Page "Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory" Paragraph 30

The bombing of the al-Shifa factory resurfaced in the news in April 2006, due to the firing of former CIA analyst Mary O ' Neil McCarthy.

McCarthy was against the bombing of the factory in 1998, and had written a formal letter of protest to President Clinton.

According to former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, she had voiced doubts that the factory had ties to al Qaeda or was producing chemical weapons.

The New York Times reported: " In the case of the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, her concerns may have been well-founded.

Sudanese officials and the plant's owner denied any connection to Al Qaeda.

In the aftermath of the attack, the internal White House debate over whether the intelligence reports about the plant were accurate spilled into the press.

Eventually, Clinton administration officials conceded that the hardest evidence used to justify striking the plant was a single soil sample that seemed to indicate the presence of a chemical used in making VX gas.