Media Blackout on Damning CIA Video

News of a bombshell CIA videotape that shows the Clinton administration had Osama bin Laden in its crosshairs but failed to take him out has been deep-sixed by most mainstream press outlets in the U.S.

More than 36 hours after NBC News broadcast the secret footage of bin Laden out in the open at his Tarnack Farms compound, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and dozens of other prestigious main press outlets have embargoed the story.

Around the world, reaction to the blockbuster report - which included an account from a CIA official who says the White House gave orders not to kill the al-Qaida chief - has been markedly different.

China's Xinhua news service, The Statesman in India, Agence France-Press and the British news service Reuters have all covered the story, even as their American cousins do their best to bury the news.

In 2002, President Clinton explained that he didn't launch an attack on bin Laden's Khandahar encampment because it could have killed 200 innocent Afghanis.

A year later, bin Laden killed 3,100 Americans in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Editor's note: