Clinton Claims Renew 9/11 Blame Game

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

By Bill Adair, St. Petersburg Times

September 27, 2006

WASHINGTON - When former President Bill Clinton sat down for an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel, the main topic was to be the ex-president's initiative on poverty and global warming. But when Wallace asked about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, it struck a nerve.

Clinton's angry response, in which he said he did more than the Bush administration to have bin Laden killed, has rekindled a debate about how much blame the Clinton and Bush administrations deserve for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The exchange, which aired Sunday, also highlights the sensitivity of both parties to national security issues in an election year.

Clinton said that conservative Republicans ridiculed him for pursuing bin Laden but that the Bush administration, after taking over the White House, then did nothing before the attacks. "They had eight months to try. They did not try."

He said, "All of President Bush's neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office."

Clinton said that he authorized the CIA to kill bin Laden and that he even hired killers.

"I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we'd have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him," Clinton said.

He said in the interview that he had "never criticized President Bush" but then did so - at least indirectly. He said, "We do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq."

Clinton said, "I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, however, disputed that claim.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.

Rice disputed Clinton's assessment of inaction by the Bush administration.

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false and I think the 9/11 Commission understood that," she said.

Rice challenged Clinton's statement that he "left a comprehensive antiterror strategy" for incoming officials when he left office.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida," she told the newspaper.

Clinton and senior aides from his administration are unhappy with a recent ABC-TV movie The Path to 9/11 that they say included false and misleading scenes that suggest they did not do enough to stop the attacks. In his Fox interview, Clinton said the movie was part of a "right-wing, conservative" effort by ABC.

He said the network falsely claimed it was based on the 9/11 Commission's report.

Tim Roemer, a member of the 9/11 Commission, said Tuesday that it's pointless for either side to still be pointing fingers over the attacks.

"I spent three years looking back at both the Clinton and the Bush administrations. Like most Americans, I want to look forward," said Roemer, a Democrat and former member of Congress from Indiana.

He said his commission's report found missteps by both administrations.

"Both tried, both failed," he said. "Instead of playing pin the tail on the donkey or the elephant, we should move forward and fix the many problems we're encountering: Afghanistan, Iraq, bin Laden on the loose, our FBI without 21st century communications."

With just six weeks before the November elections, a blame game over the 9/11 attacks could be risky for the Democratic Party. It gives Republicans a fresh issue that could rally their political base and distract from the Iraq war and other topics that have hindered GOP campaigns.

"It changes the discussion," said Stuart Rothenberg, a political analyst. "It forces the former president and his allies to respond. It dilutes the Democratic message that this election is a referendum on George Bush."

Jeremy Rosner, a Democratic pollster, said he believed Clinton was motivated by his frustration with the debate rather than a political calculation.

"It was a substantive reaction rather than a political reaction," Rosner said.

Rosner said Clinton's comments would help the Democratic effort because voters are unhappy with the Bush administration's record on terrorism.

"The public is receptive in ways that are very, very different from 2004 or 2002 on national security issues," he said. "There's just a whole different environment now."

- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

REACTION

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false and I think the 9/11 Commission understood that."

Tim Roemer, 9/11 Commission member: "Both tried, both failed. Instead of playing pin the tail on the donkey or the elephant, we should move forward."

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