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Khobar Towers The Clinton administration left many stones unturnd. BY LOUIS J. FREEH Sunday, June 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. Ten years ago today, acting under direct orders from senior Iranian government leaders, the Saudi Hezbollah detonated a 25,000-pound TNT bomb that killed 19 U.S. airmen in their dormitory at Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The blast wave destroyed Building 131 and grievously wounded hundreds of additional Air Force personnel. It also killed an unknown number of Saudi civilians in a nearby park. The 19 Americans murdered were members of the 4,404th Wing, who were risking their lives to enforce...

No one ever assumed the Republican presidential nomination was going to be smooth sailing, with 17 announced candidates ranging from all walks of public and private life vying for the prize. But the candidacy, and we use that term loosely, of Donald Trump has changed the landscape in a way few could have imagined. Trump’s presence thus far has muted the inevitability of establishment star Jeb Bush — a good thing, in our estimation, despite the insistence of some Trump supporters that our criticism of The Donald automatically means we favor the heir to the Bush Dynasty. Unfortunately, it has...

Texas Governor Rick Perry's former chairman Sam Clovis has joined forces with Donald Trump as the race to become the Republican Party's presidential nominee got its first defection last night. Clovis, an influential Conservative activist, college professor and talk-show host is now a member of Trump's team. In a sign that the GOP front-runner is being taken seriously on the campaign trail, Clovis, has become national co-chair and senior policy adviser for the Property tycoon turned politician. Earlier this week, Clovis quit the Perry campaign, after hinting that it was facing a host of difficulties. The Trump campaign relished announcing...

At this rate, itÂ’s hard to believe he wonÂ’t be the first mid-major candidate out of the race. His fundraising has been so poor, thanks in part to Ted Cruz soaking up lots of Texas money, that Perry had to temporarily stop paying his staff two weeks ago. The moneyÂ’s since started flowing again as the campaign has begun to outsource operations to his Super PAC, which has plenty of dough in the bank, but thereÂ’s no getting around the perception that heÂ’s struggling. With good reason: HeÂ’s currently at 1.3 percent in RCPÂ’s poll average in Iowa. He hasnÂ’t...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sam Clovis, the highly touted Iowa campaign co-chair for Rick Perry, has departed the Texas governor's presidential bid, a blow that comes as the campaign prepares to restructure its program in the early states. Confronted by anemic fundraising that forced the candidate to stop paying all its workers, Perry's campaign is preparing to off-load some of its field operation to an allied super PAC. The move will test whether an outside group can organize just as well as a traditional campaign. Over the next two weeks, Perry's field program will revamp as the $17 million super PAC...

The attention-grabbing candidacy of Donald Trump is again bringing out differences between the two White House hopefuls from Texas. The bombastic billionaire put the GOP field on the spot Sunday with the release of a plan to deal with illegal immigration that calls for an end to birthright citizenship. In effect, that would require changing the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to those born in the United States even if their parents are in the country illegally. Where exactly former Gov. Rick Perry stands on Trump's birthright citizenship position was unclear Wednesday. But over the past few days, Perry has...

Campaigns at last month’s 'kiddie table' debate believe the RNC took actions that made them look like losers.Two weeks after the first Republican presidential debate in Cleveland, several candidates scraping the bottom of primary polls are still seething about their treatment — and ripping party leadership for what they describe as, at best careless, and at worst intentional, decisions that embarrassed them on national TV. POLITICO reached out to the seven campaigns who faced off in an Aug. 6 undercard debate on Fox News, and several vented about the Republican National Committee — which has adopted a more assertive role...

AUSTIN - Former Gov. Rick Perry appealed to the state’s highest criminal court Tuesday in an effort to dispose of the abuse-of-power charge that remains standing against him. Casting the argument in dramatic terms and saying the constitutional separation of powers is at stake, Perry’s legal team in its petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals urged it to act “to prevent the judicial system from being complicit in undermining the very structure of Texas government.” Perry, who left office in January and is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, suggested he is looking for a speedy resolution to the...

The donors who gave to Perry's last presidential run have supplied more money to Cruz's campaign this time around.Rick Perry's campaign is in deep financial trouble. And fellow Texan Ted Cruz is part of the reason why. While Perry's near-broke campaign has stopped paying its staff, Cruz has dominated the chase for Texas dollars—even among the donors who fueled Perry's 2012 presidential campaign. According to a National Journal analysis of campaign-finance records, Perry 2012 donors have given over $895,000 to Cruz so far this year but only $376,000 (less than half) to Perry's 2016 campaign. Perry raised just over $1.1...

Tuesday, Rick Perry's campaign announced it could no longer pay his staffers around the country and released them to find other work. His fundraising had dried up. It's potentially an ignominious end to a noteworthy political career that spanned more than 30 years. Fundraising acumen was considered one of Perry's strong points four years ago when he belatedly announced his run for the White House and raised $17 million in the first seven weeks of his campaign. In 2015, it's a different story. His campaign is on the ropes and out of money. Not even Texas is solidly behind the...

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania gets agitated when political analysts question why he is still in the race for the GOP presidential nomination when he is scoring less than 2 percent in the polls and has barely raised $1 million in campaign funds – a pittance compared with many of his rivals. He notes that when he ran for president last time, he had little money and low single-digit standing in the polls in January 2012 – just before he went on to beat Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses. This time, Santorum is so far behind the large...

The Rick Perry campaign took another blow it absolutely did not need. Late Monday, National Journal reported that the former Texas governor's campaign has stopped paying its South Carolina staff. By Monday night, there were reports that all paid Perry staff had been taken off the payroll, and that the campaign's top brass gave staff the green light to apply for other jobs. "Pay is only one reason people do this," Katon Dawson, the governor's South Carolina state director, told the National Journal. He told The Washington Post that "money is extremely tight" and that everyone "moved to volunteer status,"...

Former Texas governor Rick Perry's presidential campaign is no longer paying its staff because fundraising has dried up, while his cash-flush allied super PAC is preparing to expand its political operation to compensate for the campaign's shortcomings, campaign and super PAC officials and other Republicans familiar with the operation said late Monday. Perry, who has struggled to gain traction in his second presidential run, has stopped paying his staff at the national headquarters in Austin as well as in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, according to a Republican familiar with the Perry...

Staffers for former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign are working without pay, CBS News has learned. National Journal reported Monday that Perry's team in South Carolina was no longer being compensated by the campaign. "Pay is only one reason people do this," Katon Dawson, Perry's South Carolina state director, told National Journal. "We'll be able to live off the land for a while." But the problem isn't just limited to Perry's team in South Carolina. Jeff Miller, Perry's national campaign manager, told campaign staff on Friday that the only expenses moving forward would be for travel, a source close...

The Big Conversation The two Texans on the separate GOP debate stages Thursday didn't throw many punches at fellow Republicans. Speaking at the earlier debate, former Gov. Rick Perry talked up Texas' economic performance under his tenure, saying "nobody's done it like Rick Perry's done it." Perry continued to blast Donald Trump, who was in the later debate, but Perry avoided directly attacking the six others who joined him on stage. And as The Associated Press notes, there was no "oops moment for Perry," who "appeared confident and well-rehearsed." The often-combative U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, decided to stay "largely...

<p>With the parade of Republican nominees stepping onto the stage in Cleveland and using social media to reserve their place at the electoral starting gate, the candidates read as an anthropological study of the Grand Old Party.</p> <p>From establishment favored moderates like former Florida Governor Jeb Bush to Tea Party favorites like Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the first debate stage in Cleveland will serve as a lesson in the progression of the Republican Party from Eisenhower onward.</p>

CLEVELAND — He wasn’t among the seven GOP presidential candidates selected by the Fox News Channel to take part in today’s pre-debate, but Donald Trump was criticized by two of the candidates. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Trump is “using his celebrity rather than his conservatism.” Trump has mocked Perry by saying he wears glasses to appear smarter. When asked about Trump, former CEO Carly Fiorina responding by asking her six rivals on stage if any of them had received a call from Bill Clinton before they jumped into the election. She said that was probably because they hadn’t...

CLEVELAND, Ohio — In his only sitdown interview while preparing for the first GOP primary debate on Thursday, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry discussed exclusively with Breitbart News his plan to get Americans back to work amid a crisis with the lowest workforce participation rate since 1979.

To hardly anyone’s surprise, former Gov. Rick Perry was left out of the first Republican presidential debate on Thursday night. Fox News, the network that will televise the Cleveland debate, announced its line-up of 10 GOP hopefuls on Tuesday, which is led by billionaire Donald Trump and includes Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, but excluded Perry, the longest serving governor in Texas history. For Perry and the six other GOP hopefuls who didn’t make the cut the consolation prize was an invitation to an earlier debate on the same stage. However, the second tier debate is set for 4 p.m. CDT,...

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is in danger of missing the first Republican debate, kicked off a GOP cattle call of candidates in New Hampshire on Monday vowing to secure the border if he’s elected president. “The American people don’t trust Washington, D.C., to deal with this issue of immigration reform until we secure the border,” Perry said. “And I know something about securing the border.” Fourteen Republican candidates are participating in C-SPAN’s Voter’s First forum in New Hampshire on Monday. The style is different from the debate - one by one, the candidates will take the stage to...