Tony Snow: Previous President hurt terrorism fight

WASHINGTON - The White House took a swipe at former President Clinton on Wednesday, just days after he accused President Bush of doing “nothing” to catch Osama bin Laden before Sept. 11.

White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters that Clinton spent his presidency “dramatically” slashing military and intelligence assets that are vital to fighting global terrorism.

“Even with the buildup since September 11th, we are only now beginning to achieve the same sort of levels that we had — in terms of intelligence assets — that we had at the beginning of the Clinton administration,” Snow said.

Last weekend, Clinton said Bush administration officials “did not try” to kill bin Laden before Sept. 11.

“At least I tried,” he angrily told Chris Wallace on Fox News Channel. “That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed.”

Asked on Tuesday to respond to Clinton’s criticism, Bush said he would not engage in “finger-pointing” over the failure to capture or kill bin Laden.

But on Wednesday, Snow seemed to suggest the Clinton administration did not try hard enough to counter the rising threat of global terrorism in the 1990s.

“In the previous administration, we had an attack on the World Trade Center, on Khobar Towers,” he said. “We had attacks on both embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, an attack on the USS Cole.

“Also, Osama bin Laden in February of 1998 made it clear that he not only intended to wage war on the United States, but he wanted to use Iraq as a central battleground,” he said.

“In short, there was a gathering threat. In those years, bin Laden noticed that the United States had, in fact, been cutting back dramatically on intelligence assets and on military assets.”

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who is expected by many to run for president in 2008, suggested Tuesday that Bush did not heed a warning about bin Laden that he received a month before Sept. 11.

“I’m certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,’ he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team,” she told reporters on Capitol Hill.

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