"MY FBI FOR DUMMIES"

The NY Times book review skewers former FBI director Louis Freeh's new memoir.

Only Clinton, the president Freeh served from his appointment in 1993 until just before his retirement in 2001, comes in for anything like serious flak. Could this (please) be the last of that hopelessly tiresome literary genre, the anti-Bill-Clinton book? If so, the line ends with a whimper. The news coverage suggested that the juiciest of Freeh's allegations appeared to involve Clinton's slowing the investigation of a 1996 terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans. Blocked from interviewing the detained suspects, Freeh appealed to the president to intercede with King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah. However, Freeh says, Clinton played down the F.B.I. request in favor of hitting up the crown prince for a donation to his presidential library. A Clinton spokesman denied the allegation, and even though Freeh makes it the centerpiece of his opening chapter, the anecdote turns out to rest on the skimpiest of attributions: "usually reliable sources." If that's all Freeh has, he has no business airing the charge in the first place.