RUSH: I went to the websites of Newsweek and TIME today. I thought for sure I’d see Louis Freeh on the covers, and I didn’t. Newsweek has got the Mormon Church on the cover, so I figured Louis Freeh must be a Mormon, and then I looked at TIME and I saw that Louis Freeh is not on the cover there, and neither time nor Newsweek are running excerpts from Louis Freeh’s book. TIME Magazine’s cover is, ‘Health and aging.’ I figure Louis Freeh must be getting old out there. Bill Clinton sings in the voice of Paul Shanklin.
(Playing of ‘Louie Louie’ parody.)
That is Paul Shanklin. You can visit all of Paul Shanklin’s parodies at PaulShanklin.com. That’s ‘Louie Louie,’ and for me it’s sort of like the original ‘Louie Louie.’ You can’t understand all the lyrics, but that’s part of the charm. The New York Times has a report today on the book by Louie B. Freeh. ‘In a new book FBI director fights back, settling a score,’ they say. (laughing) I told you! I told you that the mainstream press was going to circle the wagons around Freeh. No cover story on Freeh on TIME or Newsweek. No book excerpts at TIME or Newsweek. The Washington Post is not serializing the book like they sometimes do. ‘Louis Freeh, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, former director under President Clinton and the first six months of the Bush presidency asserts in a new book that Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief was basically a second-tear player who had little access to power and was in no position to issue credible warnings in advance of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
”If he was rushing around the executive branch trying to make a case that we were in imminent danger of a terrorist attack on our shores, he wasn’t trying to make that case with me,’ Freeh writes of Mr. Clarke in his memoir to be published this week called ‘My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War On Terror.’ The publisher, St. Martins Press. In his own book, by the way, ‘Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War On Terror,’ Mr. Clarke describes himself as a herald of the dangers of terrorism, paints a scathing picture of Mr. Freeh and the FBI, criticizing the former director and his agency as ignoring the possibility of terrorism in this country. Freeh says that incidents involving the two of them that Mr. Clarke describes in his book never happened, and the Clarke book ‘can be fairly described as bad facts and no access.’ Mr. Clarke was traveling over the weekend and didn’t respond to messages left on his office phone or his cell phone.’ Meanwhile, 60 Minutes did the obligatory interview with Louis Freeh last night. Mike Wallace did it, and Wallace said, ‘Mr. Freeh, I’m told that relations got so bad between you and Bill Clinton that his former chief of staff, John Podesta, says that Mr. Clinton always referred to you as ‘that F-ing Freeh,’ as though your first name of F-ing.’
FREEH: You know, I don’t know how they referred to me and I really didn’t care. My role and my obligation was to conduct criminal investigations. He, unfortunately for the country and unfortunately for him, happened to be the subject of that investigation. You know, I investigated and arrested and prosecuted some of the biggest mobsters in New York City for many, many years. Interestingly, they were always very respectful to me. When I was chosen as FBI director, one of the subjects I convicted wrote me a letter from prison, and he said, ‘Mr. Freeh, I want to say that you always treated me fairly. Good luck as FBI director,’ and then he had, ‘PS, I stole the stamp for this letter.’
RUSH: (Laughing.) Now, what does that mean, though? I mean, Louis Freeh is saying he was treated with more respect by mobsters that he put in jail than a he was by Bill Clinton. Well, that’s a mobster he didn’t put in jail. I guess the mobsters that you nail respect you for doing your job well, so they steal stamps to write you congratulatory letters. The next question. Wallace says, “Is it true that you stayed on longer as FBI director because you didn’t want Bill Clinton to get a chance to name the new guy?”
FREEH: That’s correct. I was concerned about who he would put in there as FBI director, because he had expressed antipathy for the FBI, for the director. I was going to stay there and make sure that he couldn’t replace me.
RUSH: Wallace says, “Well, with the new president’s approval on Freeh’s last day as FBI director, he announced indictments of those responsible for the Khobar attacks, but they’re still overseas, out of America’s reach. Freeh told that you say way back in 1993 after the World Trade Center, the first one, bombing, he realized the US was in a global war with terrorists but then after Al-Qaeda terrorists blew a hole in the USS Cole and demolished two US embassies in east Africa, that America did little to retaliate. Freeh writes how frustrated that made him because he believes than the retaliating only encouraged more attacks. You write, ‘America seemed like a lumbering giant, those are your words, stumbling around with a sign on its back reading “kick me.”‘”
FREEH: USS Cole, the east African bombings, the attempted assassination of President Bush, former President Bush, by the Iraqi intelligence service. What was our response to that? We sent a missile into Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad
RUSH: So today on the Today Show, they circled the wagons and they went and got Joe Lockhart who used to run the Kerry campaign, and this is one of his reactions to the charges Louis Freeh makes.
LOCKHART: He spent a lot of his time chasing political rumors and political scandals, when there were real issues like the FBI computer system, the crime lab, and the real terrorist threat.
RUSH: Hey, Joe, the real terrorist threat? That’s what he’s talking about! What do you mean “the real terrorist threat”? We all know what the real terrorist threat was. Dick Morris from that administration has made it clear the Clinton administration didn’t tackle — didn’t really care much about — terrorism because your numbers could go down if you didn’t do it right. They didn’t tackle big issues in that White House for that very reason. So Louis Freeh, let me comment on one other thing, too. Louis Freeh, we mentioned this last week, said that Clinton actually did not push the Saudis to release the suspects of the bombing of the Khobar Towers. He said to the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, “Yeah, I know the problem you got with that,” and then Freeh says Abdullah was hit up by Clinton for a big donation to the Clinton Library and Massage Parlor. Now, the Clinton spinners on this are arguing that Crown Prince Abdullah donated to the library after Clinton left office. Okay, but was that the first donation or was it the
They were do all this stuff to raise all of this money — and all those efforts led to $100 million, and everybody in the world knew, they were traveling around the world raising money, got $100 million. Bill Clinton get
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