(Press Release) - The Africa Research Centre has published Clinton’s Fatal Lie: Sudan and the US terrorism list

, a 368-page critique of the United States government’s listing of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism. Clinton’s Fatal Lie: Sudan and the US terrorism list can be read or downloaded at Clinton’s Fatal Lie: Sudan and the US terrorism list is a detailed study of the Clinton administration’s listing of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993, and its continued listing as such, and concludes that Khartoum’s designation was politically-motivated and without foundation from the very beginning. This was also the conclusion of former President Jimmy
Carter who publicly stated at the time that Sudan was listed “without proof”. Rather than being based on evidence Carter was told that there had been “strong allegations” – allegations subsequently seen have been false. Sudan’s listing also flies in the face of two decades of active cooperation with the US in counter-terrorism.
The study examines in detail every reason advanced for Sudan’s listing and finds them to have been unjustified. The book then traces how this political abuse of federal anti-terrorism legislation by an administration noted for deceit set into motion a chain of events which included rejecting repeated Sudanese offers of counter-terrorism cooperation and intelligence-sharing which would have seen the extradition of Osama bin Laden to the US in 1996 and the snuffing out of the al- Qaeda terrorist organisation before it metastasized. Simply put, the atrocities of 9/11 would have been prevented had President Clinton and his administration accepted the Sudanese offers rather than perpetuating a lie. In this respect the study also echoes the comments made by Michael Scheuer, the head of the special CIA section tracking bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, who 
that short-sighted and incompetent politicians such as Bill Clinton, his counterterrorism director Richard Clarke and national security advisor Sandy Berger were to be held accountable in part for 9/11: “Bill, Dick and Sandy helped to push Americans out of the windows of the World Trade
Center on that September morning.” The book states that Sandy Berger’s subsequent prosecution and conviction in 2005 for stealing and destroying top-secret White House memos and papers in the National Archives was in all likelihood Berger erasing evidence of the Sudanese extradition offer. Clinton’s Fatal Lie: Sudan and the US terrorism list examines the systemic US intelligence failure with regard to Sudan, including the withdrawal of over 150 CIA intelligence reports in the 1990s alleging Sudanese involvement in terrorist plots because they were subsequently revealed to have been false. The book also reviews the disastrously inept 1998 US missile strike on the al- Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, an attack based on similarly false claims about Sudanese involvement with bin Laden and weapons of mass destruction in an eerie prequel to Washington’s invasion of Iraq on equally spurious grounds.
The study outlines for the first time the extent of US-Sudanese counter-terrorism and intelligence cooperation once the Clinton administration had left office, cooperation described by the Bush administration’s Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as “really terrific”. Sudan has saved
American lives and holds the line in a region wracked by terrorism and Islamist militancy. Despite two decades of counter-terrorism cooperation, however, Washington has broken repeated promises from senior US officials to remove Sudan from the state sponsors of terrorism list, a list
it should never have been on in the first place. Washington has instead continued to use the terrorism list as a political tool and in so doing undermining the credibility of the war on terrorism. Clinton’s Fatal Lie: Sudan and the US terrorism list demonstrate that the Clinton administration lied, lied and then lied again with regards to Sudan and terrorism. The book concludes that the American people were let down by the political ineptitude, deceit and arrogance of the Clinton administration and its political appointees – many of whom were subsequently recycled in the Obama administration.
The author of the study, David Hoile, concludes The United States has cried wolf regarding Sudan and terrorism from 1993 onwards and knowingly continues to do in its continued listing of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism. Washington also cried wolf on weapons of mass destruction in Sudan. The reality is that Sudan has stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States in the war on terrorism. President Donald Trump was elected in large part on a promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington and to challenge the “fake news” that sustains it. It is in
President Trump’s gift to reverse decades of the Washington establishment’s double standards and fake claims regarding Khartoum and reward an ally by removing Sudan from the state sponsors of terrorism list.