Clinton Administration Ignores Information, Jesse Jackson and a Right Wing Attack

And now, the most intriguing two minutes in television, the latest footnotes to the American war on terrorism. 

The Clinton administration not only turned down offers from the Sudan to arrest and turn over Usama bin Laden, but also turned down intelligence information on the two men who would later pilot the planes into the World Trade Center.

This charge comes from businessman Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the prestigious council on foreign relations in New York, who writes in the  Los Angeles Times that he was the intermediary between the Sudanese government and President Clinton himself. 

Ijaz says the channel he opened in 1996 continued for two years, during which Sudan, eager to have terrorism sanctions lifted, offered either to turn over bin Laden, who was living there then, or to monitor all his activities and associations.  He said the Sudan also offered to turn over important data on both Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, who later became the World Trade Center suicide pilots, to the FBI.  But he said the Clinton administration turned all the offers down. 

Remember the case of young Aaron Petitt, the Cleveland high school student who got suspended back in October for putting posters of warplanes bombing Afghanistan on his student locker?  School officials said the posters were "threatening, intimidating, inflammatory and inappropriate."

Aaron's family sued the school district for violating his due process and free speech rights, and won a settlement in which the school system will pay $24,000. Aaron will get $2,000, his parents, $1,000, and the rest will go to his lawyers.  The Petitts say they're satisfied because they didn't want money, only their son's name cleared. 

And the Reverend Jesse Jackson is saying the right wing is taking over the government and is using the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the "right-wing media" as weapons to "destroy the leadership of organized labor." 

In a speech to the AFL-CIO convention in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Jackson said if a labor leader raises questions about the war on terror and then gives money to "a peaceful organization.  They then trail your money, and they tap your phone and then IRS and then Washington Times and then Fox." 

He cited no specific example, but it may be worth noting that Fox News has questioned Jackson's own finances, which, as we noted at the time, had apparently not been challenged by the IRS.