Former FBI head Freeh endorses Giuliani for 2008

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

NEW YORK, May 31 (Reuters) Republican presidential contender Rudolph Giuliani today was endorsed by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who served under President Bill Clinton but later turned against his former boss over the scandals at the Clinton White House.

Giuliani, who is among the 2008 presidential front-runners as is Democratic US Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton, said the backing by a top US law enforcement expert was instrumental in his political campaign, which has focused on national security and the war on terrorism.

Freeh, who ran the FBI from 1993 until June 2001, is ''knowledgeable about the kind of terrorist threat that we face,'' Giuliani said at a Manhattan news conference. ''Having his advice in this campaign, which largely is going to focus on what we have to do about terrorism, is invaluable.'' Freeh credited Giuliani, who served as New York City mayor from 1994 through 2001, with implementing innovations to fight crime. Under Giuliani, crime rates fell dramatically.

''Everybody during the '80s said nothing could be done about New York,'' Freeh said. ''Really the issue was leadership and accountability.'' Freeh, who worked as an assistant US attorney in Manhattan when Giuliani headed the federal prosecutor's office there, added he had never before endorsed a presidential candidate.

''I tried to stay out of politics as best I could,'' he said.

Nevertheless, in 2005 Freeh wrote a book, ''My FBI: Bringing down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror,'' that criticized Clinton for the scandals that plagued his administration such as the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas and his affair with a White House intern.

Freeh also has claimed the Clinton administration thwarted FBI efforts to pursue terrorism suspects. Critics have responded that the FBI under Freeh failed to recognize the threat to the United States before September 11, 2001.

REUTERS PDS BST0347

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