Posted on 06/21/2004 8:39:16 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
9-11 Ken Starr's fault? On NBC's Meet the Press, after endorsing Bill Clinton's disgust for Ken Starr ("He makes a very strong case for Starr's abuse of power") and agreeing with Clinton's view of himself more as victim than perpetrator ("My feeling is, that in the end on all this stuff he's more sinned against than sinner"), Time magazine's Joe Klein gave credibility to Clinton's claim that but for the Lewinsky scandal Clinton would have fired FBI Director Louis Freeh, who had proven incompetent in the battle against terrorism. Klein suggested "we might have had a better shot at rolling up those al-Qaeda cells if Bill Clinton had been free to fire Freeh."
In Time itself, Klein called Clinton's case against Starr "powerful."
On Meet the Press, recalling Time's interview conducted last week with Clinton, upon the release of his lengthy tome, My Life, Klein picked up on a finding of the 9-11 Commission about Freeh's supposed poor job on counter-terrorism and expounded, during a roundtable segment: "One of the other things that Clinton told us was that he would have fired Louis Freeh as FBI Director if it hadn't been for the media and for the fact that we would have associated that firing with the investigation of the Lewinsky scandal. Now, that is incredibly damning because from what I can understand, the FBI was entirely incompetent, not doing anything in terms of counter-terrorism over those years. And so in some ways, you could say that we might have had a better shot at rolling up those al-Qaeda cells if Bill Clinton had been free to fire Freeh."
Of course, there would have been no need to fire Freeh if Clinton hadn't hired him. Clinton nominated Freeh in 1993. And what evidence is there that Clinton had any knowledge of Freeh's supposedly bad management on counter-terrorism?
In fact, though Clinton did make the claim that Klein conveyed, his comment to Time magazine was in the "if I had known" form, so he didn't know and therefore would have had no reason to replace Freeh on counter-terrorism grounds. From the Time magazine interview in the June 28 edition:
On why he never fired FBI Director Louis Freeh
If I had known that when we tripled the counterterrorism funds none of it was put into improving the data processing and interconnecting with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, if I had known that the Executive Order I signed fairly early in my Administration ordering the CIA and the FBI to exchange high-level people and cooperate more hadn't been done, I might have done so.
But since the FBI chief gets a presumptive 10-year term, I didn't feel what I thought was outrageous treatment of us, particularly by him personally, was worth replacing him, because all of you [in the media] would have said, Well, he's doing it because he's got something to hide, and I didn't have anything to hide. I knew there was nothing to Whitewater, I knew there was nothing to the Paula Jones case -- Ken Starr could have as many FBI agents as he wanted doing whatever they wanted to do.
END of Excerpt
For the Time interview in full, available only to subscribers: http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101040628/story.html
or the fault of his evil alter-ego. Seriously he's the Sybil president with his story of having two personalities, the "good Bill" and the dark side, eerily reminiscent of Dick Morris' psycho-analysis of him and now self-admitted.
You bet he did. The obvious explanation, Clintoon planed to break the law.
What about the "Chinese Wall" between the FBI and CIA which was increased by Clinton appointee Jamie Gorelick? I think that was primarily to keep the FBI from seeing the CIA's info on Chinese campaign payments and illegal purchase of ICBM technology. Now why is that same Gorelick on the commission to investigate the inaction which led to 9/11?
Bob's a good writer and he sure has his sources, but his days as an eloquent debater or speaker (if he ever had any in the first place) are long, long, long past.
A MTP transcript of Novak's comments yesterday would read, "I, ah, err, uh, err, ah, uh..."
Someone like Jonah Goldberg woulda hammered Klein.
Dear Mr. Klein: If Toon wanted to get UBL, why didn't Toon rescind EO 12333?
Hey Bubba, sometimes when you sit in "the Big Chair" you have to take a 'political hit' in order to do the "Right Thing" for the country -- but then it's all about you, isn't it?
Since Bush became president, I have never read a thing by anyone, left or right, that had anything good to say about Freeh. And this is a shame, because I fell hook, line, and sinker for Freeh's look. The guy looked, and still looks at about 60 years of age, like a G-man from central casting. Tough, like you wouldn't want to tangle with him in a dark alley. Just put down your weapon and surrender. For better or worse, real heroes rarely have that central casting look.
And yet, this article is beside the point. It was Clinton gal Gorelick who built the "wall" between the CIA and the FBI, and it was Clinton himself who directed that the CIA could only gather information from "nice" sources, not the grubby, blood-stained ones with the real dope.
The administration transferred responsibility for terrorism to the FBI then shackled them with the Gorelic memo and then failed to fund them to do the job.
"What a small man."
Have you ever known or heard of ANYONE who blames others (rather than accept responsibility) the way Slick does?
Amazing! What's more amazing is that so many people allow him to get away with it.
"Have you ever known or heard of ANYONE who blames others (rather than accept responsibility) the way Slick does?"
I have. But billy jeff is the only one over the age of 10.
Klein needs to put down the glass and back away from the kool-aid.
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