In an interview with The Hill [NOTE: THIS source] yesterday, Clarke said, “I take responsibility for it. I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again.”
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Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who attended the meeting, said she asked former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) and former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, a Republican, “Who authorized the flight[s] and why?”
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“It didn’t get any higher than me,” he said. “On 9-11, 9-12 and 9-13, many things didn’t get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI.”
Clarke’s explanation fit with a new stance Hamilton has taken on the issue of the Saudi flights.
Hamilton said in an interview Friday that when he told Democratic senators that the commission did not know who authorized the Saudi flights, he was not fully informed.
“They asked the question ‘Who authorized the flight?’ and I said I did not know and I’d try to find out,” Hamilton said. “I learned subsequently from talking to the staff that we thought Clarke authorized the flight and it did not go higher.”
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This new account of the events seemed to contradict Clarke’s sworn testimony before the Sept. 11 commission at the end of March about who approved the flights.
“The request came to me, and I refused to approve it,” Clarke testified. “I suggested that it be routed to the FBI and that the FBI look at the names of the individuals who were going to be on the passenger manifest and that they approve it or not. I spoke with the — at the time — No. 2 person in the FBI, Dale Watson, and asked him to deal with this issue. The FBI then approved … the flight.”
“That’s a little different than saying, ‘I claim sole responsibility for it now,’” Roemer said yesterday.
However, the FBI has denied approving the flight.
FBI spokeswoman Donna Spiser said, “We haven’t had anything to do with arranging and clearing the flights.”
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Clarke said yesterday that the furor over the flights of Saudi citizens is much ado about nothing.
“This is a tempest in a teapot,” he said, adding that, since the attacks, the FBI has never said that any of the passengers aboard the flight shouldn’t have been allowed to leave or were wanted for further investigation.
hillnews.com |
