{"id":22809,"date":"2004-07-22T06:45:35","date_gmt":"2004-07-22T10:45:35","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-04-28T11:35:27","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T15:35:27","slug":"clinton_s_virtual_obsession_with_bin_laden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2004\/07\/22\/clinton_s_virtual_obsession_with_bin_laden\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinton\u2019s “Virtual Obsession” with Bin Laden"},"content":{"rendered":"
RUSH: All right, here\u2019s the latest on Able Danger. “The chairman of the September 11th Commission,” this will be Tom Kean, “called on the Pentagon…” Did I not predict this? I told you that by the time all this settled in, they were going to start blaming a building. “The chairman of the September 11th Commission called on the Pentagon yesterday to move quickly to evaluate the credibility of military officers who have said that a highly classified intelligence program managed to identify Mohamed Atta in the year before the 2001 attacks. Tom Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey, offered no judgment about the accuracy of the officer\u2019s accounts but he said in an interview that if the accounts were true and suggested that detailed information about the intelligence program, Able Danger, was withheld from the commission.” It was not withheld. It was presented twice. They weren\u2019t interested in it. They had their agenda. It was like news people: they go out and do a story; the story\u2019s already written, then they go out and interview people and cover things to fit the story as written. The 9\/11 Commission had its agenda, and this thing came along. This Able Danger came along, “Oh (grumbling) doesn\u2019t fit the agenda, and we can\u2019t use this business about Atta. What do you mean he met with the Iraqi security chief in Prague? Why, why, we have his cell phone records and he was on a cell phone in the United States the very day before and after he was in Prague.”Well, maybe he didn\u2019t take his cell phone to Prague because it wouldn\u2019t work there and maybe somebody else was using his cell phone in his cell at the flight school in Florida! Wouldn\u2019t that be worth looking into? But to just discount the factual: “The cell phone was used in Florida. Obviously he had to be there.” They didn\u2019t want any part of this. The CIA didn\u2019t want any part of that, either. The CIA didn\u2019t want any part of this accuracy of Atta meeting with the Iraqi and Prague and the Czech Republic because they blew that, they missed it. Everybody was in the CYA mode here. The purpose of this commission was twofold. 1) To dump it as much on Bush as possible. Take a look, take a look at the makeup of the commission, will you? Richard Ben-Veniste. Watergate? What else did Ben-Veniste do? Watergate and what else? Whitewater, yeah. He was right there defending the Clintons and Whitewater. He\u2019s the Democrats go-to guy when you\u2019re either going to nail a Republican or circle the wagons around a Democrat — and also on that committee, Jamie Gorelick, architect of the wall. You know why she was there. She was there to protect that aspect of whatever the investigation might find because you know they\u2019re not going to dump on a commission member, and the Democrats in the House got to choose the Democrat members on the committee. Look at the Republicans on the committee. John Lehman. Nice guy, secretary of the Navy, but he\u2019s not a Ben-Veniste, and he\u2019s not a Jamie Gorelick. I hate to… Slade Gorton. A moderate Republican from the state of Washington. I can\u2019t remember any of the others. I don\u2019t want to know. The point is I can\u2019t remember who they are. They were nondescript. They were nondescript. So we know that one purpose of the commission was to dump as much of this on Bush as possible, and how can we not be more curious now about Sandy Burglar?<\/p>\n

Sandy Burglar (Trousergate) going into the National Archives not just taking stuff out, but what did he put back when he we want back in and not just once but twice while preparing for his testimony, and he\u2019s right there. He\u2019s the national security advisor, folks. He would be in the loop. He\u2019d be in the chain if somebody knew of Able Danger, and there are people out there now saying that Able Danger was known by Clinton and known by the White House. There who are people saying, “Of course it was known. It would have been impossible for it not to get to Clinton. He didn\u2019t meet with the CIA guy, but he did get a presidential daily brief every day. It would be absurd to think that he didn\u2019t know. The absurdity would be to think that he didn\u2019t.” Yeah, that would be the absurdity. It would make more sense to think he had to know. He\u2019s the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief — and he certainly knows that Osama bin Laden was offered by the Sudanese, and Madeleine Albright said, “Yeah, we thought he\u2019d be less danger in Afghanistan.” Why did you think that? Afghanistan doesn\u2019t even have a government! He could go in there, get together with the Taliban and turn it into what it became: a terrorist training camp. It wasn\u2019t that in the Sudan. “Weeell, (grumbling).” You were fighting it on grand jury grounds, on legal grounds. “Oh, we didn\u2019t have any evidence to hold him.” Well, we had all this Able Danger stuff. We had enough information out there to there to be some curiosity.<\/p>\n

2) The second phase of this commission — and I\u2019m convinced of this, the second phase of this commission — the Democrats have two phases, two purposes, and one phase is to make sure that they dump as much of this on Bush as possible during an election year to hopefully defeat him. The other purpose of a “blue-ribbon panel” is to insulate the whole Washington political class, the elites in the political class from taking a hit on this, and so now they\u2019re blaming it on a building. “In a statement last week, Kean and the vice-chairman of the commission, Lee Hamilton, said that Able Danger, a computerized data mining operation run from within the defense department\u2019s Special Operations Command, quote, ‘did not turn out to be historically significant, set against the larger context of US policy and intelligence efforts.'” That\u2019s what they said last week. “But Kean suggested yesterday that the statement would need to be revised if information from officers in Able Danger proved to be true.” Man, they\u2019re running for the tall grass. They\u2019re changing their stories every day. Let\u2019s go the audiotape from this morning. Fox and Friends: the guest, US Air Force retired lieutenant colonel and senior military aide to President Clinton, Buzz Patterson. Now, Buzz Patterson, we must admit is the closest thing we\u2019ve got besides Dick Morris to a whistle-blower in the Clinton White House. He\u2019s the author of Dereliction of Duty. Brian Kilmeade asked him, “Colonel, as we talk more about what went wrong leading up to the nineties, in the nineties to by him is it correct to say that the administration took its eye off the ball or realized that this threat was real but just not important enough to make a priority?”<\/p>\n

PATTERSON: Yeah, I think, Brian, if you look at the fact that there were eight separate terrorist attacks under President Clinton\u2019s watch in the 1990s and I can attest personally that my time at the Clinton White House in \u201996, they were very well aware of bin Laden — and also they were well aware of it possibility that Al-Qaeda might use commercial airliners as a weapon.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You know, I keep hearkening back to Tuesday when Clinton puts this story out (impression), “Hey, you know, I took bin Laden far more seriously than Bush did. If I\u2019d a known — if I\u2019d a known — what Bush knew about bin Laden I\u2019d have fired everything we\u2019ve got into Iraq. I\u2019da been into Afghanistan. It may not have mattered to 9\/11 but it might have made some difference,” and, lo and behold, the next day we get the news that he couldn\u2019t have been lying more than when he spoke on Tuesday. Took bin Laden more seriously? How does he say that anyway? Because he\u2019s Bill Clinton and he\u2019s a sociopath, and he\u2019s pathological. He\u2019s one of these guys that lies and believes the lies that he says — and so whatever he says, he thinks in his mind it\u2019s the truth. Another question to Buzz Patterson by Kelly Wright, Fox and Friends: “You talked about the fact that there were so many missed opportunities to get bin Laden. President Clinton, his entire staff may have known about these attacks or these plots. So what was the problem? Were they treating it as a law enforcement issue? Were they on a war footing against the terrorism issue? What was it?”<\/p>\n

PATTERSON: That\u2019s a great point. It was always treated as a law enforcement issue. Even as the threat grew and grew, I think President Clinton really failed to grasp the growing threat, number one. When he treated it, he treated it as a law enforcement issue, number two. I think it\u2019s also important to point out the fact that President Clinton met privately with Monica Lewinsky many more times than he met with his CIA director or his FBI director. In fact I don\u2019t think he ever met with James Woolsey —<\/p>\n

WRIGHT: No.<\/p>\n

PATTERSON: — privately a single time.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And only twice with George Tenet. He\u2019s right here. Patterson is right. He had more private meetings with Monica Lewinsky. He had more cigars with Monica than he had with these guys. But it\u2019s what we\u2019ve been saying all along: The Clinton administration treated this as a law enforcement issue and that\u2019s why the wall was constructed. When you treat it as a law enforcement issue, whatever is learned goes to a grand jury where it gets wrapped up. It is secret, and nobody is entitled to know what it is. So whatever one agency learns goes to the grand jury before it goes to another agency. The FBI learns something, it goes to the grand jury before the CIA can get it, and they can\u2019t “connect the dots.” It\u2019s because of the Gorelick wall and that\u2019s how Clinton was choosing to fight this — and we all know that there were other reasons for this wall other than to prevent information being passed from the FBI to the CIA and the DIA and other intelligence agencies. There was another reason. I don\u2019t know what it was. We can all guess, but I mean, you don\u2019t create this wall because you think it\u2019s a great idea — unless you think it\u2019s a great idea for something you don\u2019t want, once it gets in the grand jury to ever get out of there. One more from Patterson. This is Brian Kilmeade again with the question. “Colonel Patterson, what do you think Sandy Berger stuffed in his socks or his pants, his shirt, whatever. He really escaped without any jail time for some reason, what do you think he was worried about?”<\/p>\n

PATTERSON: Obviously incriminating documents that point the finger at what the Clinton inner administration —<\/p>\n

KILMEADE: What documents?<\/p>\n

PATTERSON: Well, I guess the speculation has been number one millennium plot — the 2000 millennium plot — but we don\u2019t know because those documents were destroyed by Sandy Berger. I mean again I think the commission really failed to grasp, the 9\/11 Commission really failed to grasp, just when they knew that the situation and the possible threat and Berger was complicit along with Richard Clarke and President Clinton.<\/p>\n

RUSH: They didn\u2019t “fail” anything! They succeeded. Ben-Veniste succeeded! Tim Roemer succeeded! Jamie Gorelick succeeded! That\u2019s the whole point. They didn\u2019t fail at anything. Their job was to keep this away from the Clinton administration. Their job was to try to steer this as close to Bush as they could. Hello, Richard Clarke, for example. Remember the delicious detail? Remember the deal-making going on between Ben-Veniste and Roemer over who was going to get to interview Condoleezza Rice about that August 6th presidential daily briefing? Ooooooh, they were rubbing their hands together! They were salivating. They just knew that they were going to destroy Condoleezza Rice and at the same time destroy George W. Bush, and they failed because once again they\u2019re on a mission that was predominantly a lie. But let\u2019s go back. Let\u2019s turn back the hands of time. September 3rd, 2002, Larry King Alive, the guest is former President Clinton and former Senator Bob Dole, and King says to Clinton, “You remember what you were thinking, Mr. President? What would go through the mind of the immediate former president watching this?” He\u2019s talking about 9\/11 and bin Laden.<\/p>\n

CLINTON: I remember exactly what happened. Bruce Lindsey said to me on the phone, “My God, a second plane has hit the tower,” and I said, “Bin Laden did this.” That\u2019s the first thing I said. He said, “How can you be sure?” I said, “Because only bin Laden and the Iranians could set up the network to do this, and they wouldn\u2019t do it because they have a country and targets. Bin Laden did.”<\/p>\n

KING: Did you also think at the same time, “We came pretty close to getting him”?<\/p>\n

CLINTON: Yeah. I thought that my virtual obsession with him —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Oh-oh-hoo! (Laughing.)<\/p>\n

CLINTON: — was well-faced and I was full of regret that I didn\u2019t get him. I mean, I immediately thought that he\u2019d done it.<\/p>\n

RUSH: (Laughing.) He\u2019s sick! (slapping desk) He is sick! (Laughing.) (Impression) “Oh, yeah, yeah, I thought my virtual obsession with him was well-faced.” (Laughing.) Can we go back to cut 12 here and listen to Buzz Patterson who was senior military aide to President Clinton, author of Dereliction of Duty? “Colonel, we talk more about what went wrong leading up in the nineties to bin Laden. Is it correct to say the administration took its eye off the ball or realized this is not really a real threat?”<\/p>\n

PATTERSON: Yeah. I think, Brian, if you look at the fact that there were eight separate terrorist attacks under President Clinton\u2019s watch in the 1990s and I could attest personally that my time at the Clinton White House in \u201996, they were very well aware of bin Laden — and also they were well aware of it possibility that Al-Qaeda might use commercial airliners as a weapon.<\/p>\n

RUSH: (Clinton impression) “I knew it was bin Laden. I knew it. I tell you what, I thought my virtual obsession with him was well faced, and I fully regret that I didn\u2019t get him. I immediately thought he had done it. I never worked harder in my life to get bin Laden, and I cared about him more than George Bush ever did. I knew he was a bigger threat than George Bush ever did.” (chuckles) It\u2019s stuff like this, folks (chuckles), that makes you live to do this again another day.<\/p>\n

END TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

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RUSH: All right, here\u2019s the latest on Able Danger. “The chairman of the September 11th Commission,” this will be Tom Kean, “called on the Pentagon…” Did I not predict this? I told you that by the time all this settled in, they were going to start blaming a building. “The chairman of the September 11th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nClinton's "Virtual Obsession" with Bin Laden - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2004\/07\/22\/clinton_s_virtual_obsession_with_bin_laden\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Clinton's "Virtual Obsession" with Bin Laden - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: All right, here\u2019s the latest on Able Danger. “The chairman of the September 11th Commission,” this will be Tom Kean, “called on the Pentagon…” Did I not predict this? 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