Clinton skeletons burst out of cupboard unlocked by the FBI (new details)

IN THE summer of 1998, as the Monica Lewinsky scandal closed in around him, Bill Clinton was hosting an official White House dinner when he told his guests he needed to visit the bathroom.

Excusing himself, he left the table. But, unknown to his guests, he walked in humiliated fury not to the bathroom, but to the White House Map Room. Waiting for him were FBI doctors and a federal prosecutor, there to take his blood sample to see of it matched the DNA on Ms Lewinsky’s now infamous semen-stained dress.

This extraordinary episode, which remained secret until yesterday, is recounted in an explosive new book by Louis Freeh, the FBI Director during the 1990s.

Mr Freeh writes for the first time about his appalling relationship with the President who appointed him, and the endless stream of scandals that made Mr Clinton the constant target of FBI investigations.

“The problem was with Bill Clinton — the scandals and the rumoured scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended,” Mr Freeh writes in My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror.

“Whatever moral compass the President was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out. We were preoccupied in eight years with multiple investigations.” The scandals included the Whitewater inquiry and Mr Clinton’s affairs with Ms Lewinsky, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers.

The need to obtain Mr Clinton’s blood sample was the most unsavoury element of the FBI’s investigation of the Lewinsky saga, Mr Freeh says.

The White House intern, whose affair with Mr Clinton led to impeachment proceedings, had kept a Gap dress stained with his “genetic material” as proof of their relationship. She later revealed its existence to Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel investigating the former President. The dinner party subterfuge was “like a bad movie”, Mr Freeh writes. “But we did it, very carefully, very confidentially.”

John Harris, a Washington Post reporter, provides more detail about the Map Room encounter in his biography of Mr Clinton, The Survivor.

“Clinton’s face was flushed with anger as he rolled up his sleeve while one of his Navy physicians drew the sample. A prosecutor and federal agent fixed their gaze on the vial the entire time, fearful that Clinton’s team might try a surreptitious switch.” Such was the mutual distrust between Mr Starr and Mr Clinton that the former President’s lawyer ordered a second blood sample in case Mr Starr resorted to dirty tricks, according to Mr Harris.

Mr Freeh also writes of a conversation between Mr Clinton and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the Khobar Towers bombing that killed 19 US servicemen in Dhahran in 1996. He claims that Mr Clinton used the occasion to solicit a donation for his presidential library.

Mr Freeh says that Mr Clinton refused to insist that the Crown Prince allow the FBI to question suspects held in custody in Saudi Arabia. “Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the Crown Prince he understood the Saudis’ reluctance to co-operate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library.”

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House Speaker and erstwhile Clinton nemesis, said on the Fox television network: “If Louis Freeh is prepared to swear on oath that he knows that President Clinton was asking foreign leaders for money . . . this has to be a criminal offence of the first order.”

Mr Freeh was appointed by Mr Clinton in 1993, but relations between the two became poisoned. Mr Freeh writes that to distance himself from the scandals, he refused a White House pass that would have allowed him access without signing in. “I wanted all my visits to be official,” he said.

They clashed repeatedly, including over an FBI inquiry into alleged Chinese efforts to funnel campaign donations to Democrats, an inquiry that Mr Freeh never told Mr Clinton about. Mr Clinton soon referred to the FBI chief as “F****** Freeh”, seeing him as an agent for the Republicans.

Mr Freeh resigned from the FBI in 2001, three months before the September 11 terrorist attacks. He was harshly criticised by the commission that investigated the atrocity.

Jay Carson, Mr Clinton’s spokesman, said: “This is clearly a total work of fiction, written by a man who’s desperate to clear his name. It’s unfortunate that he’d stoop to this level in his desperate attempt to rewrite history. Freeh’s claims about library fundraising are more untruths from a book that’s chock-full of them.”

Daniel Benjamin, a former Clinton aide, said that the former President “pushed the Crown Prince quite hard” over the Khobar Towers investigation, and won Saudi co-operation that led to indictments.

"Daniel Benjamin, a former Clinton aide, said that the former President “pushed the Crown Prince quite hard” over the Khobar Towers investigation, and won Saudi co-operation that led to indictments."

In an important new book, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, two former counterterrorism officials on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) staff, vividly recount this history, describing how al Qaeda emerged and how America responded.

Benjamin, the National Security Council's director for counterterrorism during the Clinton administration, and Simon, its first senior director of counterterrorism, here argue that Osama bin Laden is not the root of terrorist evil but merely a branch. Chillingly, the authors signed the contract for this book before September 11.

Daniel Benjamin, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff.

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TALK ABOUT *SS COVERING!!!

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The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War against America

Did the Republican crusade to bring down President Bill Clinton ultimately cause a shift of attention from the need to protect the nation against Islamic terror threats? Benjamin and Simon, who served in Clinton's White House as counterterrorism experts, explain how the former president's "obsession" with getting Osama bin Laden was unavoidably sidetracked by the multiple investigations into his personal life, not to mention the enmity of Clinton's own FBI director, Louis Freeh. Freeh, the authors claim, arrogantly refused to follow the orders of Attorney General Janet Reno (whom he reported to), thus preventing key data on terrorist threats from getting into the right hands.

"Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon began working on this book shortly after leaving the National Security Council, where, as director and senior director for counterterrorism, they watched the rise of al-Qaeda and helped coordinate America's fight against Usama bin Laden and his organization. They warned in articles and interviews about the appearance of a new breed of terrorists who were determined to kill on the grand scale. More than a year before September 11, 2001, they began writing The Age of Sacred Terror to sound the alarm for a nation that had not recognized the gravest threat of our time." One of their book's original goals has remained: to provide the insights to understand an enemy unlike any seen in living memory - one with an extraordinary ability to detect weakness and exploit it, one with a determination to inflict catastrophic damage, one that will not be deterred. But after September 11, a second, equally crucial goal was added: to understand how America let its defenses down, how warnings went unheeded, and how key parts of the government failed at vital tasks. The Age of Sacred Terror also describes the road ahead, where the terrorists will look to draw strength, and what the United States must do, at home and abroad, to stop them.

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HE WORKED AS A JOURNALIST AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL & TIME MAGAZINE!!! What was that about SELECTING people to work in government WITHOUT qualifications?!!! CLINTON SELECTED him for counterterrorism which included coordinating U.S. counterterrorism policy!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO WONDER thousands of innocent people were killed by TERRORISTS! A JOURNALIST was running CLINTON'S counterterroism "policy"!!!

HELLO!!!

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"Before entering the government, Benjamin was Berlin bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. He has been a foreign correspondent and staff writer for Time magazine."

Daniel Benjamin is a senior fellow in the CSIS International Security Program. Prior to joining CSIS in January 2001, he was Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. From 1994 to1999, he served on the National Security Council staff. In 1998-1999, he was director for transnational threats. His principal responsibilities were in the area of counterterrorism and included coordinating U.S. counterterrorism policy, programs, and budgets within the federal government. From 1994 to 1997, he was a special assistant to the president and National Security Council director for speechwriting. Before entering the government, Benjamin was Berlin bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. He has been a foreign correspondent and staff writer for Time magazine. His recent publications include articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, New York Review of Books, and Survival, and he is a frequent columnist for the international edition of Time.

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