Rival's TV ad links Hillary Clinton with Osama Bin Laden

A Republican candidate hoping to challenge Senator Hillary Clinton this autumn is running a television advertisement that links her to al-Qaida terror boss Osama bin Laden.

The advert, produced by the Senate campaign of John Spencer, accuses Mrs Clinton of opposing national security programmes, including the USA Patriot Act and a secret National Security Agency wiretapping programme, that may have helped thwart a planned terror attack aboard US-bound flights from London last week.

Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson deemed the advert factually inaccurate and said: “Mr Spencer’s history of making wild-eyed angry falsehoods like these are among the many reasons why no-one takes him or his campaign seriously.”

In the advert, images of newspaper headlines fly across the screen, describing the alleged terror plot targeting the airliners. A photo of Mrs Clinton is then paired with a photo of bin Laden.

“Senator Hillary Clinton opposed the Patriot Act and the NSA programme that helped stop another 9/11. She’d leave us vulnerable,” the narrator says.

Spencer spokesman Rob Ryan defended the advert.

“It speaks for itself,” he said. “It’s about the failure of Senator Clinton to take proper action to defend the state in a time of war.”

Mrs Clinton, considered a potential presidential candidate in 2008, voted for the Patriot Act, which vastly expanded the federal government’s ability to track terror suspects, in 2001.

Last year, she was part of a Democrat-led filibuster that forced Republicans to accept modest curbs on the government’s power to investigate suspects. Once those modifications were made, most Senate Democrats, including Mrs Clinton, voted to renew expiring sections of the Patriot Act.