Inside Politics

Clinton caught

Former President Bill Clinton last week told the September 11 commission that he never admitted passing up a chance to have Osama bin Laden arrested — even though his words were caught on tape, NewsMax.com reports.

Former Sen. Bob Kerrey, Nebraska Democrat, revealed the Clinton denial to WDAY Fargo, N.D., radio host Scott Hennen for an interview set for broadcast today, NewsMax said.

The transcript shows that Mr. Kerrey had no idea when he questioned the ex-president that his denial is provably false.

Mr. Hennen: “Bill Clinton, in his own words, at a fund-raiser in 2002, talked about being offered, from the Sudanese, Osama bin Laden. And he said, and I quote: ’At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.’”

Mr. Kerrey: “He told us yesterday that that was a misquote.”

Mr. Hennen: “I have heard it in his own voice. I have heard him say it. I have the tape of him saying just that.”

Mr. Kerrey: “Really? Well, ship it to me. Because he said yesterday that he didn’t have a recollection of that.”

NewsMax provides a link in which Mr. Clinton can be heard uttering the words he now describes as a misquote.

Graham’s ’testimony’

Sen. Bob Graham, Florida Democrat, told the conservative weekly Human Events back in 2002 that threats of airplane hijackings mentioned in an Aug. 6, 2001, memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the Senate Intelligence Committee had seen earlier.

“The particular report that was in the President’s Daily Briefing that day was about 3 years old,” Mr. Graham was quoted as saying in a Human Events article published May 27, 2002. “It was not a contemporary piece of information.”

At the time, Mr. Graham was chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Human Events posted a copy of the article by David Freddoso on its Web site (www.humaneventsonline.com) on Friday.

The 2002 article added: “Mr. Graham’s comments contradicted combative statements made recently by the Democratic congressional leadership, and confirmed White House assertions that the only specific threats of al Qaeda hijackings known to the president before September 11 came from a memo dating back to the Clinton administration.”

Kerrey’s ’audition’

“We predicted [Thursday’s] Condoleezza Rice show would be more about the 9/11 commissioners themselves than anything the national security adviser had to say. But we confess we were unprepared for Bob Kerrey’s vice presidential audition,” the Wall Street Journal says.

“We thought the former senator had more class than to preface his remarks with a condescending allusion to the fact that Ms. Rice is a black woman. (’I’m very impressed … [by] the story of your life.’) Or to then complain that her attempts to answer his monologue were cutting into his time. In their zeal to show all the things that went undone before 9/11, Mr. Kerrey and other Democrats on the commission inadvertently underscored all that President Bush has done since. Think of it as one long endorsement of pre-emption,” the newspaper said in an editorial.

“One genuinely interesting news nugget came in Ms. Rice’s opening statement. There she gave details of the Bush administration’s first major national security directive, completed Sept. 4, 2001. It covered ’not Russia, not missile defense, not Iraq, but the elimination of al Qaeda.’ Obviously this didn’t prevent the events of a week later. But it does suggest, contra Richard Clarke, that the administration was attentive to the terrorist threat.

“Mr. Kerrey and his fellow partisans made much of an Aug. 6, 2001, presidential briefing titled ’Bin Laden determined to attack inside United States.’ But Ms. Rice properly observed that there is no obvious response to non-specific warnings that ’something very big may happen.’ She likewise dismissed Democratic insinuations of a bureaucratic ’silver bullet,’ such as dealing with issues at the ’principals’ level: Unlike his predecessor, President Bush was already conferring with his director of Central Intelligence on a daily basis.”

Blame Saddam

Atlanta talk-radio host Neil Boortz suggests partisan malice explains criticism of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy by Democrats such as former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey.

“On the floor of the U.S. Senate, on Oct. 19, 2000, immediately following the attack on the [USS] Cole, Bob Kerrey said: ’In my opinion [the attack on the Cole] is part of a military strategy designed to defeat the United States as we attempt to accomplish a serious and vital mission. I hope we will direct the anger and desire for vengeance we feel away from Yemen and towards Saddam Hussein. … I can think of no more fitting tribute to the 17 sailors lost on board the Cole than completing our mission and helping the Iraqi people achieve freedom and democracy.’

“Well, folks. Isn’t that exactly what we’re doing right now?” Mr. Boortz asks at his Web site (www.boortz.com).

“How many examples can we find of Democrats, and that would include the one about to receive his party’s nomination to run for president, stridently demanding the ousting of Saddam Hussein before George Bush was elected president? The number of such statements is surely in the hundreds … and you just heard another one from Bob Kerrey.”

Blair and Kerry

“After last month’s flap about which foreign leaders support him, you’d think John Kerry would jump at the chance to get a few words of support from George W. Bush’s closest ally,” Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe writes in the latest issue of the magazine.

“But when British Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to meet the Democratic presidential candidate this week, Kerry said he was just too busy.

“Both sides insisted they wanted to meet the other and blamed scheduling difficulties. But the cool response from the Kerry campaign is an unusual twist in what should be an easy relationship. Both leaders are liberals at home and internationalists abroad. Both were lawyers in their early careers and both play the guitar in their downtime. Both have even shared an adviser in Bob Shrum, Kerry’s media guru who helped Blair’s team during its 2001 re-election,” Newsweek said.

“So why the scheduling problems?” the reporter asked.

“Now Blair is so closely tied to Bush and the war in Iraq that Kerry’s aides tread warily. Some question how much help Blair could provide when their Democratic base loathes Bush and questions the war. There is also concern that a joint appearance will simply revive the controversy about Kerry’s unnamed foreign supporters. Meanwhile, in London, Blair is reported to have told his ministers to avoid showing support for Kerry by not traveling to the Democratic National Convention in Boston this summer — a favorite boondoggle for Blair’s party.”

• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.