The interview that rocked my Sunday.

Part 1: Clinton Interview On Fox News


As current President Bush quips, "Why do they hate us?"
I counter, "Why do so many Republicans hate this man?"


Here is the full-unedited interview with former President Bill Clinton’s “first appearance” on Fox News Sunday.

The interview with Chris Wallace has caused a bit of an internet firestorm. I received several phones calls from regular Flyer readers on this Sunday afternoon to find a way to throw this up on the site. I received several emails this evening from different folks asking me if I saw the episode. I even had a voice mail message about this “media clash”.

Since Fox is viewed by more Flyer readers than I would like to count out here in Kansas. I stayed up tonight to find the episode for you other readers who might have missed it.

I know some who are quite close to me who have Fox television or Limbaugh radio on 24/7 droning on and on in the background with the ceaseless crawler running terror fear bulletins along the bottom of the screen. One can’t even have a conversation and a cup of coffee with the folks because they are so distracted waiting for the next moment when a “terror alert” is posted from some remote area of the world. Sometime it gets pretty crazy in Middle America. I and my family lived through some of those times which will be indirectly the subject of some stories I am preparing to publish in the near future.

While watching this short series of videos I think it would be relevant to pass along some short quotes from Richard Clarke’s book Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.

Try to remember what you were doing in 1993 through 1996 while reading this short passage. I’ll tell you what I was doing at the end of these quotes and the sequel video short (part two) which is posted below.

A pertinent passage from this book which Clinton and Wallace heatedly discuss begins here:

By keeping a close eye on Rahman, within months the FBI uncovered another cell planning bombings in New York. This time it would be the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the United Nations headquarters, and other landmarks. By the end of June 1993, the plotters and Rahman were in the federal government’s Manhattan Metropolitan Detention Center. It seemed like the counterterrorism machinery was working well.

It wasn’t. The FBI and CIA should have been able to answer my question, “Who are these guys?” but they still could not.

The real answer was a group that the FBI and CIA had not yet heard of: al Qaeda. The first member of al Qaeda arrested in the United States – as we later discovered – was El Sayyid Nosair, who assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane, the fiery leader of the radical Jewish Defense League, in New York in 1992. The FBI’s investigation into the World Trade Center suspects connected them to Nosair. Nosair’s legal bills were ultimately paid by bin Laden. His apartment had materials connecting him to something called the Afghan Services Bureau; yet many of the Arabic – language materials would go untranslated by the FBI for years after his arrest. The four initially arrested for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 were quickly linked to the Al Kifah Center in Brooklyn. That center was funded by and openly affiliated with the Afghan Services Bureau (Mahktab al Kiddimah), run by bin Laden. The blind sheik had spent time in Afghanistan with bin Laden. The blind sheik was a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was already tied to bin Laden. Ahmed Ajaj had been detained at JFK Airport for carrying bomb – related materials, including a manual on the cover of which was the phrase “al Qaeda.” Ramzi Yousef had even called bin Laden from New York.

Usama bin Laden had formed al Qaeda three years earlier. Not only had no one in the CIA or FBI ever heard of it, apparently they had never heard of bin Laden either. His name never came up in our meetings in 1993 as a suspect in the World Trade Center attack. We did hear about someone who appeared to be Ramzi Yousef’s uncle. He went by various names, and he appeared to be behind Yousef’s mysterious money. One name he used was Kalid Sheik Muhammad. It was not clear exactly what his role was, but he was connected, and therefore the FBI wanted him, wherever he was.
Pg. 78 – 79

Please continued to next post below.