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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (23569)	5/18/2004 1:55:22 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

Thursday, April 1, 2004 2:56 p.m. EST Clarke: I Let bin Laden Family Go Don't look now, but Clinton terrorism czar Richard Clarke has inadvertently let the White House off the hook on the most potentially explosive charge related to 9/11 - allegations that President Bush let Osama bin Laden's family escape from the U.S. in the days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Clarke says nothing about this episode in his book and with good reason, since the truth fits neither his Bush-bashing agenda nor his carefully constructed image as a tougher-than-nails terrorism fighter. It turns out that it was Clarke himself who gave the green light for Osama bin Laden's relatives to fly home to Riyadh beginning on Sept. 14, just three days after U.S. skies were closed to all air traffic. The subject of the bin Ladens' escape came up briefly during Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 Commission last week, where he tried to finesse his role in blowing what many still believe was the best chance to get information on Osama bin Laden's whereabouts and his family's financial network. Clarke told the Commission that an individual - whose identity he doesn't recall - relayed a request for the bin Laden fly-out from the Saudi Embassy to his White House Situation Room Crisis Management Team. He says that he refused to grant approval until the FBI signed off. In his testimony the closest Clarke came to admitting responsibility was when he told the Commission: "I believe after the FBI came back and said it was all right with them, we ran it through the decision process for all of these decisions that we were making in those hours, which was the interagency Crisis Management Group on the video conference," Clarke explained, before hinting at his own responsibility. "I was making - or coordinating a lot of decisions on 9/11 in the days immediately after," he told the Commission. But in the next breath Clarke tried to shift responsibility away from himself, suggesting instead that blame for the blunder should go perhaps to White House Chief of Staff Andy Card or Secretary of State Colin Powell. "I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me," the terrorism whistleblower lamented to the Commission. "Since you press me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State or the White House Chief of Staff's office. But I don't know." In an interview with Vanity Fair last October, however, Clarke was more forthright about his role in the decision to let the bin Ladens go. "My role was to say it can't happen until the FBI approves it," he told VF writer Craig Unger. "And so the FBI was asked - we had a live connection to the FBI - and we asked the FBI to make sure that they were satisfied that everybody getting on that plane was someone that it was O.K. to leave." Then Clarke confessed, "And [the FBI] came back and said, yes it was fine with them. So we said fine, let it happen." The charge that President Bush was to blame for the bin Ladens' escape had already become a cause celebre in left-wing circles, with radical filmmaker Michael Moore among those complaining that the terrorist's kin were allowed to fly the coop at a time when all U.S. flights were still grounded. In fact, as noted by Unger in his VF piece, U.S. skies had been re-opened to air traffic by the time the bin Ladens were allowed to leave on Sept. 14, leaving yet another Democrat urban legend in tatters.

To: American Spirit who wrote (23569)	5/18/2004 9:57:28 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

They issued a preliminary finding on the subject. I've pointed this out to you before. Yet you persist on lying about the subject. "We conclude our statement with preliminary findings to date on two post-9/11 events: the flights of Saudi nationals departing the United States, and preventive detentions and other immigration law enforcement initiatives. "The Saudi Flights" National air space was closed on September 11. Fearing reprisals against Saudi nationals, the Saudi government asked for help in getting some of its citizens out of the country. We have not yet identified who they contacted for help. But we have found that the request came to the attention of Richard Clarke and that each of the flights we have studied was investigated by the FBI and dealt with in a professional manner prior to its departure. No commercial planes, including chartered flights, were permitted to fly into, out of, or within the United States until September 13, 2001. After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called bin Laden flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Osama bin Laden. We have found no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace. The Saudi flights were screened by law enforcement officials, primarily the FBI, to ensure that people on these flights did not pose a threat to national security, and that nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country. Thirty of the 142 people on these flights were interviewed by the FBI, including 22 of the 26 people (23 passengers and 3 private security guards) on the bin Laden flight. Many were asked detailed questions. None of the passengers stated that they had any recent contact with Osama bin Laden or knew anything about terrorist activity. The FBI checked a variety of databases for information on the bin Laden flight passengers and searched the aircraft. It is unclear whether the TIPOFF terrorist watchlist was checked. At our request, the Terrorist Screening Center has rechecked the names of individuals on the flight manifests of these six Saudi flights against the current TIPOFF watchlist. There are no matches. The FBI has concluded that nobody was allowed to depart on these six flights who the FBI wanted to interview in connection with the 9/11 attacks, or who the FBI later concluded had any involvement in those attacks. To date, we have uncovered no evidence to contradict this conclusion." 64.233.161.104