It Depends Upon What the Definition of 'Kill" Is

Did Bill Clinton lie in the Fox interview last September when he erupted in anger and wagged his finger (where did we last see that) at Chris Wallace in answer to the question about whether his administration had done enough to get Bin Laden?

What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since.

Not so fast. Sandy Berger may have destroyed other classified documents that he stole from the National Archives to help Clinton and himself on 9-11 failures, but he missed this report:

The report also criticized intelligence problems when Bill Clinton was president, detailing political and legal “constraints” agency officials felt in the late 1990s.

“The restrictions in the authorities given the CIA with respect to bin Laden, while arguably, although ambiguously, relaxed for a period of time in late 1998 and early 1999, limited the range of permissible operations,” the report stated. (Scheuer agreed with the inspector general’s findings on this issue, but said if anything the report was overly diplomatic. “There was never any ambiguity,” he said. “None of those authorities ever allowed us to kill anyone. At least that’s what the CIA lawyers told us.” A spokesman for the former president had no immediate comment.)

In any case, the inspector general found that the CIA's failure to conduct effective covert actions against bin Laden prior to 9/11 was ultimately not because of ambiguous legal authorities but because it did not have effective assets on the ground who could mount a “credible operation” against him.

Just another "stain" from a...well, give Bill Clinton your own psychological profile title.

References from a non-professional
(G.M. would do better):

Can the President Think?

Personality scrutiny brings fewer presidential surprises

And, if you want to learn a little about Hillary Rodham-Clinton, as if we don't know enough, here's one, but don't read it. Trust me.

The Psychobiography of Hillary Rodham Clinton