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Posner: Clinton Feared Evidence Against bin Laden was Too
Strong In
Feb. 2002, ex-President Bill Clinton said that he turned down Sudan's offer to
extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S. five years before the 9/11 attacks
because "we had no basis on which to hold him." But
according to investigative reporter Gerald Posner, who explored the 1996
episode while researching his book "Why America Slept," the
ex-president's excuse is all wet. Asked
about Clinton's
one-time-only confession to a New York business group that he blew off
Sudan's bin Laden offer, Posner told legendary WOR Radio host Bob Grant,
"There were some back door feelers made by businessmen and others from
Sudan who said, 'Look, we'd like to figure out a way to get off the terrorist
sponsorship list. Bin Laden's here. Can we do something about this?'" But
Posner contends, "The Clinton adminsitration never took them up on
it." Why
not? The
investigative author said that the problem wasn't concern over whether the
Sudanese could deliver. Instead, he contended, White House lawyers feared that
the legal case against bin Laden was actually too strong. "They
were afraid of convicting him," Posner told Grant. The thinking was that
"if he's going to go to jail over here we're going to be subject to
reprisals around the world by fundamentalists." Posner
described the reasoning as "a major miscalculation that in hindsight looks
like one of the biggest blunders" of Clinton's two terms. "I
happen to think that [the Sudanese offer was] real and a great opportunity was
missed." Charles Mims |
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