As expected the administration is pulling out all the stops to discredit former terrorism chief Richard Clarke as "politically motivated" and "reckless." Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black.
This entry begins with an analysis of the respective articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post, then soes on to look at Mr. Clarke's public record on this issue over the last couple years. As opposed to a political hack as the administration (with the always ready help of Judith Miller) would have you believe, I believe that the picture that emerges is that of a dedicated American hero. Someone who recognized the Al Qaeda threat and has done everything humanly possible to correct an administration hell bent on the pusuit of a disasterous terrorism policy.
Some of that record is layed out here. You be the judge!
First, let's note the difference between the
New York Times article by Judith Miller,
the PR flack for Ahmad Chalabi, and the
Washingtom Post article by Barton Gellman.
The Times story ran on page 19 in my edition. The Post ran this on the front page.
Ever the loyal BushCo stoolie, Miller leads with Dan Bartlett's statement:
In an interview Sunday evening, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, dismissed Mr. Clarke's charges as "politically motivated," "reckless" and "baseless."
"If Dick Clarke had such grave concerns about the direction of the war on terror, why did he stay on the team as long as he did, and why did he wait till the beginning of a presidential campaign to speak out?" Mr. Bartlett said. He said the book's timing showed that it was "more about politics than policy."
This is in the third paragraph! Before even getting to the substance of Clarke's accussations he is discredited. Miller goes on to include denials by administration officials Stephen Hadley and Brian Roehrkasse, before ever getting to the real substance of the charges. Note also that she uses "alleged" and "asserts" with regard to Clarke's charges and "dismissed" and "denied" with regard to the administration officials. A piece of writing like this will surely insure her a continued seat at the table. Good job Judith! Four more wars!
The Post article, on the other hand, describes the charges in much more detail. It then mentions the administration's response and does some good in depth reporting on the issue.
Next, let's look at the only response that the administration has come up with. The allegation that Clarke is politically motivated. "If Dick Clarke had such grave concerns about the direction of the war on terror, why did he stay on the team as long as he did, and why did he wait till the beginning of a presidential campaign to speak out?" Mr. Bartlett said.
The problem here is that HE DID SPEAK OUT repeatedly and publically for the last two years. He tried to fix it from the inside, and then after giving up in frustration has tried to popularize the issue ever since. This is just his latest attempt to get the administration to WAKE UP THE REAL THREAT FROM AL QAEDA
Here's what a quick survey of press reports on Clarke and Al Qaeda over the last couple years turned up:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/05/1028157909817.html
Presidential change delayed Al-Qaeda attack, says report
August 6 2002
A plan for the United States to launch attacks against the al-Qaeda network languished for eight months because of the change in presidents and was approved only a week before the September 11 terrorist blows rocked the US, Time magazine has reported.
A White House official disputed parts of the Time story, published on Sunday.
No plan had been handed over and President George Bush's Administration moved quickly to take steps against al-Qaeda, the official said.
The White House is clearly irritated by the report, which appeared to suggest that the Bush Administration might not have done all it could to prevent the attacks.
---
http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/05/time.history/
CNN Inside Politics
They Had A Plan
Long before 9/11, the White House debated taking the fight to al-Qaeda
August 5, 2002 Posted: 11:01 PM EDT (0301 GMT)
The terrorism briefing was delivered by Richard Clarke, a career bureaucrat who had served in the first Bush Administration and risen during the Clinton years to become the White House's point man on terrorism. As chair of the interagency Counter-Terrorism Security Group (CSG), Clarke was known as a bit of an obsessive--just the sort of person you want in a job of that kind. Since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000--an attack that left 17 Americans dead--he had been working on an aggressive plan to take the fight to al-Qaeda. The result was a strategy paper that he had presented to Berger and the other national security "principals" on Dec. 20. But Berger and the principals decided to shelve the plan and let the next Administration take it up. With less than a month left in office, they did not think it appropriate to launch a major initiative against Osama bin Laden. "We would be handing [the Bush Administration] a war when they took office on Jan. 20," says a former senior Clinton aide. "That wasn't going to happen." Now it was up to Rice's team to consider what Clarke had put together.
Berger had left the room by the time Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. A senior Bush Administration official denies being handed a formal plan to take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and says Clarke's materials merely dealt with whether the new Administration should take "a more active approach" to the terrorist group. (Rice declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled no briefing at which Berger was present.) Other senior officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda. In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Qaeda was causing trouble--Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Yemen--would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary" where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a nation that had been riven by bloody feuds between ethnic warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a substantial increase in American support for the Northern Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done since 9/11."
And that's the point. The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush...
---
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-mylroie021903.asp
National Review
February 19, 2003, 9:00 a.m.
The Circle of Terror
And the bureaucracy problem.
By Laurie Mylroie
Already on September 17, Bush affirmed, "I believe Iraq was involved, but I'm not going to strike them now," as Bob Woodward's Bush at War reveals (this is not a criminal trial; there is no presumption of innocence; and the requisite standard is much lower than "beyond a reasonable doubt.")
That is why Bush is so fixed on removing Saddam. The war, however, was split in two: al Qaeda and then Iraq. But the administration is inhibited from fully explaining the reasons for the war's second phase. Under Bill Clinton, the notion was developed that a new form of highly lethal terrorism had come into existence that did not involve states. The bureaucrats who formulated that concept remain committed to it.
Indeed, that concept -- which contravenes previous assumptions about major terrorist attacks directed at U.S. targets -- was challenged even during the Clinton years. According to former White House staffers, Steve Simon and David Benjamin, their boss, Richard Clarke, ordered an inquiry then into whether any state was involved with al Qaeda. "No evidence" was found.
"No evidence" is an easy evasion. If you don't look vigorously for such information, you may not find it. Writing about the debate within the CIA, Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland explains that information does indeed exist linking Iraq and al Qaeda, but it was "quietly buried during the Clinton years, when the need not to know very much about Iraq and terrorism was very strong."
Whenever a senior U.S. official affirms there is an Iraqi-al Qaeda link, an avalanche of leaks to the contrary follows, like "Alleged Al-Qaida Ties Questioned," a Washington Post report that appeared after Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the Security Council (there is not one named source in the article). CIA Director George Tenet's recent Senate testimony, which also cited Iraqi-al Qaeda ties, prompted similar leaks. As a Pentagon official remarked, "These guys have no loyalty."
Or their loyalty is to themselves. Our Founding Fathers held a pessimistic view of human beings and that pessimism infuses our constitutional and legal systems. We don't expect anyone to be a judge in his own case. So why expect this situation to be any different? New York Times columnist William Safire says it is only an "angry minority," which is responsible for the leaks, bent on justifying "years of mistaken estimates."
This situation is intolerable, because the consequences could be so awful. Iraq has a dangerous biological-weapons program, as Powell's presentation made clear. We need to protect ourselves.
---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17694-2003Mar12
Anti-Terror Pioneer Turns In the Badge
After 11 Years, Clarke Leaves Legacy of Lasting Change -- and Enemies
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2003; Page A21
Among friends, Clarke is skeptical that the coming war with Iraq is integral to the war on terrorism, as the White House maintains. He describes it as a diversion of scarce resources and a wedge between Washington and critical allies in destroying al Qaeda.
---
(yeah kos!)
http://www.dailykos.net/archives/001232.html
One month after the 9/11 catastrophe, Clarke was reassigned by the Bushies away from his position leading the government's secretive Counter-terrorism and Security Group, made up of senior officials from the FBI, CIA, Justice Department and armed services, who met several times each week to discuss foreign threats. He is also one of the two people in the government in the months leading up to 9/11 who knew the most about Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the other being FBI Special Agent in Charge John O'Neill.
Both O'Neill and Clarke had been warning all who would listen in the FBI and CIA during the last part of the Clinton Administration and the first few months of the Bush Administration about the imminent threat posed by Al Qaeda, a threat that Clinton was quite convinced of. O'Neill quit the FBI in frustration in August 2001, fed up with being kept from pursuing a Saudi connection to Al Qaeda by the new Bush Administration and from being passed over for the senior counter-terrorism job in the FBI. Tragically, O'Neill went to work as chief of security for the World Trade Center and died in the 9/11 catastrophe. The story on O'Neill's frustrations was well told in a recent PBS Frontline special (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/etc/synopsis.html) that featured Clarke.
---
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030101fareviewessay10229/ellen-laipson/while-america-slept-understan
ding-terrorism-and-counterterrorism.html
While America Slept: Understanding Terrorism and Counterterrorism
By Ellen Laipson
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2003
Benjamin and Simon set out to show that a small group of officials "got it" and worked to galvanize the rest of the bureaucracy to focus on the rising threat from terrorism. Their story indirectly makes an effective argument for keeping some staffers on the same brief for years, rather than continuing the normally restless rotations that characterize upward mobility for many civil servants. Both Simon and his boss and mentor, Richard Clarke, worked the terror account for most of the 1990s and thus had a unique ability to connect the dots between the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the East African embassy bombings, and nonstop intelligence warnings through the late 1990s of further attacks to come. Terrorism analysts elsewhere -- whether in the CIA, the State Department, or law enforcement -- are often passing through from other assignments. Lacking the long experience with terrorism that characterized Clarke's unusual tenure at the NSC, others in government did not see the warning signs as clearly as he and his colleagues did.
But a lack of perspective is not the only challenge that Benjamin and Simon document. They describe the bureaucracy's frequent drift to other priorities, tensions between the FBI and the CIA, petty fights over funding new technologies such as the Predator drone, and the desire of State Department regionalists to focus on a more positive agenda, rather than simply terrorism, in dealing with Muslim states. All these tales ring true, and the authors correctly express exasperation at how hard it was to get their jobs done right.
Ultimately, however, theirs is a subjective account and will be matched by those of other players who will want to explain their side of the story, or disagree with this often sharp treatment of the FBI and the media in particular. Other institutions that do not fare well in the Benjamin-Simon rendition include the State Department, the CIA, and the military -- nearly every actor, that is, except for the embattled counterterrorist shop at the NSC.
To be fair, the authors do try to turn the searchlight on themselves as well. They profile Clarke with affection and respect, recognizing his "preternatural gift for spotting emerging issues" and his tenaciousness once on an issue. He was also a master of bureaucratic politics. But when they judge that he sometimes "needlessly alienated people who might have helped him," it reads as a bit of an understatement. I share their view that Clarke and his talented proteges were formidable bureaucratic players and exceedingly hard working and productive. But I am not as sure that the personality problems can be so easily dismissed; many government officials shied away from participating in Clarke's crisis-mode working groups, and others resented his dismissive attitude toward any bureaucratic effort that he was not leading. A more inclusive, consensus-building approach might have helped forge the interagency synergies that the authors found so elusive.
---
This is a partial transcript from On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, October 9, 2002.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,65342,00.html
VAN SUSTEREN: All right. In your work and in your studies and in your book, have you determined from looking at the evidence, the information available, that that Al Qaeda and Saddam are not working in concert? Or is it simply your hypothesis, based on your study of the religion and the region?
BENJAMIN: When I was at the NSC, the intelligence community told us, you know, they're not working together. And my boss, Richard Clarke, who was then the czar for counter-terrorism, said, "Well," you know, "we need to question the received wisdom." And so we checked all of the available intelligence to see if there was something there, and we didn't find anything. That was 1998. By 1999, the end of 1999, when I left, there had been no substantial relationship uncovered, and I have not heard of anything else.
---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A30176-2002May16
Before Sept. 11, Unshared Clues and Unshaped Policy
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 17, 2002; Page A01
On July 5 of last year, a month and a day before President Bush first heard that al Qaeda might plan a hijacking, the White House summoned officials of a dozen federal agencies to the Situation Room.
"Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon," the government's top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, told the assembled group, according to two of those present. The group included the Federal Aviation Administration, along with the Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer nonvital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. For six weeks last summer, at home and overseas, the U.S. government was at its highest possible state of readiness -- and anxiety -- against imminent terrorist attack.
That intensity -- defensive in nature -- did not last. By the time Bush received his briefing at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, the government had begun to stand down from the alert. Offensive planning against al Qaeda remained in a mid-level interagency panel, which had spent half a year already in a policy review. The Deputies Committee, the second tier of national security officials, had not finished considering the emerging plan, and Bush's Cabinet-rank advisers were still a month away from their first meeting on terrorism.
---
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1126-10.htm
Published on Wednesday, November 26, 2003 by Knight-Ridder
Iraq War Diverting Resources from War on Terror, Experts Say
by Warren P. Strobel
"Fighting Iraq had little to do with fighting the war on terrorism, until we made it (so)," said Richard Clarke, who was a senior White House counter-terrorism official under Bush and President Bill Clinton.
---
So there it is. The picture becomes very clear that Richard Clarke did everything he could within the administration to raise the urgency of the fight against Al Qaeda and only after he was repeated rebuffed did he leave the administration. Ever since he left the administration he has done everything he could on the outside, including writing this book, to bring attention to this issue. This is an American hero. For the administration to discredit him as politically motivated now is beyond reproach, but sadly consistent with their venality and disastrous approach to fighting real terrorism from the moment they took power!
(Some of this appeared in yesterday's Open Thread and Richard Clarke thread, but I really want to raise the visibility here as much as possible since I think it is critical to present Clarke's public record on these matters to refute the administration's current charges of political timing.)