Posted on 09/18/2003 12:25:15 PM PDT by areafiftyone
WASHINGTON—A Montreal man has emerged as the key figure in a controversy that has dogged Democratic presidential aspirant Wesley Clark during the summer months.
Questions have swirled since June when the former NATO commander alleged on national television that he was pressured to link the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in a mystery phone call he received.
Clark first implied the call, not long after the attacks, might have come from White House, then later said it came from a Middle Eastern think tank in Canada. He has never identified the caller.
As Clark kicked off his campaign yesterday in Little Rock, Ark., Thomas Hecht, founder of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, told the Star he placed the call to Clark and drew his attention to a potential link between Saddam and the Al Qaeda suicide hijackers.
But Hecht said he did not pressure the former army general, who became a CNN commentator after retiring from the military, to make the link and said the matter was raised in a phone call inviting Clark to come to Montreal for a speech.
Clark's original claim and its subsequent variations had drawn much press and Internet attention in the United States as it became increasingly clear he was set to become the 10th candidate for the Democratic nomination.
Clark told the widely watched NBC show Meet the Press June 15 that the pressure to make the link "came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over.
"I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, `You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.'"
Clark, in the interview, said he asked for evidence of the link and received none and still hasn't seen any evidence.
As he prepared for his presidential bid, Clark backed away from his comment, denying he was drawing a link to the White House, telling Fox News in July: "I personally got a call from a fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank who gets inside intelligence information. He called me on 9/11."
Later in July, in another television interview, he said: The call came from "a man from a Middle East think tank in Canada, the man who's the brother of a very close friend of mine in Belgium. He's very well connected to Israeli intelligence and he follows Middle Eastern events very closely."
Hecht said his sister, who lives in Brussels, knows Clark socially.
One columnist, George Will of the Washington Post, took Clark to task because, he said, there was no Middle East think tank in Canada.
The Begin-Sadat Centre has its headquarters in Israel and its only office elsewhere is the one Hecht established in Montreal. Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is on its board, but strictly in a ceremonial role, Hecht said.
Hecht said he called Clark either Sept. 12 or Sept. 13 — not the morning of the attacks, as the former general said — but he merely passed on information he had received from Israel which drew a purported link.
Hecht said Clark called him in Montreal Sept. 7 this year to clarify the conversation the two men had, perhaps in anticipation of the question being raised again as part of his campaign.
"I told him the Begin-Sadat Centre is a center for strategic studies in Israel and has made various studies on the Iraqi threat to the state of Israel and therefore we have carried out analyses of what connection there could be between Saddam Hussein and other militant Islamic groups," Hecht said.
"I don't know why I would be confused with the White House. I don't even have white paint on my house," he added. "I saw those comments he made and I just chuckled."
The Clark campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
OK, whatever :-) I can live with the Democrats pinning their hopes on a word parsing slick pretty boy from Arkansas. I am sure it will remind them of exactly who I would love for them to remember, and it will remind them exactly of what I would like them to remember. That he's a deceptive, manipulative, self-serving charletan who thinks he's smarter than everyone else and above all accountability.
But even if we give GoOr that Clark did not technically say the call came from the White House, we have that 1) Clark lied when he said he was called on 9/11, 2) that Clark lied when he said that the caller pressured him and said "you've got to say this", and 3) Clark lied when he said pressure came to him from the White House-- or he has done nothing to substantiate his assertion that they did, and given that he lied about 1 and 2, there is no reason to take his word over 3.
Nice try Clark...see him looking to indriectly blame Israel to rescue him from his own lies. What a piece of sh*t.
DU'er come lately
Adolf Hitler put his life on the line for his country in WWI, and was also wounded. So what? Stop the stupid straw men, stop excusing Clark's obvious lies and stick to the issues.
What is Clark's "record of service"? Clark is by all accounts an megalomaniac who had his own orders refused by both a British General and American Lt. General, was relieved of command, and his conduct was the subject of (sealed) Senate hearings. He was commanding a Texas Army base from which the Army equipment was used to pump in gas and incinerate American civilians at Waco.
So don't talk about "respect". He is a liar on this 9/11-Iraq issue, and your distractions aren't going to save him.
Please give me that link. We are working on a major anti-Clark site.
Yes, there were people in the White House who argued early on that a war on terror must include Saddam. But no matter how many times you repeat that fact, or how many ways you try to spin it, that does not equate in any way shape or form to Clark's charge that the White House or people connected to the White House were pressuring others to make a link between Saddam and 9/11.
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