Posted on 09/20/2002 6:26:56 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger insisted Thursday that the Clinton administration never received an offer from Sudan to extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S., directly contradicting President Clinton's statement earlier this year that he personally turned down the Sudanese offer in 1996.
"There was never such an offer," Berger said, when questioned about the bin Laden deal by the joint House-Senate intelligence committee probing the 9-11 attacks, Knight Ridder News Service reported on Friday.
Berger's denial flies in the face of Clinton's own admission before a Long Island, New York business group earlier this year, when he admitted that Sudan offered him bin Laden but he said no.
"We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again," the ex-president told the Long Island Association's annual luncheon in February, when asked whether, in hindsight, he might have handled the bin Laden threat differently.
"They released him. 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," the ex-president admitted.
"So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan." (To hear NewsMax.com's exclusive audiotape of Clinton's confession, Click Here)
Berger's denial follows similar statements from other Clinton officials, including New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who have yet to be confronted by either congressional probers or reporters with NewsMax.com's smoking gun tape.
Asked on Sunday whether her husband had indeed been offered such a deal for bin Laden from Sudan, Mrs. Clinton told NBC's "Meet the Press," I don't think that a lot of what is being said and written about now actually is accurate. There's quite an extensive record of the Clinton administration's efforts against terrorism."
The former first lady's denial of the bin Laden deal was echoed Thursday by former top Clinton political advisor, Paul Begala, who told radio host Don Imus, "I'm very skeptical about that whole story.
"To believe it, you've got to believe that the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Sudan all of a sudden became sort of these Jeffersonian democrats who wanted to help America in the war on terror," he added. "I think the whole thing's a little specious."
Other former officials, such as Clinton National Security Council advisor Nancy Sodergerg, have said that Mansoor Ijaz, the former campaign contributor who helped broker bin Laden's release and first revealed the arrangement in a December Los Angeles Times op-ed piece, was living in a "fantasyland."
In May, former top Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri, now spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, called Ijaz "a liar" and "a crackpot."
Though Berger, Mrs. Clinton and the other former White House staffers have yet to be confronted with President Clinton's recorded bin Laden confession, on Thursday, Senate Intelligence committee member James Inhofe became the first elected official to say that the ex-president should be held accountable for the blunder.
"We would want to do that in some way," Inhofe told NewsMax.com's Wes Vernon, through a spokesman "It’s a matter of picking the right forum.”
Presidents and ex-presidents are rarely called before congressional committees.
It ain't working, Arkansas trash.
Yep, One of them is lying.
Maybe Tom Brokaw will...
or maybe Peter Jennings will
....or.....maybe Jim Lehrer will...
"They released him. 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," the ex-president admitted.
"So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan."
Bill Clinton confirms a story that appeared in a post 9/11 issue of Vanity Fair where where there were actually two sources who tried to warn the US (CIA/FBI) in the mid '90s about the terrorists in training in the Sudan and Pakistan, and offered help if we intervened. The Sudanese dignatary who was interviewed said he was literally "put-off" by the Clinton Administration, and was given the impression that he could not be heard unless he made a campaign contribution. (This same Sudanese dignatary was also interviewed on several TV news shows last year.) From what the artical said, he made the political contribution, and still, no one listened. I guess the Clinton presidential pardoning of terrorists (with the blessing of his fellow Democrats) would have been contradictory with going on the hunt for more of them.
That's true. Normally members of the Clinton Crime Cabal are all lying.
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