Analysis: If Clinton said he has no recollection of saying it, then he must have said it. But if he said he was offered OBL, then he obviously was never offered OBL.
Posted on 04/09/2004 1:57:24 PM PDT by Carl/NewsMax
During his private interview with the 9/11 Commission on Thursday, ex-President Bill Clinton denied that he told a New York business group in 2002 that he turned down an offer from Sudan for Osama bin Laden's extradition to the U.S., according to 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey.
"Bill Clinton said yesterday that, that was a misquote," Kerrey told WDAY Fargo, North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen, in an interview set for broadcast on Monday.
A transcript of the exchange between Hennen and Kerrey was read on the air by national radio host Sean Hannity late Friday. It shows that the 9/11 Commission was unaware that Clinton's bombshell admission that he spurned the bin Laden offer had been recorded by NewsMax.
After Kerrey said Clinton had denied the quote, Hennen said, "But wait a minute - I heard it in his own voice. I've heard him say it. I have the tape of him saying just that."
"Really?" said a perplexed Kerrey. "Well, then - ship it to me, because Clinton said yesterday [in private 9/11 testimony] that he didn't have a recollection of that."
Clinton made the bombshell admission to the Long Island Association on Feb. 15, 2002. Though the LIA videotaped his appearance, the group has refused requests for copies from NBC News, Fox News and NewsMax.
Though NewsMax has the only publicly available recording of Clinton's remarks that day, they were also reported by Newsday the next day.
Transcript of Clinton's admission:
We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again.
They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.
So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan. [End of Excerpt]
To hear ex-President Clinton make the admission that he denied making to the 9/11 Commission, Click Here.
We, of course, all know the truth. No one can prove you "don't recall", although there appear to be a lot of rats with Alzhiemers. If you say "no" you committed perjury. If you "can't recall", they can't nail you for that, because they can't prove you do recall. Kind of like Hillary losing the Rose Law Firm billing records in her bedroom. Of course, to take it further, if Kerrey is quoting Clinton correctly, he gave himself another out, as he didn't claim he was never offered Bin Laden, just that he didn't recall telling anyone he was offered Bin Laden. You've got to be quicker than Bob Kerrey to nail ole "it all depends on what the meaning of the word is is" in a perjury trap (not that Kerrey has any interest in doing anything except auditioning for a spot on the sinking S.S. Kerry campaign).
LOL, Bob Kerrey is just as boneheaded as the rest of the "unusually good liars".
WASHINGTON, D.C.
U.S. SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS HOLDS HEARING ON EXTREMIST MOVEMENTS
NOVEMBER 2, 1999
SPEAKERS:
U.S. SENATOR SAM BROWNBACK (R-KS), CHAIRMAN
U.S. SENATOR JOHN ASHCROFT (R-MO)
U.S. SENATOR GORDON H. SMITH (R-OR)
U.S. SENATOR ROD GRAMS (R-MN)
U.S. SENATOR CRAIG THOMAS (R-WY)
U.S. SENATOR PAUL DAVID WELLSTONE (D-MN), RANKING MEMBER
U.S. SENATOR ROBERT G. TORRICELLI (D-NJ)
U.S. SENATOR PAUL S. SARBANES (D-MD)
U.S. SENATOR CHRISTOPHER J. DODD (D-CT)
MICHAEL SHEEHAN, AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE, COORDINATOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
MANSOOR IJAZ, MANAGING PARTNER, CRESCENT EQUITY PARTNERS
MILT BEARDEN, FORMER CHIEF OF STATION FOR SUDAN AND PAKISTAN, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
FREDERICK STARR, CHAIRMAN, CENTRAL ASIA CAUCUS INSTITUTE, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
(snip)IJAZ: Mr. Chairman, I respectfully submit to you that our policy vacuums cannot continue without serious ramifications for U.S. interests. A multi-dimensional approach is needed to be crafted to replace current policies of blunt instrument sanctions and isolationism, in order to better calibrate -- and that's the key word, to calibrate U.S. responses to terrorist acts.
Now the most important of these multi-dimensional approaches that I would like to talk about are education programs in these affected countries, and intelligence-to-intelligence cooperation. And I'll give you two examples in that process.
The first is the recent military coup in Pakistan. And the second is what I did about two years ago to try and effect a reconciliation between the Sudan and the United States, in which I was able to bring a meaningful counterterrorism offer from the government of the Sudan to the United States, prior to our intelligence community becoming engrossed in this process of trying to figure out whether they were producing chemical weapons or not.
So the question there that has to be asked is, what would have happened? If they had acted on the counterterrorism offer that I brought in April of 1997 -- I hand-carried the letter from Khartoum to Washington -- and gone in there with our FBI's counterterrorism units and had a good look around -- that was the offer. It was an unconditional, open the doors, let's come in and see what's going on, and it was an intelligence-to-intelligence contact that we could have had.
(snip)
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