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August 23, 2007
Clinton Lied, Bin Laden Didn't Die
When former President Bill Clinton blew up at Chris Wallace last year over a question about failing to capture of kill Osama bin Laden, many regarded his behavior as overly-defensive. The damning assessment of the CIA's failures leading up to 9/11 also contradicted Clinton's angry assertion that he tried to take out bin Laden.
From the Newsweek article:
Clinton appeared to have been referring to a December 1999 Memorandum of Notification (MON) he signed that authorized the CIA to use lethal force to capture, not kill, bin Laden. But the inspector general’s report made it clear that the agency never viewed the order as a license to “kill” bin Ladenone reason it never mounted more effective operations against him. “The restrictions in the authorities given the CIA with respect to bin Laden, while arguably, although ambiguously, relaxed for a period of time in late 1998 and early 1999, limited the range of permissible operations,” the report stated. (Scheuer agreed with the inspector general’s findings on this issue, but said if anything the report was overly diplomatic. “There was never any ambiguity,” he said. “None of those authorities ever allowed us to kill anyone. At least that’s what the CIA lawyers told us.” A spokesman for the former president had no immediate comment.)
So what did "security hawk" Hillary Clinton know and when did she know it?
Posted by jeffgannon at August 23, 2007 08:30 PM
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