Donald Trump’s Campaign Guru: Bill Clinton Did 9/11

Donald Trump’s newest campaign boss has some strong feelings about the 9/11 attacks. Namely, that Bill Clinton let them happen because he hated the military and loved gays.

David Bossie, who became Trump’s deputy campaign manager last week, wrote a book in 2004 arguing that the Sept. 11 terror attacks are the legacy of Bill Clinton, not George W. Bush. The book, called Intelligence Failure: How Clinton’s National Security Policy Set the Stage for 9/11—which is no longer in print and isn’t available at major bookstores—gives insight into how a top new Trump hand views national security questions and George W. Bush’s presidency.

Bossie spent much of his political career working to damage the Clintons. He investigated them as a Hill staffer for the Oversight and Government Reform committee until he was forced out after an ethical breach of his own. Since then, he’s headed Citizens United—a group dedicated to investigating the Clintons and other liberals and best known for its role in the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United campaign finance ruling.

Bossie’s book—published by WorldNetDaily Books, the imprint of a conspiracy theory site that is the one-stop-shop for all things birther—argues that Bill Clinton’s hatred for the military and affinity for the homosexual agenda led to 9/11. His basic thesis was that Clinton weakened the FBI, weakened the CIA, thought terrorism wasn’t a problem, and coddled America’s enemies, leaving the American intelligence community in such a mess that there was nothing at all whatsoever that Bush possibly could have done to stop the attacks.

The book begins by ripping John Deutch, Clinton’s second CIA director, for trying to make the agency more “politically correct.”

“Deutch worked to push the CIA into a politically correct mold,” Bossie wrote. “Everyone near the top of the bureaucracy had to submit to AIDS awareness and sensitivity training. Quotas were imposed to ensure a diversity that allegedly looked like the American people.”

CIA agents didn’t like getting trained about AIDS, Bossie asserted, so lots of the good ones quit. Even worse than that, though? George Tenet, another Clinton CIA director, actually recruited CIA agents “from the homosexual community”—proof that he “wasted valuable time making politically correct innovations” instead of doing his job and preventing 9/11.

“Historically, there had been serious security-clearance issues and concerns about homosexuals in the intelligence community, concerns based on legitimate rationales,” Bossie continued. “Unfortunately, in the Clinton administration, we didn’t see any serious study of the issue. Rather, Clinton’s ideology, and his need to pay back the homosexual community, forced the CIA to change, regardless of the effect on national security. Where will this end? It is hard to say.”

Besides that, Bossie argued, Clinton didn’t push Congress to provide adequate funding for the FBI and the CIA. Why didn’t Clinton do this? Bossie has an answer:

“President Clinton never paid attention to or cared about the trivial matter of national security.”

Clinton hated our servicemen so much, Bossie added, that he wanted to make them work with gays.

“That Clinton continued to loathe the military was revealed as soon as he took office and attempted to overhaul military policies, such as allowing homosexuals to serve with the new ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy and forcing our soldiers to wear the UN insignia instead of a U.S. flag on their uniforms,” he wrote.

Clinton’s openness to having talks with Yasser Arafat at the Oslo Accords? Just another contributing factor to 9/11.

“In the hope of reaching peace and gaining a legacy, Clinton sent out a message to Islamic terrorists everywhere that terrorism pays,” Bossie wrote.

Instead of letting gay people serve in the military (though only secretly) and working to facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, Bossie argues that Bill Clinton should have kick-started the War on Terror as retaliation for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing

“Those six deaths and the over one thousand wounded should have served as a warning to the inexperienced Clinton administration to wage a war against terrorism,” Bossie wrote of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

“Terrorists see inaction as weakness,” he added, “so Clinton’s inaction sent a message that terrorists could attack the U.S. on its soil without fear of retribution.”

It wasn’t just Bill Clinton, though. Bossie saves a little blame for Al Gore. If Gore hadn’t contested the Florida recount efforts, he wrote, then Bush would have gotten a faster start on putting together his cabinet and vetting his national security team.

“George W. Bush was delayed for six weeks from beginning this process because Vice President Gore contested the election,” Bossie writes. “These delays clearly hurt our chances to stop 9/11.”

Thanks for 9/11, Al!

Bush, on the other hand, gets showered with credit for his brilliant response to the attacks. Bossie praised him for strengthening America’s ties to Russia, and for putting together a coalition to invade Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein. That war, Bossie writes, was one of many “bold initiatives” that Bush took to keep the U.S. safe.

To recap, in Bossie’s world, letting gay people serve in the military was evidence that you must hate it. But sending American soldiers to fight in Iraq was just another example of extremely good judgment and patriotism.

Bossie’s Bush apologia puts him at odds with Trump. The Republican nominee tepidly supported the Iraq invasion when it happened, but later reversed his stance. He then used the war to bludgeon Jeb Bush during the Republican primary, arguing that the Sept. 11 attacks were his brother’s fault.

And he repeatedly said he had opposed the war from the start, which is a lie.

Trump and Hillary Clinton are both focusing on national security this week, with the imminent 15-year anniversary of 9/11. And thanks to his top aide’s research, Trump should be all set to politicize the attacks.