The final report of the Sept. 11 commission says there's no evidence suggesting former US president Bill Clinton ordered airstrikes on targets associated with Osama bin Laden to distract attention from his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
But the report says the affair, coupled with other issues, likely affected later discussions about using force against the terrorist leader.
Following US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the Clinton administration planned and launched cruise missile strikes on alleged terrorist assets of bin Laden in Sudan and Afghanistan. The report said reaction to the Aug. 20, 1998, strikes included "scalding criticism" that the action was "too aggressive."
"At the time, President Clinton was embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal, which continued to consume public attention for the rest of that year and the first months of 1999," the report said.
"As it happened, a popular 1997 movie, Wag the Dog, features a president who fakes a war to distract public attention from a domestic scandal. Some Republicans in Congress raised questions about the timing of the strikes."
In testimony, Clinton aides told the commissioners that their advice to Clinton about the airstrikes was based solely on national security considerations.
"We have found no reason to question their statements," the commissioners said.
The commission's final report treads lightly on Clinton's affair with the one-time White House intern, which led to his impeachment and later acquittal by the Senate.
Although only tiny sections of the report refer to the affair, the commissioners spent a lot of time discussing how and whether to discuss it in the report, deciding, in the end, that it was important to do so.
"The language was carefully chosen," Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director, said Friday.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
RSS