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tv   The Nineties  CNN  December 30, 2017 6:00pm-7:00pm PST

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♪ i hope you had had the time of your life ♪ 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. >> there as been a massive explosion in oklahoma city, oklahoma. >> weicidant lose the vigilancy. >> what are your future plans? >> you'll see them and hear about them in the media. god willing. ♪
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♪ in the beginning of the '90s, terrorism was thought to be done.
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people who were likely to use terrorism 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 ate the the '90s would be a time of peace. not only was it it cold war over, we had won. >> we have the opportunity to forge a new world order, a world where the rule of law governs the conduct of nations. >> there were many people who didn't like that changing america. >> federal marshals are surrounding a cabin where a white supremacist, randy weaver was holed up with his family. >> he was a survivalist that lived at ruby ridge, idaho.
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he was of interest to the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms because he had links to the airbornian nations. they tried to pressure him to inform on his friends in the movement and he refuse said. >> weaver is summoned to court for a weapons charge that involves the selling of sawed off shotguns to law enforcement. >> a force of federal agents and the national guard have surounlded it house. >> this is nothing but a show of force to scare everybody up in idaho. we all have guns buried someplace. >> northern idaho has become home to a lot of people like randy weaver who want be away from it problems of civilization and the civilization itself. >> everybody has talked about imas a good loving christian family man. >> never before has north idaho -- >> there was a shootout in which
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weaver's 14-year-old son, sammy, and a dog and a u.s. marshal all ended up dead. sharp shooter shot his wife dead while she was carrying the baby in her arms. >> fbi agents are trained only to shoot to protect themselves and others. >> decisions were made within the fbi which allowed the snipers to shoot at anyone who was armed. >> hey, i'll make it easy. i'll turn my back on you. >> not every who lives around here says randy weaver is tin right but they say none of this would have happened if federal authorities had had just left imhad alone. >> ruby ridge was not a story on the front page of the national newspapers. but it absolutely did energize the radical right. >> the siege ended at 12:15 when randy weaver and his three children walked off the mountain
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after three days. >> arising precisely because of the end of the cold war and this mindset that the united states government is the enemy, breeds almost a decade of violence. indiana langly today, a young man opened fire on a number of people in their cars. >> nobody would think something like a shooting of cia personnel would happen on their front doorstep. the shooter escapes. >> two cia authorities were shot to death in virginia. a pakistani suspect is thought to be back in pakistan. >> they know his name but who's he working for? what organization? >> in the 1970s, we were dealing with terrorist groups.
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this is the action of one single individual. we did not realize that terrorism seems to be moving in a new direction. >> at 18 minutes afternoon something terrible happened in lower man halten. >>. >> they now suspect a car bomb. >> the bombing was designed to bring down the north tower and then falling down the south tower. >> it didn't collapse the towers butted it did injure a dozen people -- >> i was concerned any accident, tragedy, you feel it very
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personally. >> i think it's amazing more people weren't killed. >> i was in new york as ambassador of the united states. there's no way to fully explain how all the sudden the mood changed. >> every single resource is equipped to work on this. 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 extremists war 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 kping. >> it turned out one of the
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collaborators had had had come back to ask for his deposit back. >> the man has link to a radical muslim group. >> they managed to capture most of the accomplices but the master mind left. >> his uncle is the man who would later become a leader in an organization called al qaeda. >> i have an office in that building. that will be our message to whoever did this. whatever you're trying to achieve, you will fail. >> for the firb it lesson was that these guys, while dangerous, were not at the same level taz te level of the terrorists of the late '80s. that would be a complete misunderstanding. >> the tower will reopen for business ahead off schedule. >> the only ones whoicide be careful now, he says are it
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so we know how to cover almost almoanything.hing even a swing set standoff.
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and we covered it, july first, twenty-fifteen. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ finding the best hotel price is whoooo. now a safe bet. because tripadvisor searches... ...over 200 booking sites - so you save up to 30% on the... ...hotelock it in. tripadvisor. good morning, everybody. we begin this time around at 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. this religious group, the branch davidians have this compound.
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they have been buying parts that would convert semiautomatic weapons to fully automatic weapon, which were illegal. the atf decided it was time to go in. >> take the 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 this 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 tribune began to publish a series of articles about what they called the sinful messiah, who loves music and who will drink a beer with you, and who also happens to have sex with underaged girls and has a lot of weapons. >> it makes nobody's business
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whether we have a gun or not. guns are the right of americans to have. >> cult members continue fortifying their compound, an indication there is no plan to surrender any time 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 is taking it to the u.s. government. he is not going to 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
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cx gas, a kind of tear gas on steroids. all america along with all of law enforcement on the scene is waiting for 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 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 had 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
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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 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. >> 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's also an armed militia here in indiana, and at least 20 other states. >> we'd always had a radical right. but in the '90s it really entered the mainstream. gun shows became an extremely important venue, not just for
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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 is an 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 casualties there are. the explosion felt 35 miles away. >> rescue workers are desperately trying to save any remaining lives. you can see the side of the building is all down. >> on april 19th when i got to oklahoma city, the building was still on fire, and a whole lot of cars around the building that had also exploded. it was unbelievable.
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>> 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 one of the individuals believed to be responsible for wednesday's terrible attack in oklahoma city has been arrested. timothy mcveigh, aged 27. >> 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 had met in the army. mcveigh had fought in the first persian gulf war. >> he left the military very,
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very disillusioned. the one thing that sustained him was his reading about the radical far right and meeting like-minded people. >> timothy mcveigh's plot to blow up the federal building took shape over the course of a secret year-long odyssey. >> he 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 a group 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
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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 scrubbed farmhouses in other trailer parks. that is how many others there are just like him. fl[ gasps, laughs ]c, progressive gives you options based on your budget. you ever feel like... cliché foil characters scheming against a top insurer for no reason?
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good evening. it is a terrifying and long running mystery. somewhere in this country tonight, there is 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 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 unabomb. >> una bomb stands for university airline bomber. that's because six universities, and one commercial airline and an airline executive have been among the victims. >> the fbi says it cannot find a pattern and admits the long investigation has been frustrating.
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>> 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 lone solitary operation as a serial bomber was so unique. >> unibomb hotline? >> so far thousands of tips phoned into the san francisco unibomb 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 ] >> 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
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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. >> someone does recognize these crazed writings and turns him into the authorities. >> the longest and most intense manhunt in 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. >> are you the unabomber? >> fbi agents today searched the home of a 53-year-old former mathematics instructor named theodore kaczynski. >> the on-site investigation has
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yielded a cache of evidence. >> it was the most incredible moment. we knew this long journey of 18 years was over. >> mike wallace and i together on "60 minutes" interviewed the family, who had turned him in. >> i was feeling something that i didn't really expect to feel at all, which was a deep sense of unease, fear. >> because of what you read? >> because of what i read. >> because it sounded like ted? >> because it sounded 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. but 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
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needs to have a flag. three for one! >> hats, t-shirts. >> in july, 1996 when the olympics were being hosted in atlanta, there was a tremendous concern about terrorist attacks. the security for the park was carefully coordinated. >> it's all taking place in the midst of security that america 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 officials decided people should be able to go and not have to worry about checkpoints. and that was centennial park. >> this morning thousands at an open air rock concert in centennial park. >> all of a sudden i felt a big boom, blast, heat came and it knocked me off the wall, blew my pants off.
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>> up the street! everybody needs to move up the street. >> authorities said the device appeared to be a pipe bomb 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 a 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 praised as a hero after the incident, even praised by president clinton for his swift action. >> the only thing i wish we could have done is 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 it. >> 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.
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>> 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 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 was no longer a suspect, who planted the pipe bomb? to be continued. ♪ prices of the season' on the only bed that adjusts on both sides to your ideal comfort your sleep number setting.
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once again, a bomb blast in atlanta. >> the explosion 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. 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. oh, my god. >> this second explosion about an hour later injured a television photographer, an atf
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agent, and at least four others. >> 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's 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, lesbian nightclub. >> federal agents went public today asking for help in locating this man, 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
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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 advisers said you could hide a whole regiment in these mountains and we'd 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.
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i think it's part of his hide-and-seek game. >> and he thinks he is winning? >> he is winning. >> in the end, he got caught in a sort of pathetic little moment where he is rummaging around in a dumpster looking for something to eat, and some local rookie cop arrests him. >> there was kind of unbelievable quality to all of this. eric rudolph was part of this internal terrorist moment. it's like a worm that was eating away inside of us. >> 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 at least two people are inside with multiple
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automatic weapons, and perhaps some pipe bombs. we've heard unconfirmed again from police. >> 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 spraying. >> just starts shooting. anybody that was walking, talking, it didn't matter. boom, they were shot. they didn't care. >> you have blood on your hands. >> 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
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out a window. >> second floor says i'm bleeding to death. >> 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. 13 people died and 28 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 search 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 denouement begins. the search for motivation, the calls for tighter gun control, the counseling sessions at school, and the endless, endless grief. >> there have been school shootings before. but never one quite like this.
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it put the school shooting 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 do 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 hope they'd would kill as many as 500 people. in the end, a lot of their homemade bombs did not detonate.
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>> school bells have an ominous ring to them. it is 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.
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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 u.s.
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>> 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. >> his academic training was in economics and public administration. 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 net. >> when it comes to issues like motive, money, network, he is 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
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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 of osama bin laden in a story in "the new york times." i went to my boss at cnn. 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. >> the correspondent and peter juvenile, 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.
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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? >> 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? >> you'll see them and hear about them in the media. god willing. >> on the 8th anniversary of the u.s. 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 u.s. 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 on board incinerated. >> almost simultaneously, 415 miles away, another deadly blast.
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the target, the u.s. embassy in dar es salaam, tanzania. >> simultaneous attacks become the hallmark of al qaeda demonstrating its power. >> the death toll 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 madeleine 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 him.
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>> american military forces struck a series of targets overseas in sudan and afghanistan. >> 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. 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 a 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
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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, by 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 have an enemy that is completely amorphous. they can be in yemen, they can be in saudi arabia, they can be in paris and london. they can be everywhere. whoooo.
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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
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be memorable. >> there's not a man in custody, a man who came across the canadian border headed for seattle with a trunk load of explosives and timing devices. >> authorities say the suspect arrives aboard a car ferry, 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 trunk. >> authorities fear he was part of a plot to launch a new year's eve attack and that he was not acting alone. there may be a connection to saudi born terrorist osama bin laden. >> but as one u.s. official worries tonight, there's still a lot we don't know. >> he was a new kind of terrorist. in the past, al qaeda operatives have been given very specific orders and direct targeting instructions. ahmed ressam 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.
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>> two quarter jars of nitroglycerin and chemical jars filled with urea were found in the trunk. >> the ingredients were the same as the ingredients used in the bombing of the world trade center in new york. >> his mission is to blow up one of the terminals at the los angeles airport, and he gets stopped. >> even though the authorities appear to have gotten their man, the threat may not yet can be over. >> we ended the decade with a clear perception now that we were engaged with a terrorist oganization 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
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attack. 73% said they weren't worried. >> the challenge is sustaining counter-terrorism as a policy priority. we shouldn't lose vigilance after january 1. we need to sustain these efforts because the terrorists 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. >> 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 and looking at major pivot points, columbine, the shooting in schools, in colorado, the bombing in oklahoma city, the davidian compound in waco were indicative of something deep within the country. something dark was moving in this society. >> as the year 2000 approaches,
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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 u.s. government. >> these very powerful subterranean forces were marshalling their strength to really plunge us into a new era of violence in the new little millennium. >> it was bad enough when all this horror happened somewhere else but now that the world has become a global village, there is not somewhere else anymore. look out america. terrorism has come home. >> i think we are in for a long time. you know -- >> 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 when we put our mind to it, whether it was the first or second world war or the cold war, we have an enemy. and the enemy are the terrorists
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who do not believe in what we do, open societies and freedom. who are out to kill innocent people and we have to understand that this is a sustained effort. a new breeze is blowing and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn. >> a column of tanks is heading towards the russian parliament. >> there is no place for lawless aggression in the new world order we seek to create. >> unemployment will be growing again by-election day. >> i will not sellout to anybody but to the american people. >> i believe with all my heart together we can rekindle that american dream. >> the day of the dictator is over.

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