Clinton Lawyers Fretted Over bin Laden's Comfort

Friday, Aug. 19, 2005 10:35 a.m. EDT

The CIA's former bin Laden desk chief revealed Thursday night that Clinton administration lawyers warned counterterrorism agents that Osama bin Laden had to be kept as comfortable as possible if they captured him during planned raids into Afghanistan.

"The lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden`s safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him," former bin Laden desk chief Michael Scheuer told MSNBC's "Hardball."

"We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, [for] special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair," Scheuer explained. "They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn't irritate his beard."

"The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community," the former CIA man lamented. Concerns like that, as well as foot-dragging by the White House, resulted in one missed opportunity after another to get the al-Qaida terror mastermind, Scheuer said.

"We had at least eight to 10 chances to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 1998 and 1999. And the government on all occasions decided that the information was not good enough to act," he claimed. Although sharply critical of President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, the CIA counterterrorism specialist put the blame for bin Laden's escape firmly on Clinton. "In terms of which administration had more chances, Mr. Clinton's administration had far more chances to kill Osama bin Laden than Mr. Bush has until this day," Scheuer said.

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Up-dated on August 20, 2005