Help - Clinton offered Bin Laden several times by the Sudan

Hiya everyone!

I'm sure everyone's heard these stories - that Clinton was offered Bin Laden by Sudan. Can anyone give me some background on these stories? Are they true? What's the deal?

I have too many Rushies here who bring it up every 20 minutes in order to blame 9/11 on Clinton.

david

I'm sure someone will show up on this thread and post links.

And repeat a lie until the country believes it and the media refuses to examine it (and indeed repeats it). For example, Zell Miller prances around telling us Clinton "did nothing" after the previous terrorist attacks. Books such as "Ghost Wars" and "Against All Enemies" prove that Miller is a liar. But no one's going to debunk a myth or a lie, especially if the corporate media and the right-wing squad want it repeated.

Oh, and NEVER believe anything Hannity says. I looked at a couple of his books and found lies in the first two index items I checked. He's hopelessly mendacious.

Mansoor Ijaz - he had business interests that relied on better Sudan /US relations; he's pissed because Sandy Berger stopped taking his calls.

He's somewhere on the Ahmed Chalabi plane of credibility and trustworthiness.

I KNEW I had seen it ...

Some freeper DU interloper was supporting Ijaz's news acumen and honesty ....

I just couldnt place the name well enough to respond ...

:eyes:

The facts are these...

Clinton DID did ask the Sudanese to extradite OBL.

They refused.

Sudan never offered to extradite OBL to Saudi Arabia.

Sudan did not reveal OBL's location to US intelligence.

Saudi Arabia never offered to take OBL from Sudan.

Saudi Arabia never offered to turn OBL over to the US.

Ijaz is a fucking liar and anyone that believes him is a fucking fool.

I knew his name off the top of my head because of the many, many times I've had to shoot this horseshit down on the internet.

Do you happen to have the WaPo article mentioned in the piece?

the books Ghost Wars and House of Saud/House of Bush the Sudanese gov't offered Osama bin Laden to the Saudis. The Saudis refused to have anything to do with him. They never offered bin Laden to Clinton.

The Sudan made no such offer in 1996...and since Osama Bin Laden was not wanted by any law enforcement agency in 1996, there's was very little reason for them to make the offer.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/bio.html

Never, NEVER, take them at their word. If they say the world is round, make them prove it. If they say it's raining, make them prove it.

And when they can't, don't forget to laugh at them. "Silly moron! Why do you listen to such ridiculous conspiracy theories?"

Since they're the ones who brought it up, make them present their "evidence". Then, consider the source(s) and determine whether or not is passes muster.

:kick:

I would love to be able to force the right wingers to cite every piece of "information" they use on radio and television with an actual credible source. What is that again? Hmmm, wasn't that what journalism use to be??

So true ...

EVERY argument with my brother of late ends with my brother UNABLE to prove his accusations ...

Ive been kicking his little brother arse of late ...

I love him, But I wont tolerate him using unsubstantiated rumor as fact ... BACK IT UP !

it's HYSTERICAL.

that the deal put forward was not genuine.

Talk about the deal the other day on Matthews

That story first appeared in the LA Times in december 2001. It is a single source story. No coaboration at all. In fact i forget the guys name that is the source of the story. But one guess what news network he works for? You got it FOX

From a Salon editor I believe:

http://www.44thad.org/opinion/DontBlameClinton.htm

From the Washington Times google cache:

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:_M5cbIXMBcoJ:dynamic.washtimes.com/print_story.cfm%3FStoryID%3D20030922-090026-8355r+Debunking+Clinton+Sudan&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Perhaps the most sensational charge against Clinton to emerge in the months since Sept. 11 is the dubious claim that he somehow let an offer from Sudan to turn over bin Laden slip through his fingers. Sullivan blatantly misrepresents a definitive article that appeared in the Washington Post on Oct. 3, 2001, on this topic. "The Sudanese government offered to hand over bin Laden to the United States," Sullivan writes. "Astonishingly, the Clinton administration turned the offer down." But that phony accusation is exploded by the very first sentence of the Post article, which says only that Sudan offered to "arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in Saudi custody."

Specifically, the Post reported that during secret negotiations in 1996 between American officials and Sudan defense minister Elfatih Erwa, "The government was prepared to place in custody and hand him over, though to whom was ambiguous. In one formulation, Erwa said Sudan would consider any legitimate proffer of criminal charges against the accused terrorist. Saudi Arabia, he said, was the most logical destination." The Post then detailed efforts by the White House and the State Department to induce the Saudis to accept custody of bin Laden, which the authorities in Riyadh adamantly refused.

Nowhere does the Post's carefully worded story state that Sudan agreed to "hand bin Laden over to the United States" -- because that never happened, except perhaps in Sullivan's imagination.

Still referring to the same Post article, Sullivan complains that the Clinton administration "didn't even use the negotiations with the Sudanese to disable bin Laden's financial assets in the Sudan." But as the Post reported, the U.S. ambassador to Sudan pointedly inquired whether those assets would remain under bin Laden's control after his expulsion. He got no reply from Sudan's foreign minister, and within a few days after his query, the Saudi terror chief departed for Afghanistan.

The Sudanese have always had their own agenda, by the way, which Sullivan doesn't think worth mentioning. They promised to cooperate against terrorism only if the United States ended economic sanctions imposed to punish their genocidal campaign of murder and enslavement against black Christians.

"There were meetings between U.S. and Sudanese officials, including in New York, involving senior counter-terrorism officials, where would hint that they had great stuff if we lifted sanctions," says a former NSC official with direct knowledge of those events. Other former administration officials have publicly confirmed this account. (And imagine the howling protest from pundits like Sullivan if the Clinton White House had suddenly turned "soft" on Sudan.) But neither the FBI nor the CIA believed that Khartoum was providing anything valuable on bin Laden or al-Qaida.

http://www.44thad.org/opinion/DontBlameClinton.htm

Ms Goreleck (sp?) was on C-SPAN and some Freeper called with that nonsense. Her answer was that the commission staff had researched that claim thoroughly and found it not to be a credible claim and found the source (Mansoor Ijaz of Fox News) not to be a credible source.

Note: NO Repubs on the commission have repeated the claim. Why? Because its false.

I am sure the transcript is on the C-SPAN site.

I'm sure Clinton knew that bin Laden is the head of the Bush family's terrorism department. If he'd had a chance he would have gladly gotten bin Laden, both to take away the threat AND to get all the dirt on the Bushes from him.

After the embassies in Africa were bombed, two men arrived in Sudan from Kenya. They were detained at the Khartoum airport by the Sudanese police. The Sudanese police believed they were al-Queda and sent a cable to the FBI office in Washington, DC asking if the the bureau wanted the men detained in Khartoum until the FBI could send someone to question them. The day after the cable was sent, President Clinton ordered the bombing of an al-Queda camp and the pharmaceutical factory. Apparently, the Sudanese were so insenced that the USA ordered the bomb strike that they let the two men go before they could be questioned. This appears on page 135 of Why America Slept by Gerald Posner.

There's not one speck of evidence there. But you know that.

...with lies and distortions about the JFK assassination. He has stated very clearly that the Warren Commission was correct even though the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy.

I have always suspected that he is working for some rightwing organization.

Why would this book be any different from "Case Closed"?

Anybody know about that?

I was listening to the internet stream of KPFA-FM in Berkely on day one of the 911 hearings. They were taking calls during the net . A freeper called and claimed there is a tape of Clinton saying he was offered Bin Laden and didn't take him. The host politely got rid of him and moved to the next caller

On day two I was tuning in the AM radio to NPR, and had the misfortune of tuning to Rush for about 30secs. Long enough to hear him make the same claim and to do a Clinton imitation saying "I didn't take him"

Since he was not playing the tape, my assumption is that it does not exist. . .

But where are they coming up with this?

recent statement. From the Senate floor 10/20/03


Mr. HATCH. "Mr. President, I have heard a lot of speeches on the Senate floor about Osama bin Laden , about Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I can only talk briefly about this matter, but I think it is important to note I was probably the first Member of Congress--at least to my knowledge and I believe anybody's knowledge--to mention the Clinton administration had better get on top of Osama bin Laden , or he is going to kill Americans.

At one particular point in that period of time between that statement and when President Clinton left office, there was one time they could have captured Osama bin Laden , and he would have been turned over to them. They blew it, not realizing how important this matter was.
As a matter of fact, we now know he is behind terrorist activities all over the world, especially in our country and especially in the Middle East. We have had more than ample unclassified information, and person after person, group after group has tried to infiltrate our country to cause terrorist activities within this country, in each case tied back to Osama bin Laden.

We also know he has escaped Afghanistan and with the help of certain friends probably is residing somewhere in northeastern Pakistan but no one really knows. To make a long story short, we do not just have the right to go into northeastern Pakistan and conduct a major warfare search for Osama bin Laden without the permission of the Pakistanis. Everyone knows that. That relationship is a very important relationship."

Orrin Hatch's Glass House

http://www.geocities.com/peacepract/articles.html

"At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.

Now, what does Orrin Hatch have to do with this?

One heck of a lot, as it turns out:

Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. It was worth it, he said.

Is it still worth it, Senator Hatch?"

http://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/19/35/news_and_views/the_state_of_politics.html

"Indeed, the question becomes: If the Clinton administration and its congressional backers pursue an undeclared "war" against Muslim fundamentalists, where exactly will the killing stop?

The answer, according to Senate Judiciary Chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), is that there will be no limits--not even the U.S. border."

-snip-

"Even if Hatch's approach were not so hideously impractical, it would still be wrong. A policy of permitting assassinations overseas creates the prospect that this country will become the international hit man, carrying out murders often at the behest of dubious allies, and even then they may be at odds with the long-term interests of the United States.

Worse yet, a policy of permitting assassinations within the borders of the United States--targeting as many as 2,000 individuals, according to Hatch--would make this a terror state every bit as illegitimate as those Latin American dictatorships where "enemies of the state" were "disappeared" by outlaw regimes and their paramilitary killing squads."

So in Hatch theory we could have got him.

http://www.alamo-girl.com/0113.htm

They usually have it posted as "Wag the Dog"


This is really a great page of articles posted to point out how Clinton is using Bin Laden to hide his BJ news. Ends up showing how focused he was on getting him.

There is absolutely no evidence that bin Laden has ever had anything to do with terrorism. Americans are only blaming him because they hate Islam and love Israel. He talked about this in a speech in 2002:

Link to story
Link to audio of Clintons statement

"Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan," Clinton explained to a Feb. 15, 2002 Long Island Association luncheon.

"He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan. And we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start meeting with them again."

"They released him," the ex-president confirmed.

"At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America."

"So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, cause they could have," Clinton explained. "But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan."

Just go to search on DU and put in CLinton and Terrorism as the subject. A number of threads will come up for investigation. I just did this last night on the same subject and got several good links that debunk that story and several others. One of the links was to an article by Joe Conason citing numerous sources Including the Wash Post) to put that lie to bed.

I'm typing it out, spare me the typo lectures;-)...

" In recent years Sudanese intelligence officials and Americans friendly to the Sudan regime have invented a fable about bin Laden's final days in Khartoum. In the fable the Sudanese government offers to arrest bin LAden and hand him over, in chains to FBI agents, but Washingtonrejects the offer because the Clinton Administration does not see bin Laden as important or does and cannot find anywhere to put him on trial.

The only slivers of truth to this fable are that a) the Sudanese government was denying it's support for terrorism in the wake of UN sanctions, and b) the CSG had initiated informal inquiries with several nations about incarcerating bin Laden, or putting him on trial. There were no takers. Nonetheless, had we benn able to put our hands on him, we would've gladly done so. US Attorney Mary Jo White in Manhattan could, as the saying goes, "Indict a ham sandwich," She certainly could have obtained an indictment for bin Laden in 1996 had we needed it. In the spring of 1998, she did so. The facts about the supposed Sudanese offer to give us bin Laden are that Turabi (TD's words-Sudanese leader of the time) was not about to turn over his partner in teror to us and had no real attempt to do so ever occured."

There you have it. He said-she said. Who to believe? ...A central witness and high level official with 30 years of counter-terrorism experience, or a quick buck scheming opportunist who since became a Faux News "commentator"?

...why not bin Laden?

Get the book. Carlos the "Jackal" was operating on his own, and had no ties to the NIF. bin Laden OTOH was an ideological blood brother to Turabi, a family firend, and a VERY wealthy benefactor of the NIF leaders.

Albright and Richard Clarke have both denied that this is true. I believe them.