BIN LADEN-GATE WITNESS DARES DEMS: "DEPOSE ME ON CLINTON 9-11 COVER-UP"

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.

"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."

I just sent this to about 50 papers & opinionators using these:

Ignorance Making You Ill? Cure It!

for links, tools, & instructions about how to contact a pile of different people, and how to send a link to this story right here ( or anywhere else ) to a "mass email" using Outlook Express.

Do be advised that since I increased my volume of mass emails to letters to editors I have gotten return volleys of virus attacks- my ISP filters them out before the get to my PC, but if yours does not, take appropriate precautions to guard your PC.

I take this as a positive- my emails are simply links with no editorial content; so the other side must fear & loath the information even reaching the public.

From PBS News Hour, Jan. 29

MISSING REPORTER (Partial)

TERENCE SMITH: Welcome to you both. Mansoor Ijaz, you've been in touch, I understand, with Daniel Pearl, and even provided him with some contacts for sources among militant Islamic groups in Pakistan. Tell us about that.
MANSOOR IJAZ, Investment Banker: Shortly after the tragic events of September 11, Mr. Pearl called me from Bombay and said he had been made aware that I had some contacts with some of the either former associates of Osama bin Laden or some of the more radical Islamic groups in Pakistan, which I did from other things that I had done in that region. And he wanted to know whether or not I would be willing to introduce him to them.
And I spent about an hour with him in that first telephone call essentially trying to understand what story he wanted to pursue to make sure I wasn't unnecessarily putting him in harm's way, because these are not people who understand mistakes very well. And I was absolutely convinced of his integrity, his honesty, his approach, and I made those contacts available to him.
And one of those contacts was the one who sent me an e-mail message last Friday morning, very early in the morning, essentially saying that Daniel was missing for the last 48 hours, was I aware of it, and what needed to be done. And that's when I started to proceed to get involved in this process.
TERENCE SMITH: And from these contacts that you had with him, did you have any sense of where he was going when he disappeared?
MANSOOR IJAZ: Well, I certainly can't say I've been in touch with him since the beginning of the year. I think the last conversation we had was just before Christmas, in which he was essentially iterating his story and he was definitely on to some very important and very sensitive items in that part of world. It's a very complex set of problems that he was trying to unravel and untangle. But I thought he was doing a pretty good job of it, and encouraged him while I got the chance.
Investigating Richard Reid
TERENCE SMITH: And he was trying to portray the groups and what they are up to and who they are, and their relationship, we understand, with Richard Reid.
MANSOOR IJAZ: Yes, I think in this particular case he essentially came to a point where he was trying to understand where Richard Reid had gotten his basis in Islamic radicalism. And that brought him into contact with people, one of whom was a man by the name of Sheik Mubarak ali Gilani, who we have been watching here in the United States for a number of years. He started a mosque in Brooklyn back in 1986, and this man is known to be one of the most viral radical Islamists anywhere in the world. And apparently, Richard Reid was one of his disciples, and I think that's the cornerstone that Daniel was working on when he went into this thing. And I think he may have uncovered the tip of an iceberg that may yet have many deep ramifications. ...

Make of it what you will.

NO American president since before FDR has wanted to ruffle the feathers of the perfumed princes.

You're right. And now things are changing. We have new alternatives and more sources of oil.
Let's start with Alaska.
Then we'll ask Mexico for some more oil.
Then we can ask Bush's new buddies in Russia for more oil, too.

It would be ironic if Saudi Arabians knew we won't need them much longer (due to our growing friendliness with Russia and Mexico) and they hated the thought of losing all our money. Maybe they were hoping to poke us in the eye before we abandon them.

Perhaps their boycott of American goods is just a bluff.

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