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Former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta recently wrote a scathing article about former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh. Freeh made some harsh comments about his life at the FBI during the Clinton scandal years, and Podesta simply could not resist the knee-jerk urge to defend his ex-boss. Those who know me well also know that I have little love for the former FBI Director. His tenure at the helm of the bureau was a disaster. Freeh can best be described as a "Luddite" in terms of his understanding of modern technology. I am almost certain that his new book...

FORMER FBI Director Louis Freeh writes movingly of his disappointment that Presi dent Bill Clinton did little or nothing to in tervene with the Saudi monarchy to let his agents question the accused perpetrators of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. But he is at a loss to understand the president's conduct. In an earlier terror attack, the Saudis had cut off the heads of the suspected terrorists before the FBI could question them. To avoid a repeat, Freeh went to the president and emphasized the importance of intervening with the Saudis to allow questioning. The Saudis, of course, didn't want...

The rancor between Louis Freeh and former President Bill Clinton, who appointed him director of the F.B.I. in 1993, was laid raw anew today as Mr. Freeh continued his assault on the Clinton administration's handling of terrorism, while a former presidential aide accused Mr. Freeh of an "astonishing string of failures that helped leave America vulnerable to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." Mr. Freeh, appearing on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" to promote a book he has written, repeated his assertion that the Clinton administration had failed to grasp the scope and severity of the threat of terrorism and had...

In June of 2001 a Federal Grand Jury in Alexandria Virginia returned a 46 count indictment against fourteen individuals thought responsible for the June 25, 1996 bombing of the US Air Force housing complex, Building 131 at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Five years earlier, on the day of the Khobar bombing, never missing an opportunity to role-play as the sensitive but tough Chief Executive, Clinton proved once again that the most dangerous place to be in DC during his presidency - aside from Ft. Marcy Park - was between himself and a television camera, in this instance tersely making...

WASHINGTON — The State Department warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Usama bin Laden's (search) move to Afghanistan would give him more fertile ground to spread radical Islam, according to newly declassified documents. The documents, released by the legal advocacy group Judicial Watch on Wednesday, say that bin Laden would feel comfortable moving from Sudan to Afghanistan, which "has become an even more desirable location for extremists. Afghanistan may be an ideal haven as long as bin Laden can continue to run his businesses and financial networks."

Former chief White House political advisor Dick Morris revealed Tuesday that his former boss Bill Clinton cared so little about global terrorism that his own Assistant Secretary of State had trouble getting him to pay attention to a bomb threat against the Khobar Towers Air Force barracks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. "In 1996, I got a phone call from Dick Holbrooke," Morris told WABC Radio's Sean Hannity. "He said, 'We're getting hard intelligence that terrorists are planning another hit on our guys in Riyadh.... They're in the exact same building they were in when it was hit last time.'" In ...

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a commander for Osama bin Laden during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and helped the al-Qaida leader escape his mountain hideout at Tora Bora in 2001, according to a U.S. government document. The document, provided to The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information request, says the unidentified detainee "assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora." The detainee is not identified by name or nationality. He is described as being "associated with" al-Qaida and having called for a jihad,...

The Clinton Administration had located Osama Bin Laden dead to rights in their sights and failed to fire a shot at him though he had been responsible for attacks on U.S. embassies and other al Qaeda murders. President Clinton’s State Dept. even turned down offers in 1996 and 1997 from the Sudan to turn over Bin Laden on a silver platter to American jurisdiction but Clinton declined the offers. Richard Minter in his book “Losing bin Laden” asserts that the State Dept. scuttled the chance to capture Bin Laden and that this no doubt could have prevented the 9/11 attacks...

Letter Of Apology Author unknown - sentiment shared. For good and ill, the Iraqi prisoner abuse mess will remain an issue. On the one hand, right thinking Americans will abhor the stupidity of the actions while on the other hand, political glee will take control and fashion this minor event into some modern day My Lai massacre. I heard some Arabs are asking for an apology. I humbly offer mine here: I am sorry that the last seven times we Americans took up arms and sacrificed the blood of our youth, it was in the defense of Muslims (Bosnia, Kosovo,...

PANEL I LOUIS J. FREEH, DIRECTOR FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION ..... SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bryant, I've got a couple of questions that I'd like you to answer, or Director Freeh to answer, at a later date, and provide me, if you would, the answers. The first one has to do with the question of -- are things worse in the United States today than they have been throughout this century? I mean, there's a tendency, I think, an understandable tendency, when you have an attack such as this, as we've experienced in the last...

BAKERSFIELD - Terrorism and the battle to fight it did not begin on Sept. 11, 2001, and the battle will not be quickly or easily won. That was the message of Robert Gates, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to his audience at Saturday's Bakersfield Business Conference. "Terror is a global challenge that will take many years and many forms to defeat," Gates said. "What amazes me is how long it took for us to react to terror against us." The only officer in CIA history to rise from entry-level employee to director, Gates served as director from November...

“When Clinton Lied, Nobody Died” B.S. by Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret. The Democrat National Committee (DNC) is a past master at smear campaigns and predictably is the one that makes the most noise, like a child throwing a tantrum, when unvarnished truth comes back to haunt it. One of the hundreds of examples of Democrat smears appears as a Bumper Sticker (B.S.), “When Clinton lied, nobody died,” with the clear implication being that it was okay for Clinton to lie then, and for them to continue to lie now, just as the B.S. itself is a lie. As the...

Military retaliation from Baghdad was the main administration concern following Saturday's strike on Iraq. Yet U.S. officials should start thinking seriously about the question of retaliation through terror. It is quite possible, for example, that there was a connection between Saddam and recent attempts to blow up Manhattan. It is quite possible that New York's terror is Saddam's revenge. Speculation about the responsibility for last week's bombing plot and the earlier World Trade Center bombing has focused on Iran, Sudan, and the fundamentalist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Much energy has been spent linking the terror to Islamic fundamentalism. Yet Saddam,...

<p>WASHINGTON — After a bombing killed 19 U.S. airmen at a barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the Clinton administration struck back by unmasking Iranian intelligence officers around the world, significantly disrupting Iranian-backed terrorism, according to a high-level U.S. official and a former top official who was serving at the time of the operation.</p>

In the 1990s, John Kerry served eight years on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Despite such incidents as the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996, Kerry proposed intelligence cuts throughout the 1990s and even asked his colleagues in 1997, "Now that [the Cold War] struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow?" Fortunately, many of his liberal-Democratic colleagues understood that there were other threats, such as terrorism, that still abounded; it was rare for them even to agree with his proposed slashing of the intelligence budget....

A senior government official says the State Department is interfering with a civil lawsuit, creating setbacks for family members of victims of the 1996 bombing of a military barracks in Saudi Arabia. The official, who spoke on condition that he not be named, told Insight that the State Department is taking "active measures" to prevent family members of some of the 19 victims of the Khobar Towers bombing from proceeding with a civil court case that alleges Iran sponsored the bombing and seeks a judgment against the Islamic nation which the State Department itself lists as a country that sponsors...

Former FBI director Louis Freeh testified yesterday that he believed there was "overwhelming evidence" that senior Iranian government officials financed and directed the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. Freeh testified as a key witness on behalf of the families of 12 Americans killed in the bombing, who are suing the government of Iran. The former director took particular interest in the investigation into the bombing, traveling to Saudi Arabia soon after the June 25, 1996, explosion. The bombing ripped a dormitory in half and killed 19 Air Force servicemen and servicewomen. Freeh's testimony came at a fragile stage...

WASHINGTON -- Former FBI Director Louis Freeh testified in court Tuesday against the government of Iran on behalf of victims' families in the bombing of a U.S. military apartment building in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Air Force personnel. In testimony that lasted less than five minutes, Freeh renewed some of his past assertions about an Iranian role in the bombing that also wounded hundreds of people on June 25, 1996. If the government allows it, Freeh may testify more extensively in the lawsuit on behalf of the victims' families, who are seeking compensation. A U.S. criminal case is pending...

Case ClosedFrom the November 24, 2003 issue: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.by Stephen F. Hayes 11/24/2003, Volume 009, Issue 11     Email a Friend   Respond to this article OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by...