Rancor Between Freeh and Clinton Over Terrorism Continues
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
Published: October 16, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 - The rancor between Louis Freeh and former President Bill Clinton, who appointed him director of the F.B.I. in 1993, was laid raw anew today as Mr. Freeh continued his assault on the Clinton administration's handling of terrorism, while a former presidential aide accused Mr. Freeh of an "astonishing string of failures that helped leave America vulnerable to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."
Mr. Freeh, appearing on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" to promote a book he has written, repeated his assertion that the Clinton administration had failed to grasp the scope and severity of the threat of terrorism and had botched the investigation of the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which took 19 American lives.
Mr. Freeh said the administration had failed to press Saudi Arabian leaders for F.B.I. access to suspects in the bombing and - when it appeared that Iran might be behind the attack - had mishandled a letter of protest to the Iranian president in a way that needlessly infuriated both the Saudis and the Iranians.
President Clinton's last chief of staff, John Podesta, sharply rejected Mr. Freeh's accusations, which he has been making in the last week in a series of interviews to promote his new book, "My F.B.I.: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton and Fighting the War on Terror."...
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Responding to Mr. Freeh's criticisms that the Clinton administration never understood the terrorism threat, Mr. Podesta countered that under Mr. Freeh's leadership, the F.B.I. "stumbled from one blunder to the next, with little or no accountability."...
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