Friday, October 07, 2005

Soldiers Died, Clinton Took Bribe


Louis Freeh, FBI director under President Bill Clinton, is publishing his memoir called "My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror". He writes of a difficult relationship with his boss Clinton,

"The problem was with Bill Clinton — the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out.”

If only that were the worst of it.

Terrorists bombed an US military barracks, Khobar Towers, in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing nineteen of our guys and wounding 372 more. The Saudis refused to allow the FBI to question the bombing suspects they held. Clinton had made a fine sound bite, vowing to bring to justice those responsible. When Freeh asked Clinton to make a personal request to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to give the FBI access to the suspects, Clinton refused.

Freeh writes in his book that when Clinton and Abdullah talked,

“Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudis’ reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library.”

In other words, the quid pro quo was that Clinton would not press the issue if Abdullah paid him off with a bribe via Clinton's library. That was a "donation" soaked in American military blood, an expression of contempt from a president who famously claimed to loathe the military. When the chance came at Khobar Towers, he sold the military out.

The FBI was later able to question the Saudi suspects after George Bush the elder made the request to Abdullah. Iran was behind the bombing. Clinton refused to support a prosecution based on the FBI's evidence.

Freeh will be talking about his book to Mike Wallace on "60 Minutes", this Sunday night, October 9, at 7 PM ET/PT.

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