WRONG SAUDI DUPE:

Clarke claims responsibility: Ex-counterterrorism czar approved post-9-11 flights for bin Laden family (Alexander Bolton, 5/26/04, The Hill)

Richard Clarke, who served as President Bush’s chief of counterterrorism, has claimed sole responsibility for approving flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In an interview with The Hill yesterday, Clarke said, “I take responsibility for it. I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again.”

Most of the 26 passengers aboard one flight, which departed from the United States on Sept. 20, 2001, were relatives of Osama bin Laden, whom intelligence officials blamed for the attacks almost immediately after they happened.

Clarke’s claim of responsibility is likely to put an end to a brewing political controversy on Capitol Hill over who approved the controversial flights of members of the Saudi elite at a time when the administration was preparing to detain dozens of Muslim-Americans and people with Muslim backgrounds as material witnesses to the attacks.

Several Democrats say that at a closed-door meeting May 6, they pressed members of the commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11 to find out who approved the flights.

Mr. Clarke's stay as a media-darling was predictably short-lived, but any legs it had left will be cut out from under by this revelation. The Left has erected entire book and movie industries around the notion that this happened because the Saudis own the Bush family or some such nonsense.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 26, 2004 10:55 PM