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Wednesday, April 14, 2004

By Ralf Seiffe

News over the weekend should concern anyone interested in the truth about the events leading to the 9/11 attacks.

Former President Bill Clinton appeared before the 9/11 Commission to explain his view of the tragedy and received rave reviews. Unfortunately, he lied.

Answering a direct question about The Sudan’s offer to snag bin Laden and extradite him to the U.S., Clinton denied he had told a New York club that he had turned down the African country’s offer. This appears to be a self-serving falsehood.

Like a third-rate burglary exposed an earlier president, a flyover country radio station exposed this third-rate president as an unrepentant perjurer. Clinton, already disbarred for lying in another famous case, obviously hasn’t learned his lesson.

Scott Hennen, a host on radio station WDAY, in Fargo, North Dakota was interviewing the pit bull commissioner, Bob Kerry, when the story exploded into evidence. Kerry said Clinton had told the Commission he’d been misquoted when asked if he had turned down the Sudanese offer to hand over bin Laden. Hennen, shocked, then offered proof that Clinton told a Long Island audience exactly the opposite on February 15, 2002. Kerry was pole axed, having no idea this was the case and told Hennen to “ship it” to the Commission.

Worse, it now comes out that the Commission already had a copy of a video tape of Clinton’s Long Island speech before he appeared.

The commission asked for a copy and the club had already “shipped it” to the commission at least a month before Clinton’s appearance. National radio commentator Sean Hannity had actually played the tape for Commissioner Lehman days before the ex-president’s appearance last week. Chicago-based WLS-AM's Don Wade and Roma also played a version on Tuesday morning.

One of the reasons the 9/11 Commission was formed was to find out why the organs of government were not able to “connect the dots”. The presumption is that someone knew that the attacks were likely, but that the bureaucrats would not permit the free flow of information. What about the commission connecting their own dots?

What’s going on?

Super-lawyer Richard Ben-Veniste told Fox News Sunday that he and the Commission are “finders of fact." Taking him at his word, the Commission should be wondering what to do about the evident bamboozling it suffered at the lip of Bill Clinton.

The former president’s testimony last Friday had all the veracity of “I never had sex with that woman . . .” If Ben-Veniste and the other Commissioners fail to recall Clinton and get to the bottom of the variance, they cannot be considered anything but advocates. If the Commission permits such an obvious fib, Americans will be right to reject the whole of the Commission’s report as election year manipulation.

It is time for the Republican Commissioners, especially Illinois’ former Governor Jim Thompson, to take charge. Clinton’s clear, bright and outstanding falsehood is reason enough for the ace federal prosecutor to recall the ex-president, but if he needs any more justification, he need look no further than the Martha Stewart case.

Certainly, he cannot fail to connect the dots between the former president’s lying and the signal conviction of the domestic diva. Stewart has been convicted of lying to federal officials and regulators and is waiting near-certain jail time.

Stewart will serve time in a federal penitentiary for making statements that were not under oath about events that had no real consequences to anybody beyond her shareholders. Clinton was also not under oath but the events he lied about involved the most serious consequences.

In both cases, there would have been no penalty for telling the truth. The feds did not indict Stewart for “insider trading” because it didn’t occur. Had it happened, the feds certainly would have pressed the charge.

Likewise, no fair person can blame Clinton for the 9/11 attacks. That’s what makes Clinton’s lie so pointless and so obvious. Neither he nor Bush had a clue of what was to come for the reasons that one hopes the Commission discovers.

It’s true, as Condi Rice said, the country was not on a wartime footing and the concept of airliners as flying missiles was a notion beyond all but the most paranoid.

Our version of a “truth commission” will be valuable only if it is perceived to be doggedly after the truth and only from that will its findings become valuable.

Yesterday’s witnesses, Freeh, Reno and Ashcroft, added little to our understanding of the events that culminated in the tragedy. The commission’s acceptance of their mumbling about money and bureaucratic inertia adds little value of the eventual report.

Clinton’s lie may be immaterial, but its very existence diminishes the work of the commission and must be purged.

It’s time for some fireworks in that hearing room and the obvious commissioner to light the fuse is Jim Thompson.

Let’s hope he has some matches.

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Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader.