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00:07The FBI Director and the President of the United States need to have a relationship
00:13where they have ongoing dialogue. A relationship that is forged based on a shared vision of
00:21national security for the United States of America. When a President and an FBI Director
00:26don't get along. It's a recipe for chaos. This is CNN Breaking News. An explosion has occurred
00:38at a U.S. Air Force facility in Dharan, Saudi Arabia. Nineteen U.S. airmen were dead and
00:44another 372 Americans were wounded, many of them very seriously. The Khobar Towers bombing
00:55had all the elements of what could be a unifying event or a explosive event between the FBI
01:04Director and the President.
01:07Hunt!
01:09President Clinton had political interests to consider.
01:14FBI Director Louis Free, he didn't care about politics. If that brought him into conflict
01:20with the White House or anyone else, so be it. You couldn't have cast two more different
01:26people. Louis Free had the guideposts of faith and family and Bill Clinton had the guideposts
01:33of position and power. There were just so many controversies.
01:38Monica, look over here! Monica!
01:42Free felt that Bill Clinton's actions were beneath the presidency. There was about Louis Free,
01:50a strain of holier-than-thou. And that's something Bill Clinton didn't like.
01:55And they did not literally speak or communicate for four years.
02:00It was a remarkable deterioration that left the country ultimately less safe.
02:07We were facing a threat from extremist Islamists overseas, and it was something as a nation we
02:13should have been preparing for. Perhaps if we had paid more attention to Khobar Towers at the time,
02:19the outcome might have been different on 9-11. Hard to say.
02:31The relationship between the FBI Director and the President has always been complicated.
02:36Sometimes they're in moments of deep collaboration. At other times, the FBI is investigating the President.
02:44The relationship has to be characterized by a certain ambiguity and tension.
02:49There are all kinds of things that can happen when those two entities get together.
03:07At the beginning of the 1990s, really for the first time in American history, the United States was the only
03:12superpower.
03:13The Soviet Union had collapsed.
03:15The Cold War had been won.
03:20Democracy had prevailed over communism.
03:26East Germans came through the Berlin Wall and over the Wall Thursday.
03:31As for the first time in 28 years, the Communist government of East Germany allowed its citizens to travel to
03:37the West without hindrance.
03:38Even the Communist Party leaders now acknowledge they cannot hold back the tide of democratization.
03:44It's a wonderful feeling. In the morning, I dance with my son on the wall.
03:50I cannot believe it.
03:59It was a new era in the world.
04:02The United States was the major superpower.
04:06It wasn't just our military, which was unchallenged and unchallengeable.
04:10But it was our ideas about freedom and democracy and our culture.
04:23But when Bill Clinton ran for president, there was a strong sense that we had neglected the home front.
04:29We were in a terrible recession and folks really wanted change.
04:35Today in America, we're not celebrating.
04:38Why?
04:39Because all of us fear down deep inside that even as the American dream reigns supreme abroad, it's dying here
04:47at home.
04:49We talk about presidents that were born impoverished.
04:53Bill Clinton's top of the list.
04:56He grew up with nothing.
04:58Can you remember back when first thought came to you that you wanted to get into politics?
05:03I was about 10 years old and we had just gotten a television.
05:08We didn't get a television until I was nine.
05:10And I watched the Democratic and Republican national conventions on TV and I was fascinated with it.
05:17And that's the first time I began to think that I would like to do that.
05:21People knew that there was something special about this guy.
05:24He's extraordinarily smart.
05:25And he parlayed that into scholarships and then a degree at Yale Law School.
05:31This is like the miracle of America.
05:34Okay, showtime.
05:38He carries that with him every day.
05:40How do I make somebody else's story turn out like mine?
05:44There's something particularly in contrast to the two men that he's running against.
05:49George H.W. Bush, who's stiff upper lip, Connecticut.
05:55And then Ross Perot, who is running as an independent and is a million years old.
06:03Bill Clinton radiated youth and intelligence and charisma.
06:08He would enter into a conversation with anybody.
06:12People are real disillusioned with politics.
06:14We've got to change some things.
06:16So we agreed to do a town hall meeting sponsored by MTV.
06:20Hi, I'm Tabitha Soren.
06:21This is Facing the Future with Bill Clinton.
06:23MTV in the early 90s was maybe what TikTok is today.
06:27It's where young people went to get news and where old people couldn't even imagine you going there.
06:34MTV News hosted a variety of town hall type forums to delve into lots of different topics in a really
06:41deep way.
06:42Education, the environment, AIDS, the economy, why young people don't vote.
06:46Then often we ended the show with what we called a rapid round, more superficial questions, but still ones that
06:54could tell you about somebody.
06:55Mr. President, the world's dying to know, is it boxers or briefs?
07:00He doesn't hesitate to answer the question.
07:04Usually briefs.
07:07It was kind of funny.
07:09It was sort of a pop culture moment.
07:13It really, perhaps more than anything else, showed that this was a new political world out there.
07:23That's it.
07:24Game, set, match.
07:26It's over.
07:27Bill Clinton will be the new president of the United States.
07:36When Bill Clinton came into office in 1993, the head of the FBI was William Sessions.
07:42Director Sessions had come under attack for a number of different issues.
07:48Sessions had been under fire for months, even under the Bush administration, after Justice Department investigators accused him of abusing
07:54his office,
07:55taking personal trips at taxpayer expense and using government funds to build a $10,000 security fence at his home.
08:02From the Clinton administration standpoint, the one place you didn't want something looking unethical was probably the FBI.
08:12There was consensus decision that they needed new leadership.
08:16President Clinton did a most unusual thing in the post-J. Edgar Hoover world, which is he fired an FBI
08:22director.
08:24Then, of course, that meant they had to find another one.
08:28Today, I am pleased to nominate a law enforcement legend to be the director of the FBI, Judge Louis Free.
08:36It can truly be said that Louis Free is the best possible person to head the FBI as it faces
08:43new challenges and a new century.
08:46When Louis Free becomes the FBI director, he is a different kind of director.
08:52This was a buttoned-up guy who followed the rules and enforced the rules, and that's exactly who you'd want
08:58running the FBI.
08:59And thank you for the honor of this nomination.
09:01For Clinton, Louis Free was a great get.
09:04I pledge my total commitment to a Federal Bureau of Investigation whose only beacon is the rule of law.
09:11Until he wasn't.
09:19There were cheers all around when Louis Free arrived with President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno.
09:25In a ceremony in the courtyard of the FBI headquarters, the former FBI undercover agent and federal judge took the
09:31oath of office as the agency's fifth director.
09:33Louis Free, in sort of the recesses of his mind, had always thought being the director of the FBI was
09:43a dream job, what he was born to do.
09:46I, Louis J. Free, do solemnly swear, do solemnly swear.
09:50Could you boil down for me in a few words what is Louis Free's philosophy?
09:55You serve your, your country, you serve your family, you serve your God that you believe in.
10:04Louis Free was a very strong practicing Catholic.
10:11He was an altar boy and he carried a prayer book that he received as an altar boy in his
10:18back pocket.
10:19Louis Free was all about rules and careful management and is of unquestionable integrity.
10:28He was groomed for the job of FBI director.
10:32His life was devoted to public service.
10:36He's a guy from New Jersey, went to Rutgers University, worked undercover against the mob as an FBI agent in
10:44the New York office.
10:46He became a federal prosecutor and brought the single most significant international mafia narcotics case to date, the Pizza Connection
10:55case.
10:56The government says at least 1,650 pounds of heroin was imported into this country.
11:02Officials say the street value of the heroin was over a billion and a half dollars.
11:08And then was a sitting federal judge.
11:10Where's he been? This guy's like flawless.
11:13Well, he's an amazing man. I mean, he was, he grew up in a working class family in Jersey City.
11:19He worked his way through law school. He's my kind of guy, you know, just from the heartland.
11:31That first conversation that Louis Free had with President Clinton, it went on for hours.
11:37Clinton was so engaging and so open and seemed to know so much about the FBI and kind of hit
11:44all the right marks.
11:45Nobody in that room had ever seen Louis Free get that close to someone that quickly.
11:55And at the end, President Clinton said to Louis Free, what do you need from me?
12:01And he said, I need your commitment that the FBI will be free of political interference.
12:10Clinton said, I agree with that 100%.
12:12It was love at first sight. Clinton, at least I know, really thought highly of him.
12:18Free said, this is the best politician of my generation.
12:22It really looked like this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
12:32Louis Free came to the FBI, I think with a vision to take us to the next level.
12:41From a domestic law enforcement agency into a global crime and terrorism fighting agency.
12:51I think our most immediate concern now is the is the terrorism problem,
12:56a problem which we've not encountered on the scale that we've seen it and
13:00something which has to be addressed immediately with all of our resources.
13:05In the White House, we were certainly aware that there was a new threat on the horizon
13:13called terrorism that unless we paid attention to was going to continue to take the lives of
13:20innocent men, women, and children.
13:22The main thing is we need to move as quickly as we can, try to strengthen this country's hand against
13:27terrorism.
13:29In a different world, Louis Free and Bill Clinton might be peas in a pod.
13:32They might be best friends.
13:35Hyper smart, deep-faced, extraordinarily ambitious,
13:40and willing to do what it takes to get ahead.
13:47And yet somehow they didn't exactly grow together, they grew apart.
14:02The honeymoon between Bill Clinton and Louis Free was over very quickly.
14:09I was there a very short period of time, so short in fact that I had not unpacked most of
14:15my boxes.
14:16In my office, most of my boxes were still full.
14:19One of the reasons it was over very quickly was that a couple of months into Louis Free's tenure,
14:27he was told by his investigators that they were investigating something called Whitewater.
14:33I said to him, you just told me we're conducting a criminal investigation of the President of the United States.
14:38I hadn't even unpacked my materials yet.
14:41A senior administration official says it's virtually inconceivable President Clinton would not hand over to the Justice Department
14:48the files on their investment in an ill-fated land development project in Arkansas.
14:52That changed very fundamentally the relationship between the Director and the President.
14:59At that moment, the wall went up for free.
15:05Louis Free took his White House pass and he turned it in.
15:11President Clinton took a front.
15:15Right at that point, it became clear that this was not going to be a palsy relationship.
15:23The implications of a White House pass would mean I could go in and out of that building anytime I
15:28wanted,
15:29without really being recorded as a visitor.
15:33I wanted all my visits to be official.
15:38It suggested a distance.
15:41You know, you want your FBI Director to be independent, but you don't want them to be unaccountable.
15:48I had to protect the integrity of the investigation.
15:51I had to protect the FBI and I had to protect the President.
15:55A whole lot of people fell for this and a lot of very smart people fell for it.
16:00But the whole thing was investigated for years, millions and millions of dollars.
16:08And it came out to be nothing.
16:11The first year in office for President Clinton was very rocky.
16:16There were no wins in 93 for Clinton.
16:20The World Trade Center gets hit.
16:23You're failing on your big healthcare initiative.
16:26And so Clinton started seeming ineffective.
16:30Happily, there was no election for Bill Clinton to lose,
16:34but he did set new records for low ratings in the opinion polls.
16:37And the Washington pundits began asking,
16:40is this presidency already over?
16:44The Republicans felt there was blood in the water.
16:47Lo and behold, Newt Gingrich of Georgia is coming out with his contract for America.
16:55Today on these steps, we offer this contract as a first step towards renewing American civilization.
17:02The Democrats misread the electorate.
17:05They underestimated the power of the contract with America.
17:10They were caught sleeping.
17:11There is a volcanic change in American politics tonight.
17:14The Republicans, it appears likely, will take control of both the House and the Senate.
17:19For 1994, the Republicans beat us like a bad piece of meat.
17:23My name is Bob Barr.
17:24I came into the Congress after the 94 election,
17:27which was the first time the Republicans had a majority in the House in 40 years.
17:33We were held accountable yesterday,
17:35and I accept my share of the responsibility in the result of the elections.
17:40When the Republicans took control of Congress, there's a strong sense among Team Clinton
17:44that Louis Free was working for the Republicans on the Hill,
17:47not for the President of the United States.
17:49He wasn't.
17:51He was doing exactly what the director of the FBI should be doing,
17:55and that is following the evidence that indicated violations of federal law.
18:05Over time, President Clinton and FBI Director Free's relationship only got worse.
18:14Another scandal brewing involves the White House's mishandling of FBI files.
18:22One day in the mid-'90s, somebody in the White House basement finds a whole bunch of FBI files.
18:29They included a bunch of files of Republican political appointees from the previous president,
18:34who were now in private life, who had no business having their stuff pawed through in the White House.
18:39Attorney General Janet Reno today asked the FBI to move forward with an investigation
18:44into how and why the White House improperly obtained the confidential files on many prominent Republicans.
18:51Immediately, Clinton said, well, it's some kind of bureaucratic snafu.
18:53That's not what Louis Free said.
18:57Louis Free put out a statement that said, the FBI and I have been victimized.
19:03It turned out to be nothing, thank God.
19:05But it was, it really bothered a lot of us.
19:12It's just the fact that the FBI director would attack the White House in the press.
19:18It immediately says to the American people, we're on different sides of the fence.
19:24There were just so many cascading controversies that were piling up.
19:33Later, word got out that the FBI was investigating Chinese campaign contributions to the Clinton campaign.
19:42Is there compelling evidence that Chinese money was in fact funneled into the American political system?
19:48We are looking at both the national security aspects of this case and the criminal aspects.
19:53We're not going to leave any stone unturned.
19:55It was, at that time, the largest investigation in FBI history.
20:03When you deploy that, you better, by God, be sure there's some decent cause for it.
20:13And, man, I guess today the kids would say he was triggered.
20:16If you go to any town in America and you would give a special counsel no other job but to
20:20look into a person,
20:22and anybody that person ever knew, and you gave them more FBI resources than were used in the World Trade
20:29Center bombing,
20:31in an unlimited amount of time, in an unlimited checkbook, I'll bet you they could find some things wrong elsewhere,
20:36too.
20:36I'll bet you could, but there has still not been a single solitary shred of evidence of wrongdoing by me,
20:45by my wife, by her law firm, by my administration.
20:48I don't think that the scandals were all true, but at some point, if there's that much smoke,
20:58it's hard for people to believe that there's no fire.
21:05In the beginning, the simmering battle between President Clinton and Louis Free was a secret.
21:15But there are no secrets in Washington that last.
21:21It's been building behind the scenes for days, but the White House has now effectively humiliated FBI Director Louis Free
21:29in public.
21:30Listen to McCurry damn free with faint praise.
21:34Does Mr. Free have the President's confidence?
21:36I think the President thinks that the FBI is the world's greatest law enforcement agency,
21:42and I think the President has great confidence that Louis Free is leading that agency as best he can.
21:49Mike, do you recognize that your formulation is less than a full endorsement?
21:53I am pretty careful in how I choose my words.
21:56The President's decision not to talk to me and to, you know, have his press spokesman get up in the
22:02White House press room and try to undermine me, that was his decision.
22:06Bill Clinton comes to hate his director of the FBI, and the feeling is mutual.
22:18When the bombing of Cobar Towers took place in 1996, it only made things worse.
22:24You cannot understand the relationship between Louis Free and Bill Clinton without understanding Cobar Towers and that investigation and what
22:38went wrong there.
22:48The Cobar Towers was a military base in Saudi Arabia that housed thousands of American soldiers.
22:57Daheran was the base itself.
22:59Cobar Towers was a small section of Daheran where most everyone lived.
23:09We were supporting the Operation Desert Shield.
23:13We were trying to keep Saddam from reinvading after the Gulf War.
23:21There was a lot of people seeing Saudi Arabia as sacred ground.
23:26And having Westerners there made some people upset.
23:31People didn't really seem to understand that there was a threat at all.
23:38An explosion has occurred at a U.S. Air Force facility in Daheran, Saudi Arabia.
23:43This occurred just a short time ago.
23:45There are reportedly a number of casualties.
23:49President Clinton is in the briefing room now at the White House.
23:52We will pursue this.
23:54America takes care of our own.
23:56Those who did it must not go unpunished.
24:01U.S. military officials say a soldier first became suspicious after he saw a fuel truck parked nearby Tuesday night.
24:09A lot more lives would have been lost if this young airman at the roof hadn't witnessed all this.
24:14It was a passenger vehicle and a large truck.
24:17It was a cylindrical truck like a gas truck.
24:20In that area there are no gas stations so to me that was unusual.
24:25After they parked, everybody got out of the truck and into the car and sped off.
24:29That's when the hairs in the back of their head stood up.
24:34I got on the radio and I called it in.
24:38My whole focus was I need to get everything I can out of this building.
24:42It was only about two and a half minutes between the time that we started the evacuation and the bomb
24:48went off.
24:49Well, what happens at a massive detonation like that with high explosives is you'll have the blast wave go out
24:56in all directions.
24:57It'll take everything with it, people, cars, buildings.
25:04An eight-story apartment building shredded, many of its occupants wounded or dead.
25:10An explosion so massive it left behind a 35-foot crater.
25:15It will destroy, obliterate the human body.
25:19You will come apart in pieces.
25:21Nineteen U.S. Airmen were dead.
25:24372 Americans were wounded, many of them very seriously.
25:30After the bomb went out, I had to clear some of that rubble.
25:34There was a bare foot sticking out of it, just one foot.
25:38And I could tell whoever was on the bottom of that pile was not alive anymore.
25:52Louis Free would never forget what he saw that day when he first arrived at the Khobar Tower site.
26:00I was standing there in front of this building a few days after the explosion went off.
26:04And I could see the body parts and human remains being recovered from the scene.
26:09It just hit him like a wall how young these injured American soldiers were.
26:17He told those men in the hospital, we're going to find out who did this.
26:23We will pursue this matter to whatever end, to whatever consequence, to whatever logical and just conclusion.
26:31And you have my promise that I will do whatever I can to see that that occurs.
26:39He became obsessed with that matter in the same way a frontline investigator normally would.
26:49The FBI is good at a lot of things, and one of the best things they're good at is working
26:54crime scenes.
26:57Particularly bombing crime scenes.
27:01Digging through the rubble left by the Dharan bomb will be a tedious but critical chore.
27:06The clues that lie hidden there may be the only way to find out who did it and why.
27:14A bomb maker is like a chef.
27:16Everybody has their own little touch.
27:22You can tell either by the twist of their wire or the particular component that they favor or the type
27:31of initiator or switching device they use.
27:35They'll do something that post-blast will tell the investigator, hey, I've seen this one before.
27:42Most people think that any evidence in a bombing crime scene vanishes in the thin air.
27:47It doesn't work like that.
27:50The components are still out there somewhere.
27:52They're in small pieces.
27:53Sometimes they're recognizable.
27:54Sometimes they're not.
28:01Two years after the Khobar Tower's bombing in Saudi Arabia, the case remains unsolved.
28:08Tonight, the Clinton White House faces a huge crisis over another allegation of sexual impropriety by the president.
28:15These are the most serious allegations against President Clinton ever.
28:18Specifically, that the president carried on an affair with a 21-year-old White House intern and then instructed her
28:25to lie about it to investigators.
28:27Louis Free felt that Bill Clinton's actions were beneath the presidency.
28:36Everything good that a president could accomplish can become undermined by that kind of event.
28:45There are at least 17 audiotapes.
28:48Can you indict a sitting president?
28:51I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
28:56It was the early days of the 24-hour news cycle.
29:00And if you are a news maker or a public figure, you're going to be on TV a lot more.
29:06This story has hit this city like a bomb today.
29:09On this story, news is made every 20 minutes, it seems, and we're all under this unrelenting pressure to respond
29:15to what's on somebody's website, what's on talk radio, what's on all news cable channels.
29:19They kept throwing the stuff at him.
29:21What he called, rightly, the politics of personal destruction.
29:25This complicated the Khobar Tower's investigation.
29:27If you're so consumed by investigations and politics and people running around with their hair on fire, it detracts from
29:36your ability to focus on the business of the country.
29:39This was 24-7, all Clinton, all scandal, all the time.
29:43Here's how you write about it.
29:45The problem was, with Bill Clinton, the scandals and rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended.
29:52Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction.
29:56His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out.
30:00We were preoccupied in eight years with multiple investigations.
30:04Whitewater, Travelgate, campaign contributions, Jennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica.
30:10Yes.
30:13Louis Free felt that the president was preoccupied by these scandals and the White House was putting the Khobar Towers
30:20investigation on the back burner.
30:24For Louis Free, Khobar Towers was the most important case of his tenure.
30:31And the more pushback he felt he was getting, the more determined he was to get to the bottom of
30:39this.
30:40He was not going to be deterred.
30:49You know, they say character is destiny.
30:52These two had very different characters.
30:55Maybe the most important difference is, and Clinton used to say this to me all the time, say,
30:59be careful of anybody who believes they're in sole possession of the truth.
31:04I think Free, while very smart, has very little interest in people who challenge his assumptions.
31:09If you disagree with him, you're not only wrong, you're bad.
31:13Louis Free was this moralist.
31:17Bill Clinton was this pragmatist.
31:21And believed that you could or should always try to come up with some kind of political answer.
31:29To the people of Iran, I would like to say that the United States regrets the estrangement of our two
31:36nations.
31:40In May of 1997, Iran elected a new president, Khatami, who was viewed as much more moderate.
31:51On university campuses and around the country, suddenly everyone is using the F word.
31:58Individual freedom. Freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of belief.
32:01Right.
32:02I hope that we have more exchanges between our people.
32:05And that the day will soon come when we can enjoy, once again, good relations with Iran.
32:13Clinton wanted to improve that relationship and knew that this Khobar Towers investigation might impede that.
32:21Louis Free had his eye on one thing, and that was investigating to the fullest what happened.
32:32He didn't care about politics.
32:34Monday, U.S. officials for the first time publicly made clear they were investigating a possible Iranian connection.
32:41Louis Free saw this case that he wanted to pursue at all costs, no matter what it did to the
32:49rest of the U.S. government's relationship.
32:51At the same time, Louis Free thought that we weren't getting the right amount of cooperation from the Saudis on
32:58the Khobar bombing.
32:59While the U.S. won't criticize Saudi Arabia in public, sources tell CNN that dealing with the Saudis was, quote,
33:05sometimes slow and difficult.
33:07What Louis Free ultimately wanted from the Saudi government was to be able to interview the suspects that they had
33:16in custody.
33:16The White House was coming back with, well, we're trying, but it's complicated.
33:25You had FBI interests. You had Saudi interests. You had U.S. government interests.
33:33It wasn't as straightforward as you might hope.
33:40In September of 1998, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia arrived in the United States.
33:49Louis Free expected the President to ask the Crown Prince to share evidence, access to the crime scene, and everything
33:59else.
34:00The President didn't do it. Free went batshit.
34:03I was very disappointed that the political leadership of the United States would tell the families of these 19 heroes
34:13that we were going to leave no stone unturned, and then to do nothing to assist and facilitate that investigation,
34:20in fact, to undermine it.
34:21Jay Carson, Bill Clinton's spokesman now, responds with this statement.
34:25Free was not even in the meetings he describes and thus is totally wrong with his baseless allegations.
34:32President Clinton repeatedly pressed the Saudis for cooperation.
34:36At that point, Louis Free did something pretty extraordinary.
34:41Out of frustration, I went to former President Bush, 41, told him our problem, gave him the talking points.
34:48This is all without telling anybody in the White House, without telling Clinton.
34:53He met with the Crown Prince on a Saturday afternoon in McLean, Virginia.
34:57Monday morning, 48 hours later, the Crown Prince gave us access to the prisoners.
35:04In the White House, nobody felt that Louis Free respected the chain of command.
35:10They felt like Louis Free was carrying on his own foreign policy.
35:14That whole region seemed to be a tinderbox, hence it was something for the foreign policy experts, not for Louis
35:25Free.
35:26Ultimately, Louis Free's approach succeeded in getting him what he'd wanted for two and a half years, which was access
35:36to the suspects in Saudi custody.
35:38It took President Bush, 41, 48 hours to perfect that request, where for two and a half years, the president
35:46and his national security adviser not only didn't pursue it, but neither of them in two and a half years
35:51ever asked me how the case was going.
35:54In November of 1998, the FBI agents are sitting there behind this one-way mirror and they're listening to these
36:02suspects describe how the bombing was coordinated, planned and executed and funded by the Iranian government.
36:14This was all the confirmation that the agents felt they needed.
36:25Nearly five years to the day after the deadly bombing of the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia,
36:30U.S. officials announced the indictment of 13 Saudis and one Lebanese man listed only as John Doe, but who
36:37is suspected of helping build the bomb that killed 19 U.S. servicemen.
36:43We hope that this development today not only signifies our commitment, but will bring to these families some measure of
36:50peace and closure and, of course, the conviction that this crime will be pursued to whatever end it takes us.
36:57The indictment successfully closes a chapter for Louis Freeh, who ends his tenure as FBI director this week.
37:04Louis Freeh's last day in office as FBI director was exactly to the day, five years after Khobar Tower.
37:13That was no accident.
37:16That, for him, was a moment where he felt he had done his job.
37:28There you see the president and the first lady smiling, getting ready to greet the two people that will be
37:34taking their place here in the White House.
37:39The Khobar Tower's investigation lasted years, well beyond President Clinton's term in office.
37:48By the end of Louis Freeh's term, the two men had very negative views of each other.
37:56Bill Clinton thought that Louis Freeh was trying to nail his ass, as he said, at every turn, and that
38:03he didn't understand politics at all.
38:06And Louis Freeh viewed Bill Clinton as a very talented politician, but who did not adhere to what he viewed
38:18as the morally right thing to do.
38:21And if you thought that the struggle between Freeh and Clinton was over the day Louis Freeh left the FBI,
38:30you were wrong.
38:31Former President Bill Clinton is coming under some scathing criticism today from his former FBI director.
38:38Freeh wrote a book in 2005 where he laid it all bare, and it reopened a feud.
38:46Now Freeh is calling Bill Clinton something else, a man with a faulty moral compass and a closet filled with
38:52skeletons.
38:53President Clinton also released a memoir about his time in office that referenced Louis Freeh.
39:01It was unfavorable.
39:03There was some lingering feelings, some bad blood between these two men.
39:07There's no doubt about that.
39:10Millard Campbell.
39:14When the president and the FBI director aren't even talking to each other,
39:20it creates a breach in American national security that makes the country more vulnerable to foreign terrorist attacks than it
39:27was before.
39:28Christopher Adams.
39:34The Cobar Towers attack was without question the opening chapter of understanding the threat from terrorism.
39:49The U.S. had certainly seen terrorist cases unfold, most famously the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, but really
39:58much of the focus in the late 1990s had been on domestic extremism.
40:03In Washington today, the FBI director William Sessions told a congressional committee that the bombing of the World Trade Center
40:09in New York was the first terrorist act in the U.S. in 10 years, and it should not, he
40:14said, be viewed as the opening act in a coming wave of terrorism.
40:18Terrorist bombs explode minutes apart outside U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
40:24Nearly 200 people dead, more than 5,000 hurt.
40:35It took us a while to get there, but as terrorists went after other targets, we were waking up to
40:42the reality of terrorism and the danger that it represented to our national security.
40:53I think that the U.S. never militarily responded to Cobar Towers was a bit of a green light to
41:05some other groups.
41:07We have breaking news this morning out of Africa where a U.S. Navy ship was the target of a
41:12terrorist attack.
41:14Four sailors killed, at least 30 injured.
41:16Joseph Rimkus.
41:21It was an intelligence failure that the U.S. intelligence community really didn't understand what happened at Cobar could be
41:29a prelude to even bigger terrorist attacks against the United States.
41:50We should have been looking for what is the next thing they're going to do.
41:55The threat never subsided and the threat was never taken seriously enough.
42:01The threat must have been in.
42:07The threat neverrementics of war would go through.
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