Dumb Luck

Five years isn't enough time to bury the truth. The Clinton Administration's one success, the thwarting of a terrorist attack at LA International Airport, was a stroke of luck - the work of a lone, attentive border guard.

Bill Clinton, Richard Clarke, and Janet Reno all claimed that it was their hard work that saved lives.

"It's almost become an article of faith at the 9/11 commission hearings that high-level meetings in Washington helped stop a terrorist attack at the Los Angeles airport just before the turn of the millennium. But the inside-the-Beltway gospel just isn't true.

NBC News went back to the customs agent who actually stopped an al-Qaida terrorist from entering the United States in 1999, and she says it was her gut instincts — not meetings in Washington — that helped her make the arrest.

In December of 1999, upon arriving on a ferry from Canada, al-Qaida operative Ahmed Ressam was arrested with a trunk full of explosives. His plan: to blow up Los Angeles International Airport."