CLINTON, BIN LADEN AND THE SUDAN

(Hat-tip to AnnECUCherry on AOL)

In July 2004, Clinton was interviewed by The Daily Sun. Here's the part about Osama:

You mentioned what you could or might have been able to do. Sometime in 1996 you spoke to a group of people in Long Island about this whole issue of Sudan, was Sudan ...

That was in 2001 ...

OK. Was Sudan asked to extradite [bin Laden]? Did you miss the opportunity to have him extradited?

And I miss ... what I said there was wrong. What I said was in error. I went back now and did all this research for my book and I said that we were told we couldn't hold him, implying that we had a chance to get him and didn't. That's not factually accurate. Here's what is factually accurate.

In 1996 and before then, when we found out about bin Laden, we had first thought he was a financier of terrorism but not a ringleader. In the beginning. When he took up residence in Sudan after having been ejected from Saudi Arabia, it is true that at some point during that period, there was some discussion in the Justice Department casting a doubt on how long we could hold him ... on the question of had he committed, or did we have evidence that he committed, an offense against the United States.
But that was never part of the question about whether we could get him.

When he left, the idea that the Sudanese offered to hand him over to us is just absurd. The idea that they told us when he was leaving, and he was landing in the Gulf and we could get him at another airport, is absurd, and the idea that they tried to give him to us instead of giving him to Afghanistan is just not true. I have now gone back and reconstructed all the records, read all the documents, and that is just not true.