Posted on 07/25/2004 2:24:37 AM PDT by beyond the sea
9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said Friday that he believed ex-President Bill Clinton when Clinton told the Commission he "misspoke" in a 2002 speech where he detailed an offer from Sudan to have Osama bin Laden extradited to the U.S.
But Kerrey also admitted that if he or any of the other commissioners had challenged Clinton's account, it would have split the Commission along partisan lines and short-circuited efforts to keep their findings unanimous.
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"He said that he misspoke so I believe him," Kerrey told WDAY North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen. "I choose to believe him on this issue."
When asked if his choice was governed by a desire to avoid a partisan fight with other commissioners, Kerrey told Hennen, "Yeah, but this isn't the only area where that's the case. . . . We do that in the interests of having a 10-0 consensus."
The Nebraska Democrat, who once called Clinton "an unusually good liar" in a magazine interview, revealed that some of the other commissioners were angry at him for discussing Clinton's testimony about the Sudanese offer during a previous interview with Hennen.
"I got in trouble with the other commissioners because we weren't supposed to talk about what happened at that meeting," he told the WDAY host. "That was inappropriate for me to answer your question at the time."
In April, Kerrey told Hennen that the ex-president initially told the Commission that he had been "misquoted" in reports saying he confirmed the Sudanese offer.
But when pressed Clinton changed his story, telling the Commission, in Kerrey's words, "I didn't understand the question. I didn't understand what the facts were. I didn't have a good recollection of what was going on."
In the Commission's final report, the change was characterized as Clinton having "misspoken."
A month before the ex-president's testimony, the 9/11 Commission obtained a videotape of his 2002 comments from New York's Long Island Association, the venue where he made the remarks. But Commissioners did not challenge him directly with the recording and have so far declined to make the videotape public.
Commissioner Kerrey, however, said he saw no reason why the tape couldn't be released now.
"I don't think it would hurt to release it," he told Hennen. "I don't think that we're going to prevent the public from getting it. This certainly is not classified so I don't think there's any reason why the public wouldn't be able to get it."
In June, a 9/11 Commission spokesman told NewsMax that the Commission would not release evidentiary materials, including the Clinton video.
Kerrey also admitted that if he or any of the other commissioners had challenged Clinton's account, it would have split the Commission along partisan lines and short-circuited efforts to keep their findings unanimous.
Yes, this is usually the case when the Clintons are confronted.
When asked if his choice was governed by a desire to avoid a partisan fight with other commissioners, Kerrey told Hennen, "Yeah, but this isn't the only area where that's the case. . . . We do that in the interests of having a 10-0 consensus."
This is the group that wants the US intelligence agencies to avoid "group think" and encourage dissent in analysis.
What a bunch of hypocritical cretins.
Kerrey, like Kerry, is just another lowlife, lying, traitorous, deviant scumbag, liberal-demokkkRAT turdboy.
The report is worthless. The nation deserved better.
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