Posted on 06/21/2004 10:46:53 PM PDT by kattracks
In an effort to counter the growing perception that President Clinton forfeited America's best chance to arrest Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks, "CBS Evening News" anchorman Dan Rather aired new footage Monday night of Clinton strenuously denying that the government of Sudan ever offered to extradite the al Qaida mastermind.
In a segment initially edited out of Sunday night's "60 Minutes" broadcast, Clinton tells Rather, "To the best of my knowledge it is not true that we were ever offered [bin Laden] by the Sudanese, even though they later claimed it. I think it's total bull." In more remarks deleted from the original broadcast, the ex-president claimed:"Mr. Absurabi, the head of the Sudanese government, was a buddy of bin Laden's. They were business partners together. There was no way in the wide world this guy who was in business with bin Laden in Sudan was going to give him up to us."
During Sunday night's telecast, the portion of Clinton's comments on the Sudanese offer aired by CBS was far more abbreviated.
"I don't believe that is true," he said. "There was a story, which is factually inaccurate, that the Sudanese offered bin Laden to us. As far as I know, there is not a shred of evidence of that."
The Clinton-CBS publicity machine racheted up denials about the Sudanese offer after talk radio stations from coast-to-coast aired audiotape on Monday of a Feb. 2002 speech where Mr. Clinton admitted that Sudan had indeed offered him bin Laden, but that he turned the offer down.
"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," the ex-president explained, in comments recorded exclusively by NewsMax.com.
Clinton's characterization of the Sudanese story as "bull" was first reported Thursday by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, based on his interview with Mr. Rather.
But "60 Minutes" spokesman Kevin Tedesco insisted to NewsMax later in the day that Clinton never uttered the word "bull," explaining instead that the Mr. Rather had attributed the word to Mr. Clinton erroneously.
"Clinton never used the word 'bull.' That was Dan Rather's word. Clinton never said that," Tedesco said.
"60 Minutes" declined NewsMax.com's offer to share its recording of Clinton admitting he had turned down the Sudanese offer, and instead let Clinton's denial stand unchallenged.
In a March staff report issued by the Sept. 11 Commission, commission investigators said that every Sudanese official interviewed about the bin Laden offer confirmed the story, while every Clinton official they spoke to denied it.
In his own April 9 interview with the Commission, Mr. Clinton said he'd been "misquoted" in reports claiming that he had confirmed the bin Laden offer.
9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said two days later that at the time of Clinton's interrogation, he was unaware that staffers had obtained a videotape of Clinton's 2002 speech where he detailed the Sudanese offer.
Mr. Clinton's expanded denials were posted to the CBS News web site after the Monday's "CBS Evening News" broadcast.
Listen to the recording that was too hot to handle for "60 Minutes."
This is precisely why you never saw media polls back then dealing with how Clinton would fare in hypothetical races against various opponents. I saw the results of one such poll during the 2000 campaign, and was surprised to see that not only would he have lost to George W. Bush in 2000 . . . he would have lost to former President George Bush as well.
Now, now. Remember that it was Dan Rather who said that rape was a personal and private matter. It's quite improper to bring up that sort of thing.
What are Dan Rather's financial interests in CBS, its parent company, and Simon and Schuster? Are there any records of legal dealings with Clinton regarding future profit percentages or royalties from the sale of this book or of Hillary's? Are there any linkages between Rather relatives and the Clintonistas? Does anyone know?
Maybe all we really have to do is follow the money. It might be just that simple.
My goodness!! It appears that Slick Willie has a bit of a quagmire here.......
Looks great devolve, too bad you can't put your colored background on it here!
I could have just used a large table bgcolor for the whole list with a 1st (outer) table border=3
Put font color= tag inside the a href= audio link tag and pick a contrasting color for the text
"Parallel Lives"........ - Slick Willie
My EVIL TWIN did it alert!
I commented because I had just seen it with the colored background and it looked so nice.
We used to be able to use the 'blink' feature here and I liked it. Can't use 'marquee' either!
I have the marquee codes for blinking text with adjustable delays and text viewing times
It`s on my email SIGS
Note that Katie Couric swiped one of my audio titles to use on her show to describe Slick Willie`s extra-curriculal proclivities
No, I didn't know that!! Were you watching or did someone else tell you about it?
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