Jonah, I think what your reader is hitting on is something that Clinton is weaving out of Dick Clarke’s book, not an accusation that was ever actually made.

Clarke argues that after Bush became president, the counterterrorism focus — to the extent Clarke allows that there was one — shifted from al Qaeda to state sponsorship of terrorism. The contention among some Bushies who were involved in policy-making was that the Clinton administration had homed in too much on bin Laden and not enough on the governments (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, etc.) that were making it possible for bin Laden to be effective.

Clinton, I believe, is spinning this to mean he was criticized for paying too much attention to bin Laden. But in point of fact, it’s (a) a distortion of the nature of the criticism, and (b) it’s not a criticism that was made — as Clinton suggests — at the time Clinton was president.