In Autobiography, Former FBI Director Tells Behind-the-Scenes Tale of Terrorism
My FBI
By Louis Freeh
St. Martin's. 336 pp. $25.95
Reviewed by Mark Yost
Forget Bill Clinton. Iran is the real evildoer that emerges from FBI director Louis Freeh's new autobiography, My FBI.
Early reviews of the book have focused on Clinton's wholly inappropriate - and thoroughly believable - solicitation of funds from the Saudis for his library while he was still President. Much worse was Clinton's abject failure to press the Saudis to make the suspects in the Khobar Tower bombing - which killed 19 U.S. servicemen - available to Freeh's investigators.
Indeed, Freeh's greatest service in this book is detailing how the June 1996 bombing of a U.S. military apartment complex in Saudi Arabia was carried out by Hezbollah operatives funded and supplied by Iran's secret police - facts he and his agents were able to confirm only after former President George H.W. Bush, not Clinton, pressed the Saudis for their cooperation.
The evidence "showed almost beyond a doubt that the Khobar Tower attacks had been sanctioned, funded, and directed by senior officials of the government of Iran," Freeh writes. "The Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had both been in on the planning and execution. The bombers had been trained by Iranians in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed Hezbollah is based. They had been issued passports by the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, that allowed them to cross the border into Saudi Arabia."
These were all very inconvenient facts for the Clinton administration, which was convinced that the election of President Mohammad Khatami was a sign of "moderation" in Iran. Unlike Clinton's State Department, Freeh understood that it was the mullahs, not the president, who governed Iran.
In addition to being denied State Department clearance to go to Saudi Arabia to pursue the Khobar Tower investigation, Freeh's agents were also told to stop fingerprinting Iranian athletes coming into the United States.
"Our reasoning was simple," Freeh writes. "Intelligence officers were almost always embedded in the teams."
Freeh's hope was to discourage the Iranians from using international sporting events as a way to infiltrate the United States. It worked, "but it also raised the Iranians' ire, and finally that ire bubbled all the way up to the White House, which ordered us to stop the practice."
"The Iranians are complaining," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Freeh.
"Of course they are," Freeh shot back. "That's the point."
When Freeh had all the evidence he needed to finger the Iranians for the Khobar Tower bombing, he took it to his boss, Attorney General Janet Reno, and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. While Reno understood the seriousness of the connection, Berger was more concerned with political fallout than national security. When Berger called a meeting of his key advisers, it focused on how to manage the press and Congress rather than strike back at Iran.
"Are we going to talk about the fact that Iranians killed nineteen Americans?" Freeh asked, fully knowing the answer he'd get. The Joint Chiefs were on Freeh's side, but that was about it.
"It seemed we were here to manage the issue, not do a damn thing about it," Freeh writes. "In the eight years I was to spend as FBI director, there was nothing to match that moment in the Situation Room for sheer disappointment."
After reading this book, most will agree that Louis Freeh has nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed, he did his country a great service by staying on as FBI director to be a witness - a truth teller, if you will - to all the nefarious goings on at the Clinton White House.
As with most debates surrounding the Clinton presidency, it comes down to this: Do you believe Louis Freeh, or do you believe Bill Clinton? If there remains any doubt, this book forever answers that question.
