(NaturalNews) It seems as though a previous Democratic president had more than enough evidence that Iran is a terrorist-sponsoring state, long before the current Democratic president launched negotiations that will ultimately reward Tehran for being one.

As reported by The Washington Times, the administration of Bill Clinton put together enough evidence to send a top-secret message accusing Iran of helping plan and facilitate the deadly 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia in 1996. The information, however, was kept from the American people over fears it would lead to calls for reprisal, documents and interviews revealed.

Prior to Clinton leaving the White House, the U.S. intelligence community had gathered enough data to implicate Iran in the attack that killed 19 U.S. servicemen and wounded hundreds of others. The evidence was deemed extensive and "credible," according to memos reviewed by the Times.

The paper further noted:

"It included FBI interviews with a half-dozen Saudi co-conspirators who revealed they got their passports from the Iranian embassy in Damascus, reported to a top Iranian general and were trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), officials [said]..."

New evidence of Iran's involvement

Details about what the Clinton administration knew are now taking on renewed importance following the recent capture of the man accused of masterminding the attack — an arrest that has happened in the shadow of a newly inked and highly controversial nuclear deal between the Obama administration and Tehran. And the information comes amid charges by Argentinian President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner at the UN in September that an Obama operative attempted to persuade her country to provide nuclear fuel to the Iranian regime in 2009.

The Times reported that the master planner, Ahmed al-Mughassil, was intercepted in August as he returned to Lebanon from Iran. His arrest has provided U.S. investigators with new evidence of Iran's involvement in the 1996 attack, along with a terrorist organization, Hezbollah, which Tehran is known to financially support. Iran has attempted to shield al-Mughassil from prosecution for nearly 20 years, according to U.S. officials who spoke to the paper.

Louis Freeh, who was the FBI director at the time of the attack, told the Times that he had asked for help from the Clinton White House to gain access to the Saudi suspects but was rebuffed. After he succeeded in going around Clinton and came back with the evidence, he said it was dismissed as "hearsay" and he was personally asked not to reveal it because the White House had made a decision to improve relations with Iran and did not want to derail those efforts.

"The bottom line was they weren't interested. They were not at all responsive to it," Freeh told the paper regarding the evidence linking Iran to the attack.

"They were looking to change the relationships with the regime there, which is foreign policy. And the FBI has nothing to do with that," he continued. "They didn't like that. But I did what I thought was proper."

Freeh has made similar accusations — about a decade ago — when he penned a book about his time as FBI director. At the time, he was heavily criticized by Clinton supporters who accused him of being partisan and claimed the evidence implicating Iranian complicity was not conclusive, and that no one in the Oval Office tried to shut down the investigation.

In June 2003, The New York Times reported that al-Qaeda was suspected in the Khobar Towers attack, but also noted that Iranian officials were "initially" blamed.

Corroborating Freeh's claims

In December 2006, The Washington Post reported that a federal judge ruled that Iran was responsible for the Khobar bombing and ordered Tehran to pay the families of the Americans who were killed $245 million.

The judge, Royce Lamberth, "said the leading experts on Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group based in Lebanon, presented 'overwhelming' evidence that the Iranian military worked with Saudi Hezbollah members to execute the attack, and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security provided money, plans and maps to help carry out the bombing," the Post reported. "Six Hezbollah members captured after the attacks implicated Iranian officials."

In the subsequent years, the Washington Times reported, new information implicating Iran emerged from declassified memos, oral history interviews with retired government officials and other sources — information which substantiated Freeh's claims.

"Chief among the new evidence is a top-secret cable from summer 1999 showing that Mr. Clinton told Iran's new and more moderate president at the time, Mohammad Khatami, that the U.S. believed Iran had participated in the Khobar Towers truck bombing," the paper said.

Sources:

WashingtonTimes.com

NYTimes.com

Mediaite.com