US ignored leads on embassy bombing in city, new book reveals

Rescuers search through rubble forvictims near the US Embassy afterthe bombing on August 7, 1998. [PHOTO: FILE/STANDARD]

The US Embassy bombing in Nairobi on August 7, 1998, could have been prevented had US intelligence analysed and interrogated a treasure trove of documents and a computer recovered from an apartment where an Al-Qaeda cell operator was arrested almost a year to the attack, a newly published book reveals.

It also discloses that the documents and computer recovered from the Nairobi terrorism operative arrested in August 1997 were put in a box and shipped off to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where, astonishingly, they lay in a room unopened until the attack a year later.