Freeh’s odd timing

October 7, 2005

Apparently former FBI director Louis Freeh is preparing for a return to the limelight by, like too many ’90s-era Republicans, writing a book trashing Bill Clinton.

Louis Freeh, the FBI director appointed by President Clinton, says his relationship with his boss fell apart because Clinton’s “closets were full of skeletons.” […] Freeh discussed the bad blood with Clinton in an interview to be aired Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

“We were preoccupied in eight years with multiple investigations,” Freeh said in the interview, according to excerpts released Thursday.

In the book, according to CBS, Freeh writes: “The problem was with Bill Clinton the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out.”

It seems to me there any number of ways to go about responding to Freeh’s claims. First, you could point out that Freeh is a partisan Republican, who donated nearly $20,000 to the GOP, including Bush, in the last campaign. Second, you could note that in many instances, Freeh just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Third, you might take note of the fact that, by Freeh’s own argument, he let a sex scandal distract him from real law enforcement work. Fourth, you could take note of the fact that Freeh was helplessly, almost shockingly, incompetent at the FBI, which brings some of his criticisms into question now.

All of those points are true, but I had a different take. The most interesting part of Freeh’s attack on Clinton, at least to me, is Freeh’s ridiculously bad sense of timing.

Here we have a former FBI director with an axe to grind, writing a book in part to complain about Lewinski about the blue dress? To condemn Clinton’s “moral compass”? Now?

Much to his publisher’s dismay, Freeh’s attack comes in the midst of the most sweeping, systemic Republican breakdown since Watergate. Talk about “moral compasses,” Freeh has Lewinski on his mind as the entire Republican establishment is either a) under indictment for criminal conduct; or b) about to be.

Expect to see Freeh’s book on remainder tables soon at a bookstore near you.

It usually takes quite a while for a book to be written and published, perhaps a year or more. This is a longshot, but it’s just possible that someone in the current administration encouraged Freeh to get started on this a while back to have on hand as a distraction if the going got rough. Just a thought.

As it turns out, things are so bad for Bush that even their favorite sport, Clinton-bashing, that’s been so helpful to them in the past just seems sad and irrelevant today. Sort of like claiming Ward Cleaver was a cross-dresser and everybody just sort of shrugs.

  • How about the point that, other than the Lewinsky scandal/Clinton’s sexual habits, how are all the other scandals really Clinton’s fault? Just because Freeh and others took the time to investigate fictional or trumped up claims by those on the right whose only goal was to embarrass Clinton doesn’t make Freeh’s perceived problem Clinton’s fault. Isn’t the problem really with those who would raise false or misleading “scandals” ? Or the incompetence of Freeh and his staff in investigating numerous rumors without and adequate basis to them?

  • Maybe he saw all the loser, incompetent people in the Bush administration and figured the atmosphere was right for a book from an incompetent loser.

  • Perhaps normal Americans can used the “whole lot” of unsold books to burn in their furnaces this winter – since we won’t be able to afford fuel oil, natural gas, or electricity thanks to incompetents such as Louis Freeh and BushCO.

  • Timing is everything. I think Curmudgeon’s point about the lengthy publishing process is a good one.

    Nutwingery is on the rise, firm control of all branches of government. What a great time to rewrite history and make myself seem less impotent and incompetent…

    Oops. Reminds me of the 1992 Grammy Awards. Billy Ray Cyrus has the musical run he has been dreaming of. Then, he gets to stand by, watch Eric Clapton sing “Tears and Heaven” which, of course, is dedicated to Clapton’s deceased young son, just before taking the stage to sing and dance to “Achy Breaky Heart” on national TV…

    -jjf

  • Aside from how distasteful the whole insider-kiss-and-tell, profit-on-my-glaring-disloyalty-and-disrespect genre is, my hypothesis on why Freeh would bother is (a) he senses that domestic intel failures are going to be blamed on him and is already smarting about the way his tenure is viewed and finally broke and had to lash out; or more cynically (b) is a stooge writing a “drag the Clinton name through the mud again” tome just in time for the start of Hillary’s 2008 campaign.

  • Well, maybe they’re trying to float the excuse that Bush isn’t the only president to appoint incompetant, partisan fuckups. “See! Clinton did it too!”

    Funny that they would get the incompetant partisan fuckup in question to write his own book detailing this.

  • @zeitgeist

    I remember in spring of last year, with the election a long way off, anytime something that looked bad for Bush came out it became the default right-wing talking point that it was politically motivated because of the “timing”. Regardless of 1) timing had nothing to do with it, ie Richard Clarke’s book that the White House took an unusually long time to approve, and 2) what timing? We were still several months away. What was it timed to? That was never, ever made clear.

    So I have to disagree with the idea that this has anything to do with Hillary’s supposed campaign for an election that is three years off. Everyone assumed she was going to campaign in 2004. Now they’re all assuming she’s already campaigning for 2008. Will people leave the lady alone? Please?

  • But if Freeh is part of the Republican machine, the timing makes sense. The Republican machine does not recognize a moral breakdown, but they recognize that the idea is starting to take root. The response in these situations in Swift Boat – You say Bush avoided Vietnam? Then Kerry did, too!

    Freeh is the counterweight that the he-said/she-said conventions of journalism demand so that they can make the case this is “more of the same”, everybody does it, nothing to see here. As these indictments come down and Democrats start to make the case that things look a little crooked in Denmark, expect the right-wing echo chamber to therefore devote the bulk of the time to Freeh’s charges of corruption.

    In fact, you can usually tell what Republicans are guilty of by what they falsely accuse Democrats are doing. Cocain money was used by Dems to court votes in Ohio? Then the Republicans suppressed the vote in Ohio. Falwell says Dems would vote no to Jesus if he were a Bush pick? Then Republicans would not vote for Jesus if he was running as a Democrat. DeLay accusses Earl of taking illegal campaign contributions? DeLay’s a crooked man!

  • Gavel Consulting says it all. Louie Freeh, Ken Starr, William Webster, William Sessions, all the f**king whores selling themselves. The price for government access has another surcharge slapped on.

    http://www.gavelconsultinggroup.com/Overview_and_Members.htm

    Louie only does “pro bono” work. Yeah, and I’m Princess Di’s long lost sister.

    Freeh, the little weasel, covered up the Robert Hanssen case for George Bush in 1990.

    From an 8/23/03 Newsday editorial about the Robert Hanssen case:

    “In 1990, Hanssen’s brother-in-law, who was also an FBI agent, alerted superiors to large sums of unexplained cash in Hanssen’s dresser drawer.”

    The brother-in-law did not find the cash in Hanssen’s dresser drawer. Mrs. Hanssen did.

    The brother-in-law, who is probably Mrs. Hanssen’s brother, had to have had more evidence than just cash, when he reported Hanssen to senior FBI management. He and Mrs. Hanssen both knew Hanssen was in counterintelligence. Who knows what else was in the dressser drawer.

    No one ever said publicly, as far as I know, what Hanssen was doing on offical business in Hong Kong in 1989 but he took his stripper girlfriend along. He gave her cash, jewelry, a credit card and even a Mercedes.

    Think about turning your wife or husband into the FBI for crimes that could send him or her to prison for a long, long time. Mrs. Hanssen had a lot of guts turning in Hanssen with six children at home.

    She and Hanssen’s brother-in-law were patriotic Americans.

    Here’s what happened after Hanssen’s brother-in-law turned him in – Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and FBI Director William Sessions covered up an embarassing espionage case for George Bush. The year before, the Soviet Union fell apart and Bush was basking in the spotlight. They didn’t want any messy reminders about the Cold War.

    Freeh knew about the Hanssen case and kept it quiet for ten years even
    after Hanssen got caught accessing sensitive Soviet intelligence files. A Soviet military intelligence officer turned Hanssen in for trying to sell information. Zip happened. Hanssen’s file was scrubbed clean by Louie who had ten years to doctor the case.

    In January 2001, Clinton leaves office and the Hanssen case comes to light two months later, in February. Louie hangs on until May.

    And Mrs. Hanssen had to live another ten years with that sick bastard, Hanssen. That’s how patriotism is rewarded in Bush’s America.

    And who investigated the Hanssen case in 2001? William Webster, member of the board of directors of US Technologies. If you remember, the auditors, BO Seidman had a problem with US Technologies financials.

    Read the last couple of SEC filings for US Technologies. One of the investors was the Carlyle Group. I sure do wonder why a technology firm had the contract to run one Texas prison. Given the number of screwy financial transactions, the company was laundering money.

    F**k Louie Freeh and his rotten, corrupt friends.

  • the rumored scandals

    Yeah, nothing like being mired by allegations made by your buddies, right Freeh? Allegations the never really panned out? Look a wolf. Gotcha.

  • “My FBI”: Would FBI here stand for Failures Beyond Imagination? Like leaving an organization without normal email capability and a moral compass that sent unlimited agents to look up old boyfriends of Lewinski and not one to check into strange goings-on at US flight schools before 9-11?

    Freeh was able to duck criticism of his marginalized FBI by aligning with the GOP majority in congress in pursuing Clinton…a dirty deal that damaged the country…but being right wing means never having to say you’re sorry, much less tell the truth.

  • From the Gavel Consulting Group’s website which 277fia links to above.

    group members include:

    · Three former Directors of the FBI
    · A former Director of the CIA
    · A former Independent Counsel
    · A former Solicitor General
    · Two former United States Attorneys
    · A former head of the SEC Enforcement Division
    · Two former General Counsels — the CIA and the U.S. Air Force
    · A General Counsel of a global bank

    I grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast. Sub-tropical, hot and humid. Sometimes if you peeled the bark off a dead tree or a plank off of an old decaying house or maybe lifted a long rotting log on the ground, for a moment, cockroaches hiding underneath would be still and startled before skittering off to find dark security once again. These guys aren’t invisible but that’s the feeling I got when I saw this site. Like I’d uncovered a rotting place and everything in it was flat, shiney, omnivorous, opportunistic and quick. Our gov’t needs to be fumigated.

  • I’m sorry, but after suffering through five years of “the Shrub”, and his collection of neo-fascist criminal cronies, Bill Clinton could’ve had the skeleton of a Mastodon in his closet, and I would still miss him just as much!

    No one can effectively or credibly ‘bash’ Clinton now.

  • It sure looks like the work of Carl (rotten) Rove, Cheney and the rest of their right wing idiot friends at work in the Freeh book. How the Republicans and their Shill, Louis Freeh harassed Bill Clinton with meaningless charges and investigations every day of his entire Presidency and then come back 6 years after he has left office and try to crucify him for all these investigations is beyond belief. Speaking of skeletons, Freeh and that bunch must be related to them because there is no evidence of brain tissue in any of them. I wonder if the day will ever come when one of the Bush Cheney insiders will fess up and admit what a disaster their group has laid upon this country. They would certainly gain a lot of ccredibility if they did.

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