Kristol: O'Neill War Memo Came From Clinton

A controversial White House memo outlining plans for a postwar Iraq that was drafted well before the 9/11 attacks had its origins in the Clinton administration, former Bush 41 White House official Bill Kristol said Sunday.

In an interview set for broadcast Sunday night, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill tells CBS's "60 Minutes" that "from the very beginning, there was a conviction [in the Bush White House] that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go."

Of White House deliberations on the decision to invade Iraq, O'Neill claims: "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying, 'Go find me a way to do this.'"

O'Neill's comments are bolstered by memos he supplied to author Ronald Suskind, whose new book, "The Price of Loyalty," is based on O'Neill's story.

But former White House official Bill Kristol, who now publishes The Weekly Standard, says that a key memo cited by the author that outlines U.S. contingency plans to topple Saddam Hussein goes back to the Clinton administration.

"[Suskind] quotes this secret memo, 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq,' that apparently the Bush administration had in its first few months," Kristol told "Fox News Sunday."

"I'm sure that was left over from the Clinton administration. Of course [the Bush White House] had a plan for post-Saddam Iraq - it's been our policy to have regime change there for three years before the Bush administration."

Kristol, who served as chief of staff for former Vice President Dan Quayle, also questioned O'Neill's recollections of Bush's comments, which Suskind claimed are based on "nearly verbatim" transcripts of White House meetings.

"I've been in White House meetings. There's no verbatim transcript of such meetings," he told "Fox News Sunday." "People take notes, obviously, for their use later on. [But] I'd like to know, I'd like to see this 'nearly verbatim' transcript of the meeting."

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