CHRIS WALLACE'S CLINTON INTERVIEW: FACT CHECK

First off, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend watching this interview of former President Bill Clinton conducted by Fox News. Right-wingers have spent the past 72 hours trying to paint Clinton as everything from "crazed" (Fox News) to "unhinged and unglued" (Rush Limabaugh) in regards to his reply to Chris Wallace's question about Osama bin Laden.

Personally, as I watched the interview I found myself fascinated with a Presidential figure stringing together sentence after sentence without a single "Um" or "Awww", and thought about how much I miss a well-spoken (albeit sex-crazed) representative of the American People.

However, in addition to answering the bin Laden question, Clinton also took exception to the fact that Wallace asked him about his record on 9/11 while not asking the same of the Bush Administration officials. The exchange in question went like this (it's at the 5:50 mark of the attached video):

WALLACE: I asked a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?

CLINTON: 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 Cole? I want to know how many you asked: Why did you fire Dick Clarke? I want to know…

WALLACE: We asked…

CLINTON:…

WALLACE: Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday sir?

CLINTON: I don’t believe you ask them that.

WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of…

CLINTON: You didn’t ask that did you? Tell the truth.

WALLACE: About the USS Cole?

CLINTON: Tell the truth.

WALLACE: I…with Iraq and Afghanistan there’s plenty of stuff to ask.

CLINTON: Did you ever ask that?

Sounds like Wallace has the record to back-up his claims huh? Well as it turns out, not so much.

For the record, this was Clinton's FIRST solo interview on Fox News. And according to ThinkProgress who did a Lexis-Nexis database search on Fox News Sunday, neither Chris Wallace or his predecessor (Tony Snow) EVER asked a Bush Administration official about the lack of response to the Cole bombing.

Oh well, maybe the opportunity never came up... here's a list of Bush officials and their appearances on "Fox News Sunday":
Vice President Dick Cheney: SIX TIMES
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: NINE TIMES
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: TWENTY-THREE TIMES
National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley: FOUR TIMES

That's a total of FORTY-TWO APPEARANCES without a question about the last terrorist attack prior to 9/11? Fair and balanced indeed.