Gawain of Orkeny
10-08-2005, 01:59
Ex-FBI Chief On Clinton's Scandals
Oct. 6, 2005
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Louis Freeh served as director of the FBI from 1993 until 2001. (CBS)
(CBS) Elevated to the post of FBI director by President Clinton in 1993, Louis Freeh now speaks publicly about his terrible relationship with the president.
“We were preoccupied in eight years with multiple investigations,” Freeh tells 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace this Sunday, Oct. 9, at 7 PM ET/PT.
In his upcoming book, My FBI, Freeh writes, “The problem was with Bill Clinton — the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out.”
The scandals Freeh mentions include Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers.
The director sought to distance himself from Clinton because of Whitewater, refusing a White House pass that would have enabled him to enter the building without signing in. This irked Clinton. “I wanted all my visits to be official,” says Freeh. “When I sent the pass back with a note, I had no idea it would antagonize the president.”
Freeh says the most delicate and unsavory of the investigations was the Lewinsky affair, when the FBI needed to obtain a blood sample from the president to match the DNA on the infamous blue dress.
“But we did it … very carefully, very confidentially,” Freeh says. During a scheduled dinner, the president excused himself to go to the bathroom. Instead of the restroom, he entered another room where FBI medical technicians were waiting to take a blood sample.
Aside from scandals and investigations, Freeh says Clinton let down the American people and the families of victims of the 1996 Khobar Towers terror attack in Saudi Arabia.
After promising to bring to justice those responsible for the bombing that killed 19 and injured hundreds, Freeh says Clinton refused to personally ask Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to allow the FBI to question bombing suspects the kingdom had in custody — the only way the bureau could secure the interviews, according to Freeh.
Freeh writes in the book, “Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudis’ reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library.”
Freeh also says he was determined to stay on as FBI director until President Clinton left office so that Clinton could not appoint his successor. “I was concerned about who he would put in there as FBI director because he had expressed antipathy for the FBI, for the director,” he says. “I was going to stay there and make sure he couldn’t replace me.”
What a bum.
Oct. 6, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Louis Freeh served as director of the FBI from 1993 until 2001. (CBS)
(CBS) Elevated to the post of FBI director by President Clinton in 1993, Louis Freeh now speaks publicly about his terrible relationship with the president.
“We were preoccupied in eight years with multiple investigations,” Freeh tells 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace this Sunday, Oct. 9, at 7 PM ET/PT.
In his upcoming book, My FBI, Freeh writes, “The problem was with Bill Clinton — the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out.”
The scandals Freeh mentions include Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers.
The director sought to distance himself from Clinton because of Whitewater, refusing a White House pass that would have enabled him to enter the building without signing in. This irked Clinton. “I wanted all my visits to be official,” says Freeh. “When I sent the pass back with a note, I had no idea it would antagonize the president.”
Freeh says the most delicate and unsavory of the investigations was the Lewinsky affair, when the FBI needed to obtain a blood sample from the president to match the DNA on the infamous blue dress.
“But we did it … very carefully, very confidentially,” Freeh says. During a scheduled dinner, the president excused himself to go to the bathroom. Instead of the restroom, he entered another room where FBI medical technicians were waiting to take a blood sample.
Aside from scandals and investigations, Freeh says Clinton let down the American people and the families of victims of the 1996 Khobar Towers terror attack in Saudi Arabia.
After promising to bring to justice those responsible for the bombing that killed 19 and injured hundreds, Freeh says Clinton refused to personally ask Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to allow the FBI to question bombing suspects the kingdom had in custody — the only way the bureau could secure the interviews, according to Freeh.
Freeh writes in the book, “Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudis’ reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library.”
Freeh also says he was determined to stay on as FBI director until President Clinton left office so that Clinton could not appoint his successor. “I was concerned about who he would put in there as FBI director because he had expressed antipathy for the FBI, for the director,” he says. “I was going to stay there and make sure he couldn’t replace me.”
What a bum.