New book says Hillary Clinton was force behind mission to kill Osama bin Laden

President Obama canceled previous plans to attack terror kingpin, author Richard Miniter alleges

By Glenn Blain / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, August 20, 2012, 2:58 PM

Carolyn Kaster/AP

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It was Hillary Clinton who persuaded a jittery President Obama to carry out the mission to kill terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, a new book claims.

Obama canceled three missions targeting bin Laden before Clinton finally convinced him to pull the trigger, according to the book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Richard Miniter.

“Obama feared taking responsibility for a risky raid that might go tragically wrong,” Miniter writes in “Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide For Him.”

Excerpts of the book, which is being published Tuesday, were viewed by the London Daily Mail and posted on its website Monday.

Miniter — who has also worked for the Washington Times and the Sunday Times of London — cites an unnamed source within Joint Special Operations Command as claiming previous missions to kill bin Laden were canceled by the President in January, February and March 2011.

Miniter’s explosive allegation threatens to undermine the White House’s narrative of a decisive Obama ordering the risky May 2011 raid by U.S. Navy Seals to kill bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan.

The book portrays Clinton as the primary force pushing Obama to kill bin Laden and contends that Obama was influenced by a number of strong women — including top adviser Valerie Jarrett and his wife, Michelle.

According to Miniter, Obama came into office undecided about whether to kill bin Laden and was often “disengaged” as the operation was planned.

“Throughout 2009 Obama demanded more and more certainty about U.S. intelligence concerning bin Laden,” the book says.

“As CIA covert teams successfully parried concerns about intelligence by extraordinary efforts that proved bin Laden was indeed in the Abbottabad compound, a new set of delaying tactics emerged, embedded in the debate over what should actually be done,” Miniter added.

Clinton, according to the source, used her weekly meetings with the President to lobby for a strike against bin Laden.

“She knew her husband had paid a political price for failing to stop bin Laden before the September 11 attacks,” Miniter wrote. “She knew Obama’s presidency could be mortally wounded if he had bin Laden in his gun sights and didn’t fire.”

Clinton, despite her 2008 campaign against Obama for the Democratic nomination, won Obama over and was eventually able to convince him to move against the terror kingpin.

“He knew Clinton was right,” Miniter wrote. “So he agreed to keep making minor decisions, but remained uneasy about the big one at the end — deciding to kill bin Laden, and to risk losing American and Pakistani lives in the process.”