Our NewsMax buddies have this tape and they’ve got it up on their website now. We have it here for you, too, it you would like to listen to it. It’s sort of bad quality, Internet quality (lousy audio, actually). He’s making a speech to a group of people somewhere. I forget where this was taking place. But this is what he said.CLINTON: …Mr. Bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan. And we’d been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with him again. 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. 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.
RUSH: (Clinton impression) “Yeah, he just happened to end up over in Afghanistan because I didn’t have reason to take him,” but in the case where Yousef and his cronies were convicted, there was an indictment for Bin Laden. He was mentioned in an indictment as being a coconspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center attack. So there was reason to hold him, and that was accurately portrayed last night. Mary Jo White was the US attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan, of New York, and John O’Neill was happy as hell when he learned from her that Bin Laden could be pursued under terms of the indictment. Clinton had the chance, didn’t do it.
Now, that tape you just heard was from February of 2002. September 3rd of 2002, about seven months later, Clinton is on Larry King Alive, and King says, “You remember what you were thinking, Mr. President? What would go through the mind of the immediate former president watching the 9/11 attacks?”
CLINTON: I remember exactly what happened. Bruce Lindsey said to me on the phone, “My God, a second plane has hit the tower — second tower,” and I said, “Bin Laden did this.” That’s 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’t do it because they have a country and targets.” Bin Laden did.
KING: Did you also think at the same time, “We came pretty close to getting him”?
CLINTON: Yeah. I thought that my…virtual obsession with him was well-faced, and I was full of regret that I didn’t get him. I mean, I immediately thought that he had done it.
RUSH: (sigh) I’ve tried to tell you people for countless numbers of years now, we’re dealing with a… the man has a genuine problem. You just heard from February 2002, essentially the Sudanese wanted to give bin Laden to us, and Clinton wasn’t interested. Now you’ve just heard that Clinton had a “virtual obsession” with him and was “full of regret that I didn’t get him, I mean I immediately thought that he had done it.” (Clinton impression) “I told Bruce Lindsey when that second tower went, I said, ‘I know it’s Bin Laden! I know it. Only the Bin Laden guys and the Iranians could have done it. The Iranians aren’t going to do it because they’re a country; that makes them a big target. I knew Bin Laden did it. I was virtually obsessed with this guy, and I knew it was?”
(sigh) Back in just a second. I just don’t want to relive the nineties.
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