Clarke: I Let Bin Laden Family Go

Newsmax ^ | 4/1/04

[areafiftyone]

Don't look now, but Clinton terrorism czar Richard Clarke has inadvertently let the White House off the hook on the most potentially explosive charge related to 9/11 - allegations that President Bush let Osama bin Laden's family escape from the U.S. in the days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Clarke says nothing about this episode in his book and with good reason, since the truth fits neither his Bush-bashing agenda nor his carefully constructed image as a tougher-than-nails terrorism fighter.

It turns out, however, that it was Clarke himself who gave the green light for Osama bin Laden's relatives fly home to Riyadh beginning on Sept. 14, just three days after U.S. skies were closed to all air traffic.

The subject of the bin Ladens' escape came up briefly during Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 Commission last week, where he tried to finesse his role in blowing what many still believe was the best chance to get information on Osama bin Laden's whereabouts and his family's financial network.

Clarke told the Commission that an individual - whose identity he doesn't recall - relayed a request for the bin Laden fly-out from the Saudi embassy to his White House Situation Room Crisis Management Team.

He says that he refused to grant approval until the FBI signed off.

In his testimony the closest Clarke came to admitting responsibility was when he told the Commission:

"I believe after the FBI came back and said it was all right with them, we ran it through the decision process for all of these decisions that we were making in those hours, which was the interagency Crisis Management Group on the video conference," Clarke explained, before hinting at his own responsibility.

"I was making - or coordinating a lot of decisions on 9/11 in the days immediately after," he told the Commission.

But in the next breath Clarke tried to shift responsibility away from himself, suggesting instead that blame for the blunder should go perhaps to White House Chief of Staff Andy Card or Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me," the terrorism whistleblower lamented to the Commission. "Since you press me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State or the White House Chief of Staff's Office. But I don't know."

In an interview with Vanity Fair last October, however, Clarke was more forthright about his role in the decision to let the bin Ladens go.

"My role was to say it can't happen until the FBI approves it," he told VF writer Craig Unger. "And so the FBI was asked - we had a live connection to the FBI - and we asked the FBI to make sure that they were satisfied that everybody getting on that plane was someone that it was O.K. to leave.

Then Clarke confessed, "And [the FBI] came back and said, yes it was fine with them. So we said fine, let it happen."

The charge that President Bush was to blame for the bin Ladens' escape had already become a cause-celeb in left-wing circles, with radical filmmaker Michael Moore among those complaining that the terrorist's kin were allowed to fly the coop at a time when all U.S. flights were still grounded.

In fact, as noted by Unger in his VF piece, U.S. skies had been re-opened to air traffic by the time the bin Ladens were allowed to leave on Sept. 14, leaving yet another Democrat urban legend in tatters.

[CyberAnt]

I thought it was the State Dept that gave the approval for them to leave the country ..??

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Yep! Right there in black and white!