Johnny Buffalo wrote:

Gore, Clinton meet privately with Sept. 11 panel

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Al Gore met with the Sept. 11
panel privately Friday, a day after President Clinton told
commissioners that intelligence wasn't strong enough to justify a
retaliation against al-Qaeda for the 2000 bombing of a Navy ship.
Gore met with the 10-member bipartisan commission in a three-hour
meeting it described as candid and forthcoming. "We thank him for his
continued cooperation with the commission," the panel said in a
statement.

On Thursday, the commission interviewed Clinton behind closed doors
for nearly four hours after the conclusion of national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice's public testimony, broadcast live on
national television.

Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska and now a member
of the commission, said Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America" he
believes Clinton should have been more aggressive in going after
al-Qaeda following the ship attack.

"I think he did have enough proof to take action," Kerrey said.
"That's a difference of opinion."

A person familiar with the session said Clinton told the commission he
did not order retaliatory military strikes after the bombing of the
USS Cole in October 2000 because he could not get "a clear, firm
judgment of responsibility" from U.S. intelligence before he left
office the following January.

It wasn't until after the Bush administration took power that U.S.
intelligence concluded al-Qaeda had sponsored the attack on the ship
in the harbor at Aden, Yemen. Some commissioners have been critical of
the decision not to launch a retaliatory military strike.

The person, who would speak only on condition of anonymity because
Clinton's testimony delved into classified materials, also said the
former president explained the rationale for many of the
terror-fighting policies that his administration instituted and the
message his administration left behind to the incoming Bush
administration.

Clinton "did not indicate anything fundamentally that he would have
done differently" given what U.S. intelligence knew about Osama bin
Laden and the al-Qaeda threat, the person said.

Commission chairman Thomas Kean said Clinton told the commission he
has wrestled with the issue of whether his administration could have
done more.

"He said he's going back in his mind over and over again about whether
there was something more he could've done," Kean told PBS' "NewsHour
with Jim Lehrer."

The panel said it didn't plan to release details of the meeting,
saying much of it involved classified information.

Commissioners said that Clinton addressed big-picture policy issues.

"He was adamant about trying to work in a bipartisan way to fix the
problems," said Democratic commissioner Timothy Roemer, a former U.S.
representative from Indiana. "He was quite honest and frank."

John Lehman, a former Navy secretary under President Reagan, agreed.

"He did very well," Lehman told CNN. "He gave us a lot of very helpful
insights into things that happened, policy approaches."

A spokesman for Clinton, Jim Kennedy, said the former president was
pleased to talk to the commission "and believed it was a very
constructive meeting."

Clinton and Gore consented in February to separate private interviews.

President Bush and Vice President ***** Cheney also will meet privately
with the full panel in a joint session in coming weeks. They initially
restricted the interview to one hour with two panel members, but under
mounting public pressure agreed last week to a joint session without
time constraints.

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Move along boys, nothing to see here.

JB is just showing the contrast between the Clinton administration's
straight forward assistance to the committee and the GW/Cheney
ventriloquist road show at the White House today. We should be seeing
GW sitting down soon as soon as the irritation from doing the interview
with Cheney's hand up his ***** goes away.

Miles "Mortimer Snerd" Long

GW sitting down soon as soon as the irritation from doing the interview
with Cheney's hand up his ***** goes away.