Chris Wallace, a journalist for the Fox News Network, received considerable attention for an interview with former President Bill Clinton, sometimes known as "Slick Willie", that aired on September 24, 2006 on Fox News Sunday. Clinton and Fox News had agreed in advance that half the time would be devoted to the Clinton Global Initiative and half to any other subjects that Wallace wanted to raise. [2162]

Wallace asked Clinton: "Why didn't you do more to put [Osama] bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president?" Clinton responded by detailing what he called his administration's "comprehensive anti-terror operation" and saying that at least he had tried, unlike his successor, George W. Bush. He then accused Wallace and Fox News of bias:

<blockquote>So you did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me. ... It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, "Why didn't you do anything about the [bombing of the USS] Cole?" I want to know how many you asked, "Why did you fire [anti-terrorism expert] Dick Clarke?"</blockquote>

In response to Clinton's charge of bias, Wallace said that Fox News Sunday had asked Bush administration officials "plenty of questions" of that sort. Media Matters for America, a web-based organization that reports and criticizes what it describes as "conservative misinformation in the U.S. media"
[2163], disputed Wallace's statement. [2164] It reviewed "dozens of interviews ... with senior Bush aides" and found only one (a 2004 interview with Donald Rumsfeld) in which Wallace raised the "basic charge that, pre-9-11 ... this government, the Bush administration, largely ignored the threat from Al Qaeda". [2165] The organization found no interviews in which Wallace or his predecessor, Tony Snow, had asked a Bush administration official about the treatment of Clarke or about the lack of response to the Cole bombing.

Response by Fox News

Fox News host John Gibson compared Clinton's gestures during the interview to those he made while being misleading about having sexual contact Monica Lewinsky. In that situation, Clinton was found to have deposited ejaculate on Lewinsky's dress. Later, Clinton was demonstrated to have vaginally penetrated Lewinsky with a cigar. Moreover, the independent counsel stated that Lewinsky provided oral comfort to Clinton's anus. The combination of this evidence left little doubt in the public mind that Clinton had been less than completely forthright.

Fox News legal correspondent Andrew Napolitano has also suggested that Clinton made misleading remarks he made during the interview. Clinton stated that he authorized the CIA to kill bin Laden. He also stated that he did not launch "a full scale military attack" on Afghanistan in pursuit of bin Laden in part because "the CIA and FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole bombing] while I was there." Napolitano characterized an assassination under those circumstances as "Legal under American law but not International law. Who cares!" Napolitano also stated that the FBI and the CIA "don't need to certify anything to him" to justify an invasion. the Bench&Big_Story&Did Bill Clinton contradict himself to Chris Wallace on 'FOX News Sunday'?&Law Center&-1&Before the Bench&Video Launch Page&News In November of 1998, Bin Laden, along with 72 others, were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in New York City for "conspiracy to kill Americans everywhere on the planet", with specific references to the the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing, and the 1998 United States embassy bombings [2166]. Napolitano stated that the filing of the indictment "triggers the authority of the executive branch of government to arrest the people indicted, by using a single Federal Marshall or 50,000 troops, or whatever it takes."

Several sources have criticized Napolitano for allegedly making false statements about both fact and law regarding other matters in his capacity as a media legal analysist.[2167][2168][2169][2170][2171] The prominent conservative magazine National Review has described Napolitano as a former "midlevel state court judge in New Jersey," and opined that any actual legal expertise arising from Napolitano's experience "would be an exceedingly narrow one: to wit, he might be thought an authority on the constitution and laws of the Garden State." The conservative magazine continues, "[Napolitano] then proceeds to expound with glib certainty on all manner of legal issues, including matters of federal law, for which he appears to have little familiarity. That the 'Judge' is out of his league in these areas is often painfully obvious .... Fox's viewers, nonetheless, are led to believe they are recipients of pearls of wisdom from a jurisprudential giant."
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