill a president should be investigated.
“As a former chief of staff, I’d be very interested in trying to find out whether somebody put this information to the side and didn’t bring it to the attention of people who should have been aware that something like that happened.”
Under a 1986 law it is a crime for a foreign extremist organization to attempt to kill any U.S. national overseas. Prosecution requires authorization from the attorney general – the late Janet Reno in 1996 – which would then trigger an FBI investigation.
The FBI declined to comment on the Manila assassination attempt.
Four former U.S. officials, including the ambassador in Manila at the time, Thomas Hubbard, confirmed the foiled attack to Reuters but said they were also unaware of any U.S. investigation or follow-up actions.
Thirteen years after Osama bin Laden’s death, al Qaeda is a diminished force. But the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas “mobilized efforts to radicalize and recruit new followers within Muslim communities in Europe,” a U.N. panel of experts wrote in a Jan. 29 report, citing al Qaeda propaganda supporting Hamas.