Mansoor Ijaz
Posted on 05/17/2002 12:50:42 PM PDT by Elkiejg
The man who negotiated a deal for Osama bin Laden's extradition to the United States six years ago is daring Senate Democrats to call him as a witness in the upcoming probe into the government's 9-11 intelligence failures, saying he can blow the lid off the Clinton administration's cover-up of the episode.
Mansoor Ijaz, a major Clinton financial supporter who hammered out the 1996 bin Laden agreement with the government of Sudan only to have the White House turn the offer down, issued the challenge Thursday during an interview with nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity.
"I'm saying this point blank," Ijaz announced in impassioned tones. "Clinton, Berger, Albright, Susan Rice - any of them that want to come and take us on. I've got the paperwork to back up what I've said and they know it. And they know they can't run and hide."
Ijaz complained that since Sept. 11, he has yet to be called by either the House or Senate intelligence committees to give sworn testimony.
"[Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman] Bob Graham is a friend of mine and he knows what I've got in my files. And they know where to find me if they really want to find out the truth about what was possible at that time."
Ijaz charged that Senate Democrats don't want to call him, in order to protect the previous administration.
"I'm absolutely convinced," he told Hannity, "that the Democrats are desperately trying to find a way to deflect the attention from the complicity of the Clinton administration in letting this terrorism problem get so far out of hand."
The former Clinton negotiator described the missed opportunity to get bin Laden and fingered former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and former Attorney General Janet Reno as having key roles in the deadly foul-up.
"By May of 1996 the Sudanese had decided to get rid of bin Laden because he was becoming a problem there as well. They called the Clinton administration one last time and said, 'If you don't want him to go to Saudi Arabia, we're prepared to hand him over to you guys directly.'"
"And the Clinton administration's response to that was 'We don't have enough legal evidence against him,'" Ijaz explained.
Besides Berger and Reno, "Clearly the president had to have had a hand in making that decision," he added. "There's no question in my mind that he was involved in those decisions as well. There's no question about that at all."
The former Clinton negotiator suggested that Congress depose other witnesses who could corroborate and expand upon his account.
"The American people should know that I have even persuaded a senior Sudanese intelligence official, who was later the intelligence chief, that if it became necessary he would come to the United States and testify in closed hearings about precisely what they were prepared to do," he said. "And he would bring the data with him."
Another witness suggested by Ijaz: former Clinton administration ambassador to the Sudan, Tim Carney.
"Frankly, [Carney] can take the American people a couple of steps further in terms of taking them inside the deliberations that went on and telling people precisely how the politicizing of the intelligence took place at that time."
Ijaz also charged that Clinton officials deliberately went out of their way to stifle FBI anti-terrorism probes.
"The FBI, in 1996 and 1997, had their efforts to look at terrorism data and deal with the bin Laden issue overruled every single time by the State Department, by Susan Rice and her cronies, who were hell-bent on destroying the Sudan," he said.
The Bush administration takes a different approach entirely, according to Ijaz.
"I can tell you personally that I have dealt with the Bush administration's national security team." he told Hannity. "These are people who immediately react to information that is brought to their attention that is necessary and important for people to know. ... There is no comparison to the Clinton administration."
Mansoor Ijaz
Clinton didn't want to make waves among the Arabs. If he alienated the Arabs he would lose his chance to settle the Mid-East problem and lose his chance to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
True on so many levels, thank god.
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