Miniter's Notebook

The former president had exploded in a rage at Wallace's question, alleging a conspiracy by America's most watched cable news outfit. He leaned deep into Wallace's personal space, jabbing his finger in his face. And it lasted minute after embarrassing minute.

Yes, Wallace was surprised by both the intensity and the answer.

Clinton's performance, his defenders say, was planned in advance to stiffen his party's spine and teach it how to fight back. Was it planned? "Absolutely not," Wallace told me. Off camera, during the interview, he said he saw Clinton's public relations man waving his arms, demanding that the interview be terminated immediately. At the end of the interview, Clinton was still visibly angry and threatened to fire his PR man if he ever had to endure another interview like that one.

Why is this worth thinking about? Every Bush policy that arouses the ire of the anti-war set - the Patriot Act, renditions, detention without trial and pre-emptive war - is a departure from the Clinton years. Where Clinton and Bush policies overlap - air attacks on terrorist infrastructure, secret presidential orders to kill terrorists, intelligence sharing with allies, seizure of terrorist bank accounts, using police to arrest suspected terrorists - there is little friction. Should America return to Clinton policies or soldier on with Bush's? While finger-pointing is pointless, this debate is important because it is about the future as much as the past.

So it is vital that this debate be honest, but so far it hasn't been. Clinton's outrage at Wallace's question is an attempt to polarise America's memory, to drive partisans to his side. This may be good for Clinton's reputation (and his wife's political prospects), but it is ultimately unhealthy. What we need now is a cold-eyed, dead-sober reckoning of what works against terrorists and what does not.

So let us look at Clinton's war on terror. Thirty-eight days after Clinton was sworn in, al-Qa'ida attacked the World Trade Centre. He did not visit the twin towers that year, even though four days after the attack he was minutes away in neighbouring New Jersey, talking about job training. His only public mention of the bombing was a few paragraphs stuffed into a Saturday radio address, which was devoted to an economic-stimulus package. Those stray paragraphs were limited to reassuring the public and thanking the rescuers, the kinds of things governors say after floods. He did not even vow to bring the bombers to justice. Instead, he turned the first terrorist attack on American soil over to the FBI and forgot about it.

In his Fox interview, Clinton said "no one knew that al-Qa'ida existed" in October 1993 during the tragic events in Somalia. False. Clinton's national security adviser, Tony Lake, told me that he learned of bin Laden in 1993 and by 1994 regularly briefed the president on the terrorist. US Army captain James Francis Yacone, a Black Hawk squadron commander in Somalia, later testified in a US court that radio intercepts of enemy mortar crew firing at Americans were in Arabic, not Somali. While bin Laden's men speak Arabic, warlord Farah Aideed's men did not. CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency reports as well as reports from Ethiopian and Sudanese services placed al-Qa'ida operatives in Somalia at the time.

By the end of Clinton's first year, al-Qa'ida had apparently attacked twice. Al-Qa'ida attacks would continue for every one of the Clinton years, climbing in lethality.

In 1994, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (who would later plan the 9/11 attacks) launched Operation Bojinka to down 11 planes simultaneously over the Pacific, killing about 3000 people. A sharp-eyed Filipina police officer foiled the plot. The sole American response: increased law-enforcement co-operation with the Philippines.

In 1995, al-Qa'ida detonated a 100kg car bomb outside the US military's Office of the Program Manager in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five Americans and wounding 60 more. The FBI was sent in.

In 1996, al-Qa'ida bombed the barracks of American pilots patrolling the "no-fly zones" over Iraq, killing 19. Again, the FBI went in.

In 1997, bin Laden repeatedly declared war on the Western world. In February 1997, bin Laden told an Arab television network: "If someone can kill an American soldier, it is better than wasting time on other matters." Clinton did not respond.

In 1998, al-Qa'ida simultaneously attacked US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people including 12 American diplomats. The FBI team arrived within days. But this time the law enforcement did not seem sufficient. Thirteen days after the attacks, Clinton ordered cruise-missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan. Here Clinton's critics are wrong: the president was right to retaliate, irrespective of the Monica Lewinsky case.

Still, Operation Infinite Reach was weakened by Clintonian compromise. The State Department feared Pakistan might spot the American cruise missiles lumbering across its air space and misinterpret it as an Indian attack, launching all-out war. So Clinton told the vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Joe Ralston, to notify Pakistan's army chief of staff, minutes before the Tomahawks passed over Pakistan. Given Pakistan's links to jihadis at the time, it is not surprising that bin Laden was tipped off, fleeing 45 minutes before the missiles arrived. If Clinton had ordered a different missile trajectory or used aircraft, Pakistan would not have had to be told, and bin Laden might be dead.

In 1999, the Clinton administration disrupted al-Qa'ida's millennium plots, a series of bombings stretching from Amman in Jordan to Los Angeles. This shining success was mostly the work of Richard Clarke, a National Security Council senior director who forced agencies to work together. But the millennium approach was short-lived. Over Clarke's objections, the previous status quo quickly returned.

In January 2000, al-Qa'ida tried and failed to attack the USS The Sullivans off Yemen. (Their boat sank before they could reach their target.) In October 2000, they wouldn't fail. An al-Qa'ida bomb ripped a 12sqm hole in the hull of the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors and wounding another 39. Throughout history, an attack on an American warship has led to war, but not this time.

When Clarke presented a plan to launch a concerted cruise missile strike on al-Qa'ida and Taliban facilities in Afghanistan, every member of the Clinton cabinet voted no. After the cabinet meeting, Michael Sheehan, a State Department counter-terrorism official, sought out Clarke. Both told me they were incredulous. Sheehan asked Clarke: "What's it going to take to get them to hit al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan? Does al-Qa'ida have to attack the Pentagon?"

There is much more to Clinton's record - how the Predator drone plane, which spotted bin Laden three times in 1999 and 2000, was grounded by bureaucratic infighting; how a petty dispute with an Arizona Democratic senator stopped the CIA from hiring more Arabic translators; how Clinton refused to meet his first CIA director for two years - but this is enough to illustrate the point.

Clinton did not fully grasp that he was at war and that war often requires overcoming bureaucratic objections and a democracy's natural reluctance to use force.

It is a hard lesson. But it is better to learn it from studying the Clinton years than from reliving them.

Richard Miniter is the bestselling author of Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror. His latest book is Disinformation: 22 Media Myths that Undermine the War on Terror.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20493502-601,00.html