In more remarks deleted from the original broadcast, the ex-president claimed:

"Mr. Absurabi, the head of the Sudanese government, was a buddy of bin Laden's. They were business partners together. There was no way in the wide world this guy who was in business with bin Laden in Sudan was going to give him up to us."

During Sunday night's telecast, the portion of Clinton's comments on the Sudanese offer aired by CBS was far more abbreviated.

"I don't believe that is true," he said. "There was a story, which is factually inaccurate, that the Sudanese offered bin Laden to us. As far as I know, there is not a shred of evidence of that."

The Clinton-CBS publicity machine ratcheted up denials about the Sudanese offer after talk radio stations from coast to coast aired audiotape on Monday of a February 2002 speech in which Clinton admitted that Sudan had indeed offered him bin Laden, but that he had turned the offer down.

"At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America," the ex-president explained, in comments recorded exclusively by NewsMax.com.

Clinton's characterization of the Sudanese story as "bull" was first reported Thursday by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, based on his interview with Rather.

But "60 Minutes" spokesman Kevin Tedesco insisted to NewsMax later in the day that Clinton never uttered the word "bull," explaining instead that Rather had attributed the word to Mr. Clinton erroneously.

"Clinton never used the word 'bull.' That was Dan Rather's word. Clinton never said that," Tedesco said.

"60 Minutes" declined NewsMax.com's offer to share its recording of Clinton admitting he had turned down the Sudanese offer, and instead let Clinton's denial stand unchallenged.

In a March staff report issued by the Sept. 11 Commission, commission investigators said that every Sudanese official interviewed about the bin Laden offer confirmed the story, while every Clinton official they spoke to denied it.

In his own April 9 interview with the Commission, Clinton said he'd been "misquoted" in reports claiming that he had confirmed the bin Laden offer.

9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said two days later that at the time of Clinton's interrogation, he was unaware that staffers had obtained a videotape of Clinton's 2002 speech where he detailed the Sudanese offer.

Clinton's expanded denials were posted to the CBS News Web site after Monday's "CBS Evening News" broadcast.

Listen to the recording that was too hot to handle for "60 Minutes" - along with Hillary's denial of the bin Laden offer.

Editor's note: