I understand Bill Clinton's desire to attempt to influence history's judgment of his administration's efforts to reign in Al Qaeda and get Bin Laden, both for the sake of his personal legacy and his wife's campaign to be president. However, I question the wisdom of the Clinton's very aggressive moves over the ABC docudrama "The Path to 9/11" and the recent blowup with Chris Wallace on FOX News. Yesterday's FOX News Sunday is a perfect example of why I don't think Bill Clinton really wants the facts to be exposed over who did more, or what administration did what, to get Bin Laden prior to 9/11.

WALLACE: But, Mr. Scheuer, I can see you beginning to shake your head. I mean, whether or not they had certifiable proof about the Cole, they certainly knew that Al Qaida had been involved in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa. In your opinion, as somebody who was up close and personal, why didn't the Clinton administration go after Al Qaida after the USS Cole?

SCHEUER: Mr. Wallace, my opinion is not all that important. I went to a little Jesuit school in Buffalo called Canicius, and the priests taught us never to lie, but if you had to lie, never lie about facts. Mr. Richard Clarke, Mr. Sandy Berger, President Clinton are lying about the opportunities they had to kill Osama bin Laden. That's the plain truth, the exact truth.

Men and women at the CIA risked their lives to provide occasions to kill a man we knew had declared war and had attacked America four or five times before 1998. We had plans that had been approved by the Joint Operations Command at Fort Bragg. We had opportunities, many opportunities to kill him.

But that's the president's decision. That's absolutely the case. It's not a simple, dumb bureaucrat like me; that's not my decision. It's his. But for him to get on the television and say to the American people he did all he could is a flat lie, sir.

WALLACE: Mr. Benjamin?

BENJAMIN: Well, I simply disagree. The plans that Mike is referring to about being approved were actually disapproved by his own chain of command. The CIA did not have confidence in the operation that was drawn up, and we couldn't go forward with it.

After the attack on the East Africa embassies, the covert operations were restarted, and again the same assets that were being involved earlier proved to be feckless and didn't deliver the goods.

SCHEUER: ... saying this, that what Mr. Benjamin, who I have a great deal of respect for, but what I say doesn't matter. What matters is the documents that back up what I have to say or what Mr. Benjamin has to say.

The 9/11 Commission ignored those documents, didn't publish them to the American people, let no one involved with the effort to get bin Laden testify to the American people.

This is not a question of interpretation or judgment. This is a question of fact. And the documents will show the president had the opportunity.

It seems to me Bill Clinton would have been better off just accepting the politically correct conclusions of the 9/11 Commission, ignoring ABC's "The Path to 9/11," and letting the public continue take the politically benign view that his administration, the administration of President Bush, and indeed the entire government didn't do enough to accurately assess and deal with the threat posed from Al Qaeda and bin Laden prior to 9/11.

Correcting real inaccuracies in the "The Path to 9/11" is one thing, but in the Wallace interview Clinton was brazenly trying to rewrite history by suggesting "I got closer to killing him than anybody" and implying he was on the cusp of invading Afghanistan "I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan." Clinton's ability to massage the truth may have clouded his brilliant political judgment as there is just too much public evidence on the record disputing the story Clinton is trying to tell. Looking toward the '08 campaign from the Clintons' perspective, it doesn't make any sense to dredge up which administration might have been more at fault pre-9/11. The Clintons would be better off focusing on what they perceive as the Bush administration's mistakes post-9/11 and how to best fight the war moving forward.