Clinton Briefings Preceded Dean Gaffes

Some of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's worst campaign gaffes have followed briefings by former Clinton administration officials who were sought out by the Vermont Democrat to tutor him on foreign policy.

In August, Dean's campaign staff turned to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who conducted a six-hour "private class" for the Vermont Democrat on Middle East issues, reported the Boston Globe in Sunday editions.

A few weeks later, Dean caused an uproar by suggesting that Israel and the Palestinians should be treated in an "evenhanded" way, the paper noted.

After that blunder, President Clinton began personally advising the Vermont Democrat, ostensibly in a bid to head off any further politically damaging gaffes. But the results have been anything but stellar for the presidential front-runner.

Shortly after his talks with the ex-president, Dean began touting Clinton as a special Middle East envoy, saying that President Bush should tap Clinton for the job now and that he would do so if elected. In the weeks that followed, Dean loaded up his campaign staff with ex-Clinton officials such as Anthony Lake and Susan Rice.

Lake was regarded by critics as a security risk when he was nominated by Clinton to be national security adviser in 1993.

Rice has been accused of spurning efforts by Sudan in the late 1990s to improve relations with the Clinton administration, which included an offer to arrest 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and turn him over to the U.S.

Coincidentally or not, since he's been under the tutelage of Clinton, Albright, Lake and Rice, the Democratic front-runner has careened from one rhetorical blunder on foreign policy after another.

In the last four weeks alone, Dean has accused the White House of being complicit in the 9/11 attacks, citing suspicions that President Bush received advanced warning from the Saudis but decided not to act on the tip.

Under sharp questioning a few days later by "Fox News Sunday's" Chris Wallace, Dean declined to back away from the conspiracy theory or apologize, saying of the bizarre allegation: "We don't know [if it's true] and it would be a nice thing to know."

Two weeks ago, Dean insisted that the U.S. was "no safer" after the capture of Saddam Hussein and that security measures undertaken by the Bush administration had left the country no less vulnerable to terrorist attack than it had been before 9/11.

And in what promises to be the most damaging gaffe of all, Dean told a New Hampshire newspaper on Friday that it was wrong to prejudge bin Laden's guilt, even though the 9/11 mastermind had bragged of plotting the attacks in a videotape released by al-Qaeda two years ago.

In what may be a window into the kind of bizarre advice Dean has been getting, Albright herself was caught 10 days ago indulging in some wild-eyed conspiracy-mongering when she told Fox News commentator Morton Kondracke that she wondered if the Bush administration had already captured bin Laden but was keeping the news on ice until just before the 2004 election.

Albright later said she had been joking.

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