The best defense is a good offense

The White House fires back at Democrats -- singling out Hillary Clinton -- while trying to limit further inquiries.

By Anthony York

May 18, 2002 | WASHINGTON -- The White House came out swinging Friday, accusing Democrats of insinuating that President Bush could and should have done more to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11.

At a Rose Garden ceremony for the Air Force Academy football team, Bush called Washington "a kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature. The American people know this about me and my national security team and my administration: Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer repeated the "second-guessing" line at an afternoon press conference. But Fleischer went a step further, specifically accusing Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., of being among the most guilty of political opportunists on the other side of the aisle. The White House's decision to call out Clinton -- whose mere name still makes partisan Republicans' skin crawl -- is perhaps the clearest sign of just how political this Sept. 11 finger-pointing has become.

"When there was a suggestion that Bush knew about this, in print, Bush knew about 9/11, Mayor Bloomberg of New York said that suggestion was ridiculous," Fleischer said. "I have to say with disappointment that Mrs. Clinton, having seen that same headline, did not call the White House, did not ask if it was accurate or not. Instead, she immediately went to the floor of the Senate, and I'm sorry to say that she followed that headline and divided."

In remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, Clinton spoke about the New York Post's sensationalist headline "Bush Knew!"

"The president knew what?" Clinton asked Thursday. "My constituents would like to know the answer to that and many other questions, not to blame the president or any other American but just to know, to learn from experience, to do all we can today to ensure that a 9/11 never happens again."

"This should not be made into something political, because it is truly a matter of our national security," Clinton said in New York Friday. "On behalf of my constituents and my colleagues, we have a responsibility to ask for information. And I think that it is not only appropriate, but necessary. You know, nobody is more entitled to answers to some of these questions than the people of New York. And I take that responsibility very, very seriously."

As to the assertion that Clinton did not contact the White House, Clinton spokesman Jim Kennedy said his boss spent the afternoon in a briefing with Bush's National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and had a "very good idea where the administration was coming from."

The White House's line of attack is similar to the strategy the Bush team mastered during the presidential campaign -- taking thinly veiled partisan jabs while trying to claim an apolitical high ground.

For example, when Fleischer was asked about a 1999 Library of Congress report -- which states, "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House" -- he used it as an opportunity to include Congress and the Clinton administration in any blame for ignoring warning signs leading up to Sept. 11. Saying the report "was available in 1999 to members of Congress, the previous administration," Fleischer concluded that "It existed in some form which did not come to the attention of this administration when we took office on Jan. 20. And I think what it shows is this information that was out there did not raise enough alarms with anybody."

Next page: Stealing a line from the Clinton White House