Wash. Post ignored own reporting in repeating Freeh allegation

[NNN0LHI]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200712150004?f=h_latest

In a December 15 article by staff writers John Solomon and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum about funding for the Clinton Presidential Library, The Washington Post reported: "In an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal last year, former FBI director Louis J. Freeh said Clinton 'hit up {Saudi Arabia's head of state} Prince Abdullah for a contribution to his library' during a meeting in which Freeh wanted Clinton to ask about the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing." Though the Post acknowledged that former President Clinton disputes this account, the newspaper ignored its own previous reporting in a 2005 article on Freeh's allegation about the Khobar Towers investigation that Freeh was not present at the meeting in question and had no firsthand knowledge of it. Indeed, Freeh acknowledged that "I was not in the room" for the meeting during the October 16, 2005, edition of NBC's Meet the Press. Further, beyond omitting the fact that Freeh was not in the meeting, by describing the meeting as "a meeting in which Freeh wanted Clinton to ask about the ... bombing," the Post affirmatively suggests that Freeh was there. Nor did the Post note that, as Media Matters has previously detailed, Freeh has given contradictory descriptions of the people who supposedly told him about the meeting.

Former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta rebutted Freeh's accusation -- first made in his book My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror (St. Martin's Press, 2005) and repeated in a June 25, 2006, Wall Street Journal op-ed -- in a June 30, 2006, letter to the Journal:

Mr. Freeh's major claims are that President Clinton failed to press the Saudis for cooperation in investigating the attack; that his National Security Adviser Sandy Berger objected to evidence of Iranian culpability; and that the administration was unwilling to take action against Iran.

These claims (among others) are false, and were roundly refuted when his book was released last fall. Several senior Clinton administration officials, including Mr. Berger, pressed their Saudi counterparts to assist our investigation. And on Sept. 24, 1998, President Clinton delivered a forceful message in the Oval Office to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that the future of U.S.-Saudi relations depended upon the kingdom's cooperation -- a message that was reinforced in Vice President Gore's own meeting with Prince Abdullah later that day. Five days later, on Sept. 29, the Saudis began to cooperate, leading to the granting of access, the acquisition of information and the eventual indictments of 13 Saudis and a Lebanese national.

[EFerrari]

1. Has this dirty bastard ever settled John O'Neill's assertion that

he blocked O'Neill's al Qaida investigation?

These beauties never stop, do they.