Four Years Ago in TIME

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Amanda Bower, Roy B. White, Rebecca Winters

When the U.S. retaliated after two embassy bombings, Americans wondered what else we were doing to fight terrorism. In an issue with President Clinton on the cover, TIME's story on OSAMA BIN LADEN warned of attacks at home.

The exercise was code-named Poised Response. Attorney General Janet Reno had invited 200 policemen...to plan how they'd react to a terrorist attack. They consider[ed] four scenarios: a car-bomb attack, a chemical-weapons strike on a Washington Redskins football game, the planting of an explosive device in a federal building and an assassination attempt on Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State. But the war game quickly melted down into squabbling and finger pointing.

Reno left the session feeling uneasy--understandably so, say Administration officials. Poised Response was anything but poised. And while the cops involved were never told which terrorist might carry out such an audacious attack, Reno and other top Administration aides had one man in mind: Osama bin Laden, whose Afghan camp had been blasted by U.S. cruise missiles two months earlier. His operatives might be coming to town soon. Intelligence sources tell TIME they have evidence that bin Laden may be planning his boldest move yet--a strike on Washington or possibly New York City in an eye-for-an-eye retaliation. --TIME, December 21, 1998