Lacking ready access to a dead horse, I will have to resume beating Richard Clarke's impression that "fighting terrorism, in general, and fighting Al Qaida, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration -- certainly no higher priority".
Having paged through the well-regarded "War in a Time of Peace - Bush, Clinton, and the Generals" by the Pulitzer prize winning David Halberstam, I can say that the Get Osama lede is buried so deeply that it never emerges.
Not mentioned, in what the Times calls "a sprawling tapestry of exquisite bottom-up reporting and powerful vignettes": Osama, Usama, bin Laden, Richard Clarke, the Taliban, Afghanistan, al Qaeda, the embassy bombings, the 1998 cruise missile strikes, or the USS Cole. Somehow, although I have little doubt that the Clinton aides desperately tried to re-focus Mr. Halberstam on the real story, he persisted in a book about Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
He provides an interesting note about Secretary of State Madeleine Albright:
"...no one associated her with any particular view or wing of the party. No label seemed to stick to her. But she was passionate about one issue and one man, the Balkans and Milosevic."
He also mentions the notion held by critics that Clinton was legacy hunting in 2000, with his highest priority being a peace settlement in the Middle East. Lexis-Nexis jockeys might be able to rustle up "Clinton's Final Chapter: Single-Minded, Full-Steam Run at a Global Agenda," January 3, 2000, NY Times", which Mr. Halberstam mentions, to get some added flavor.
UPDATE: Well, Tim Russert wonders about the Clinton priorities too.
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