"A presidential executive order issued during the Clinton
administration hamstrung the FBI so badly that bureau
lawyers decided it would be illegal to infiltrate Osama bin
Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, a senior
FBI official during the Clinton administration said Saturday."
(June 1, 2002)
"I don't believe 9-11 happened because of an intelligence breach," Quayle told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes.""I think it was really a policy breach. It was the inaction of the previous administration, by and large, that al Qaeda -- and bin Laden in particular -- thought that they could hit the United States, and there would be a retaliation maybe of a cruise missile but nothing more than that," he explained.
The comments make the former vice president, who served under President Bush's father from 1989 to 1993, the highest ranking former U.S. official to suggest that the Clinton administration should get the lion's share of the blame for not preventing the 9-11 attacks.