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Hillary charges back in husband's defense

BY GLENN THRUSH | Newsday Washington Bureau

September 27, 2006

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton is emerging as her husband's key defender in the who-lost-Osama fight, but the senator's role as family protector could boomerang to hurt her career, Clinton-watchers say.

Responding to negative remarks about Bill Clinton by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the senator went on the attack yesterday, saying the former president was more responsive to pre-Sept. 11, 2001 intelligence than Bush or Rice.

"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 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 yesterday.

Sen. Clinton was referring to an August 2001 intelligence memo claiming al-Qaida wanted to hijack civilian airliners; Rice and other administration officials didn't take immediate action on the information.

On Monday, Rice told the New York Post editorial board that Clinton failed to leave Bush "a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida." Rice, in turn, was responding to the former president's stormy Sunday appearance on Fox News, in which he accused Bush of failing to address the bin Laden threat during the first eight months of the administration.

The fury of the Clinton family counterattack has its roots, allies say, in the 2004 Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry. Both Clintons believe Kerry should have responded more decisively against the attacks and have been spoiling to give the GOP the kind of fight Kerry did not wage, according to Clinton allies.

"Hillary's not going to let the Republicans Swift-Boat her party, her husband or herself," said one of the senator's top aides, speaking on anonymity.

In August, the Clintons first fired up their famed rapid-response operation to reply to a partly fictionalized ABC miniseries about Sept. 11 that portrayed President Clinton as distracted and unwilling to pursue bin Laden.

Hillary Clinton spoke out against the network, but the comments yesterday marked an intensification of her involvement in a battle between White Houses that shows no sign of abating.

The former first lady's actions prove she's still Bill Clinton's political co-pilot and that he'll be a liability if he appears angry, defensive and draws her into his fights.

"It's part of this huge collection of baggage she hauls with her into a national campaign," GOP strategist Nelson Warfield said. "Do voters really want to go back into four years of the national soap opera that is the Clintons in the White House?"

Another top Republican strategist, who requested anonymity, said the episode "reminds people of how selfish Bill Clinton is and how she essentially works for him. ... It's not supposed to be be about him, it's supposed to be about her."

But Sept. 11 Commission co-chairman Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, thinks the senator won't be damaged because the public will ultimately decide that both presidents did the best they could to get bin Laden.

"Looking at it from the perspective of someone who's been around politics a long time ... can't imagine how it would have a detrimental effect on her," Kean said.

Staff writer Carol Eisenberg contributed to this story, which was supplemented with Associated Press reports.