WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton insisted in an interview Friday that he had no inside information about the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound, having been kept in the dark by his wife, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The former president, appearing on CNBC, was discussing general US efforts to combat terrorism when he disclosed that despite his proximity to one of the key decision-makers, he was not privy to the months of planning and was as surprised as everyone else to find out the terrorist leader had been killed in a raid carried out by US Navy SEALs.
“When Hillary got on the Armed Services Committee, which is right after she became a senator, I made up my mind that as long as she was there — and then she became secretary of state — I would never take a security briefing unless asked to do so by the president for a specific reason,” Clinton said.
“And you will be proud that I, like all Americans, knew nothing about the bin Laden operation, which had been debated in the administration in a tiny number of hands for months, until the president called and told me,” he added.
The former president then recalled how he contacted his wife the day of the raid, but had no inkling moves were afoot to kill the world’s most wanted man.
“I placed two calls to my wife on that day, and all I was told is, ‘She’s at the White House and can’t talk to you,'” he said.