NPR's Fresh Air: Bill Clinton Almost Killed by Al Qaida While FBI Was Distracted by His Sex Life

[JPZenger]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123653000

The above link is to an interview broadcast today on Public Radio's Fresh Air program with the author of an extensively researched 800 page new book on Ken Starr's investigation of Bill Clinton.

The author interviewed the director of the Secret Service while Bill Clinton was president. That director was very upset that the FBI at the time was using so many agents and resources investigating Bill Clinton's sex life and questioning women in Arkansas, while the Secret Service realized that there was a very serious threat from Al Qaida. The Secret Service Director revealed for the first time that Bill Clinton, while President, was almost assasinated in Manila by a group connected to Bin Laden. The Secret Service intercepted a message that referred to a bridge. On a hunch, the Secret Service Director ordered the motorcade to take a lengthy detour around a bridge that made the President late. They then found enough explosives under the bridge to destroy the entire motorcade.

(There were separate reports at the time that the FBI had 80 agents on the Lewinsky case. They probably had almost no agents working on Al Qaida at the time).

[SeattleGirl]

1. Apparently the actual life of the President was not as important

to the FBI as his sex life was.

Jeebus!

[Kablooie]

37. That was the point. Ken Starr and the Republicans put exposing the scandal as priority one.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. who was controlling them?

[DURHAM D]

28. Louis Freeh - director of the FBI.

Rightwing crazy person - member of Opus Dei. Same Opus Dei chapter as SC justices Scalia and Thomas and Richard Hanssen (FBI spy for Russia that Freeh prayed with but didn't worry about the fact he couldn't pass a lie detector test).

Mostly Freeh was working with/for Cong. Dan Burton (House handler who shot a watermelon in his basement to prove some wacky theory about Vince Foster) and his insane staff member Dave Bossi. Freeh was out to get the Clintons at any cost but he was just one of the insane people running D.C.

When Freeh arrived at the FBI the first thing he did was remove the computer from his desk. He didn't like technology. In fact, he would not spend the funds congress had allocated to the FBI to upgrade. By time Freeh's successor arrive they were about 5 generations (tech wise) behind the times.

[EFerrari]

3. Manila happened in 1996. This is the History Commons entry:

By late 1996, the CIA definitively confirms that Osama bin Laden is more of a leader of militants worldwide than just a financier of them. CIA Director George Tenet will later comment, “By 1996 we knew that bin Laden was more than a financier. An al-Qaeda defector told us that was the head of a worldwide terrorist organization with a board of directors that would include the likes of Ayman al-Zawahiri and that he wanted to strike the United States on our soil” (see June 1996-April 1997). Yet the US will not take “bin Laden or al-Qaeda all that seriously” until after the bombing of US embassies in Africa in 1998. Dan Coleman, the FBI’s top al-Qaeda expert, helps interrogate al-Fadl in 1996 and 1997 (see June 1996-April 1997), and Coleman comes to the conclusion that the US is facing a profound new threat. But according to journalist Robert Wright, Coleman’s reports “met with little response outside a small circle of prosecutors and a few people in the who took an interest…” Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, is interested, as is John O’Neill, who heads the New York FBI office that specializes in bin Laden cases. But O’Neill and Scheuer hate each other and do not cooperate. Al-Fadl’s information will not turn into the first US indictment of bin Laden until June 1998 (see June 8, 1998).

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=john_o_neill

[JPZenger]

20. Author was referring to previous FBI investigations

I believe the author was referring to the FBI being distracted by pre-Lewinsky investigations in 1996. He talked about the FBI spending much time questioning women in Arkansas.

[EFerrari]

24. Yes, and my post was the intelligence community's work on AQ

at about the same time. :hi:

[Jamastiene]

4. See what happened?

They were so busy obsessing about the Clenis that they quit doing their jobs.

I swear there should be a Clenis cartoon series. The Clenis could pop up anywhere at any time laughing his balls off while Ken Starr and his cohorts go digging through garbage looking for semen stains and cigars and who knows what else, the nosy bastards.

[EFerrari]

6. The Republicans impeded the investigation of Bin Laden and they know it n/t

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

13. Bin Laden was a creation of the GOP

for their first silly war in Afghanistan against the Soviets, of course... don't forget that

[EFerrari]

23. I thought the funding was started by Jimmy Carter.

Maybe I have my Republican debacles mixed up. :)

[arcadian]

5. I'm calling complete bullshit on this.

A hunch? What did his gut tell him?

[EFerrari]

9. His source is the former head of the Secret Service. n/t

[arcadian]

10. Yeah, the guy who had the "hunch".

Was former Secret Service. It's bullshit. Revisionist crap to make the current so called terrorist threat look greater than it is.

[EFerrari]

17. I tend to believe him. And what it shows is that Republicans derailed

the AQ investigation BEFORE 9/11, which is consistent with what we already know. It would be interesting to see who else pipes up about this story.

[arcadian]

21. I would need to see documentation

The flurry of Bush I & II related assassination "attempts" that surfaced at a rather opportune times has left me skeptical of these stories when they are reported on years after the fact.

[EFerrari]

22. Sure. I agree with that. n/t

[DURHAM D]

31. This is not a new story. The info has been out for some time. nt

[JPZenger]

33. Dec 2009

The UK Telegraph article I linked to said that this story was revealed in Dec 2009, when excerpts of this book were first released. Before that, there had been stories about one bomb that was discovered in Manila, but not explosives on a bridge that almost killed Clinton and his entourage.

[JPZenger]

7. Link has full audio of interview with much more

The assasination story was most newsworthy, but the interview includes many other revelations about Starr's investigation. For example, Linda Tripp was doing wiretaps for Starr. Tripp insisted that she had not altered the tapes. However, the FBI experts discovered that portions had been erased. At that point, Starr had to delete quotes from the wiretaps at the last minute from his report because that evidence was compromised.

The author said that the Justice Dept. would have never appointed Starr as the independent prosecutor if they knew of his involvement in past persecutions of Clinton.

He also said the original reason for the special prosecutor turned out to be a false accusation. The initial accusation was that Hamilton Jordan set up Lewinsky with a job to keep her quiet. Lewinsky was no longer involved with Clinton and wanted to get a fresh start in NYC. She asked Jordan for help in finding a job, but Jordan did little. The job that Lewinsky got on her own in NYC only paid half of what she was paid for her job in DC.

[DURHAM D]

30. Hamilton Jordan was on Jimmy Carter's staff. I think you mean Vernon Jordan. nt

[Captain Hilts]

8. WTF???

[givemebackmycountry]

11. I was listening to this and all I could think about was that film...

"The Hunting of the President"

Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, Obama it don't really matter.
When a Democrat is occupying the White House, the long knives come out.
They HATE our party, and they hate our Presidents even more.

WHY we continue to reach out to these fuckers is something I will never understand.
Yeah, yeah, I get that they are all the same but one difference I have noticed is they hate us so much, they try to KILL us when we are in office.
And I don't have to remind you that sometimes, they succeed.

[hollowdweller]

26. Amen Brother I was too.

Republicans are such SORE LOSERS that rather than biding their time till the next election they must try to ruin any chance a dem has of bein effective by any means they can.

When will the press report on THAT?

[BrklynLiberal]

12. Just one more case of the repukes and the RWingnuts trying to destroy this country.

[naaman fletcher]

14. BS. Lewinsky story broke in 1998.

But, Starr was investigating Whitewater prior to Manila, so the story might only be half BS.

[JPZenger]

16. edit

Yes, you are correct. The author spoke about both events in the same set of comments, but they occurred 2 years apart.

[EFerrari]

19. There was really only one month between them according to this timeline:

"in December 1997, Starr shut down the Whitewater investigation because of insufficient evidence. A month later, Linda Tripp called Deputy Independent Counsel Jackie Bennett and said she had taped conversions with Monica Lewinsky about an affair with the president."

[upi402]

15. Ironic, Clinton was the best Republican President in history. And they hounded him

No pity for Mr NAFTA and GATT and Telecommunications Act, and war on Welfare people, ad infinitum. Ken Starr, skin sack full of evil.

[DURHAM D]

32. what utter crap

Did you read that in your high school text book last week?

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Synnical]

18. Kick to read later n/t

[Randall Flagg]

25. K&R

[ohiodemocratic]

27. Clinton hatred dies hard

in the MSM, here and everywhere.

[applegrove]

29. That sounds awful. Truly awful. Part of me wonders why the FBI

in America would have anything to do with investigating dangers in Manilla. But it does sound really scary. I hope it isn't true.

[ck4829]

36. Getting Bill Clinton was more important than getting Osama to these guys

[laughingliberal]

38. Oh, but we have some right here on DU who think our leaders' sex lives are very important

for us to know about. Never mind some of our best Presidents (actually all of our best Presidents) could not have met their standards.