Ex-Clinton FBI chief Louis Freeh pushing Rudy for president

May 31, 2007

Louis Freeh, Democrat Bill Clinton’s FBI director, is going over to the other side in a big way today - endorsing Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, the Daily News has learned.

The high-profile endorsement is a boon to the former mayor, whose views on security and terrorism can only benefit from having an international lawman like Freeh in his corner, experts said.

“Any endorsement that lets Rudy talk about fighting crime and terrorism is good for him,” said GOP consultant Dan Schnur. “And if Giuliani and [Hillary] Clinton are the nominees, you can be sure that Louis Freeh ends up in the front row of every debate, just to try and knock her off her game.”

Freeh’s defection to Team Rudy is part of a gradual transformation by the former top G-man from one-time friend of the Clintons to outspoken critic, blaming the former President for raining scandal down upon the White House, and for being soft on terrorism in the years before 9/11.

“Until 9/11,” Freeh wrote in his 2005 book, “My FBI,” about America’s counterterrorism efforts, “we lacked the political leadership and more important the political will to do what had to be done.”

Critics saw such digs as an attempt by Freeh, who was FBI director from 1993 until a few months before 9/11, to avoid responsibility for the World Trade Center attacks.

Freeh also was scathing about Bill Clinton’s personal failings, particularly his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky - a matter Freeh’s FBI had to investigate.

“The problem was with Bill Clinton - the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended,” he wrote in his book. “Whatever moral compass the President was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction.”

But it is Freeh’s get-tough approach to crime and terrorism - he has long advocated expanding U.S. intelligence gathering around the globe - that will likely take center stage at today’s planned endorsement.

It’s a message that certainly fits with Giuliani’s recent rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail, where he often argues that Democrats want to go back to playing “defense” on terrorism, while Republicans understand the importance of playing “offense.”

There are other similarities between the two men: both were raised in Italian-American households, spent their early careers prosecuting Mafia cases together as federal prosecutors in New York, and Giuliani’s term as mayor largely coincided with Freeh’s stint as FBI director.

Even the setting for today’s endorsement - Times Square - is intended to send a message. It is meant to highlight Giuliani’s efforts at battling crime and cleaning up a once dangerous and tattered environment, a skill he has suggested could be just as useful in Iraq today as New York of the 1990s.

Source: NY Daily News

Posted by Hillary · Filed Under 2008, Hillary Clinton, News

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Ex-Clinton FBI chief Louis Freeh pushing Rudy for president

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