By December 1998, intelligence indicated that Bin Laden was staying at the governor’s residence in Kandahar, according to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, otherwise known as the 9/11 Report, released in 2004. According to the report, the missed chance made some lower-level officials angry, but later information showed that Bin Laden had left his quarters.
“The principals’ wariness about ordering a strike appears to have been vindicated: Bin Laden left his room unexpectedly, and if a strike had been ordered he would not have been hit,” the commission wrote.
U.S. officials again considered a missile strike against Bin Laden in May 1999 – but decided not to act because the intelligence seemed unclear. The situation was complicated by the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the NATO war against Serbia, the commission said.