HILL JOINS BILL IN TERROR WAR
By IAN BISHOP and GEOFF EARLE Post Correspondents
September 27, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday fired a direct shot at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for not taking Osama bin Laden seriously enough before 9/11.
Clinton jumped into the escalating and bitter blame game after Rice charged in yesterday's Post that Bill Clinton was making "flatly false" claims that the Bush administration didn't do enough to stop the terror attacks.
"I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.,' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team," Hillary Clinton charged.
Her carefully worded but searing comments were aimed directly at Rice, who served as Bush's national security adviser before the attacks. Clinton was referring to a classified Aug. 6, 2001, briefing Bush received, attended by Rice and other top advisers, that dealt with bin Laden's interest in attacking the United States.
"All you have to do is read the 9/11 commission [report] to know what [Bill Clinton] and his administration did to protect Americans," Hillary Clinton said.
"I think my husband did a great job in demonstrating Democrats are not going to take these attacks," she added.
President Bush also weighed in on the controversy yesterday - saying he doesn't "have enough time to finger-point" over whose administration did more to take down the terror mastermind before the attacks.
"I've got to do my job, which comes home every day in the Oval Office, and that is to protect the American people from further attack," Bush said during a White House news conference with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai after he was asked by a reporter about Bill Clinton's claims.
"I've watched all this finger-pointing and naming of names, and all that stuff," Bush added - an apparent slap at Bill Clinton, who repeatedly wagged his finger at Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace during a contentious 22-minute weekend interview that started the uproar.
"We'll let history judge - all the different finger-pointing and all that business. I don't have enough time to finger-point," Bush said.
During the Fox interview, an agitated Clinton huffed about his efforts to get bin Laden: "I tried. They had eight months to try. They did not try."
Rice fired back in a point-by-point rebuttal in yesterday's bombshell Post front-page story.
"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false," Rice told Post reporters and editors.
"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years."
In the high-stakes battle, both Clinton and Rice used the 9/11 commission report as the basis for their charges.
"President Clinton believes in responding with facts when someone tries to smear you," said Bill Clinton spokesman Jay Carson.
"Every single fact that President Clinton stated in his interview is backed up by the historical record - including the 9/11 commission report," Carson added.
Meanwhile, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill joined in the battle.
"I think he's [Clinton] trying to rewrite history to say he was doing more than he was," Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told The Post.
"If his plan was so good, why didn't he go ahead and implement it," King said.
But Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) charged: "Condoleezza is the perfect sycophant. For her to appear as anything less wouldn't come off. If she wants to believe the administration was on its game from January [2001] to 9/11, then you better go back and read the 9/11 report."
The nasty partisan fight comes as Democrats scramble to convince voters they're tough on terror six weeks before the crucial elections for control of Congress.
While Clinton defended her husband's aggressive retorts as smart political strategy, King said the finger-wagging anger only brings up bad memories.
"I think it's clearly not helping the Democrats. It's bringing everything back to the contortions of the Clinton administration," he said.
Bill Clinton's contentious interview propelled "Fox News Sunday" to its best ratings since the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 - and prompted nearly a million views on the YouTube Web site.
ian.bishop@nypost.com
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