With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
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Sunday, Aug. 11, 2002

Clinton Reveals on Secret Audio: I Nixed Bin Laden Extradition Offer

Secret audiotape obtained exclusively by NewsMax.com shows former President Clinton admitting for the first time anywhere that he had the chance to take Osama bin Laden into custody, but he nixed the idea because he couldn't come up with a legal justification for the 9-11 mastermind's extradition.

The tape, recorded at a February business luncheon on New York's Long Island, proves that the claims of Pakistani-American businessman Mansour Ijaz, who says he brokered the deal for bin Laden's extradition, have been accurate all along - even as former Clinton officials trashed him as an exaggerator and even a liar.

Clinton's comments to the Long Island Association were so controversial that the group refused to release its own video recording to NBC News, after the network requested a copy on Friday based on NewsMax.com's Wednesday report on the event.

But NewsMax was there with our own tape rolling, a portion of which we now make available to our readers.

On the tape you'll hear the ex-president himself responding to a question about whether he would have handled bin Laden differently knowing now what he didn't know then.

Clinton explains that he was criticized at the time for being "too obsessed" with bin Laden and al-Qaeda, then maintains he just barely missed the terror kingpin when he launched the Aug. 20, 1998, cruise missile attack on his terror training camp in Khost, Afghanistan.

The mission failed, said the former commander in chief, because the attack plans were "ratted out."

In the next breath the ex-president defends his simultaneous cruise missile attack on a Sudanese medicine factory, claiming subsequent testimony from the trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers proves that attack was justified.

Then Clinton makes the devastating admission he has never repeated before or since - that Sudan was ready to hand over bin Laden to the U.S., but he said no, even though "we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America."

For those who can't access NewsMax.com's MP3 Clinton audio file, we've transcribed the ex-president's bombshell revelation verbatim:

You must credit NewsMax if linking or republishing this article or audio.

"Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. 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.

"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. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan." (End of excerpt)

Since last December, Ijaz has insisted that he negotiated the deal for bin Laden's release from Sudan. But he maintained that the White House declined to take advantage of the offer because of legal technicalities - a detail now confirmed by the ex-president, as NewsMax's tape proves.

But shortly after his account first appeared in the Los Angeles Times, former Clinton officials trashed the bin Laden extradition story as an exaggeration at best - a complete fabrication at worst.

Asked to respond to Ijaz's account in January, ex-NSC aide Nancy Soderberg told Fox News Channel, "He's living in a fantasy land. There was no such Sudanese offer."

"He's lying ... he's a crackpot," said Jennifer Palmieri, a former White House aide who now serves as chief spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, of Ijaz's story in May. "The guy has absolutely no credibility. You'll see that you never see him on television anymore once he was outed as being a fraud."

Mainstream reporters, apparently unaware of Clinton's February comments, have also trashed Ijaz's account.

In May, both New York Times reporter Judith Miller and NBC newswoman Andrea Mitchell told radioman Don Imus they declined to cover the bin Laden extradition story because they didn't find it credible.

July 1996 "[the bomb in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia] was the result of American behavior against Muslims, its support of Jews in Palestine, and the massacre of Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon."

August 1996 "[the bomb in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia was] the beginning of war between Muslims and the United States."

November 1996 "Had we wanted to carry out small operations after our threat statement, we would have been able to… We thought that the two bombings in Riyadh and Dhahran would be enough (sic.) a signal to the wise U.S. decision-makers to avoid the real confrontation with the Islamic nation, but it seems they did not understand it."

February 1997 "This war will not only be between the people of the two sacred mosques and the Americans, but it will be between the Islamic world and the Americans and their allies because this war is a new crusade led by America against the Islamic nations."

May 1997 "We have focused our declaration of jihad on the U.S. soldiers inside Arabia…The U.S. government has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal through its support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine."

May 1997 "If the American government is serious about avoiding the explosions inside the US, then let it stop provoking the feelings of 1,250 million Muslims. Those hundreds of thousands who have been killed or displaced in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, do have brothers and relatives. They would make of Ramzi Yousef [convicted for his role in 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center] a symbol and a teacher. The US will drive them to transfer the battle into the United States."

The world, with religion running government, will never be at peace.