It's Dick Clarke's Un-American Grandstand....
Saturday, March 20, 2004 11:19 p.m. EST
Richard Clarke Flashback: Clinton Dropped Ball on bin Laden
Former Clinton White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke is preparing to tell the Independent Commission Investigating the Sept. 11 Attacks this week that the Bush administration failed to act on a Clinton administration plan to attack Osama bin Laden.
And in a "60 Minutes" interview set to air Sunday night, Clarke blasts Bush for doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism."
But just a year ago Clarke was singing a different tune, telling reporter Richard Miniter, author of the book "Losing bin Laden," that it was the Clinton administration - not team Bush - that had dropped the ball on bin Laden.
Clarke, who was a primary source for Miniter's book, detailed a meeting of top Clinton officials in the wake of al-Qaida's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.
He urged them to take immediate military action. But his advice found no takers.
Reporting on Miniter's book, the National Review summarized the episode:
"At a meeting with Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Attorney General Janet Reno, and other staffers, Clarke was the only one in favor of retaliation against bin Laden."
The list of excuses seemed endless:
"Reno thought retaliation might violate international law and was therefore against it.
"Tenet wanted more definitive proof that bin Laden was behind the attack, although he personally thought he was.
"Albright was concerned about the reaction of world opinion to a retaliation against Muslims, and the impact it would have in the final days of the Clinton Middle East peace process.
"Cohen, according to Clarke, did not consider the Cole attack 'sufficient provocation' for a military retaliation."
And what about President Clinton? According to what Clarke told Miniter, he rejected the attack plan. Instead, Clinton twice phoned the president of Yemen demanding better cooperation between the FBI and the Yemeni security services.
Clarke offered a chillingly prescient quote from one aide who agreed with him about Clinton administration inaction: "What's it going to take to get them to hit al-Qaida in Afghanistan? Does al-Qaida have to attack the Pentagon?" said the dismayed Clintonista.
Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 commission will surely boost sales for his new book, "Against All Enemies," which his publisher is releasing on the eve of his appearance before the panel.
The book's bombshell news hook is Clarke's claim that after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush wanted him to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement.
But it's not clear how much politics has tempered his recollections. Clarke certainly sounded partisan on the morning of Dec. 15, when, as the nation was celebrating Saddam Hussein's capture, he was complaining that the brutal dictator's apprehension was actually bad news.
"I don't think it's going to have a near-term positive effect on security," Clarke told ABC's "This Week."
"In the short term, we may have actually a worse problem," he insisted.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/3/20/232055.shtml
Numbers Show Media Bias on Clarke
Susan Jones, CNSNews.com
Friday, March 26, 2004
While hundreds of news reports mentioned Richard Clarke's criticism of Bush administration, relatively few of those reports also mentioned documents contradicting key elements of what Clarke said.
A search of the Nexis news database shows that from March 24 through March 26, there were 872 news reports mentioning the name Richard Clarke.
Clarke is the former counterterrorism official who expressed support for the Bush administration when he worked at the Bush White House, then blasted the Bush administration after he left.
Clarke's new book, saying that terrorism was not a priority for the Bush administration, came out this week, apparently timed to coincide with his appearance on Wednesday before the commission investigating the events leading up to 9/11.
Hundreds of news reports from March 24-46 discussed Clarke's contention that the Bush administration did not do all it could have done to protect the American people from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
A Nexis search of "Richard Clarke/Fox" and "Richard Clarke/Fox News" turned up only 130 stories, however.
A search of Richard Clarke/Chris Shays and Richard Clarke/Christopher Shays turned up 10 stories.
And a search for Richard Clarke/Fox/Chris Shays turned up only 2 stories.
The two-day search of the Nexis news database was conducted at 7:10 a.m. EST Friday.
Fox News on Wednesday, with the White House's permission, released a transcript of an August 2002 White House background briefing, at which Clarke described the handover of intelligence from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.
"There was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration," Clarke told reporters in August 2002.
Clarke also said the Bush administration, in its first eight months in office, adopted a "new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda." He said the Bush administration ordered a five-fold increase in money for covert action before Sept. 11, 2001.
And Clarke told reporters that in March 2001, months before the 9/11 attacks, that President Bush had directed his staff to "stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem," that problem being how to deal with al-Qaida.
On Wednesday, in his testimony before the 9/11 commission, Clarke seemed to contradict what he said at the August 2002 background briefing: "[M]y impression was that fighting terrorism in general and fighting al-Qaida, in particular, was an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration. Certainly, there was no higher priority," Clarke said on Wednesday.
He also testified on Wednesday that terrorism was "an important issue but not an urgent issue" for the Bush administration.
In a letter to the 9/11 commission on Wednesday, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., told panel members that "Clarke was part of the problem before Sept. 11 because he took too narrow a view of the terrorism threat."
Shays said that before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a House panel held 20 hearings and two formal briefings on terrorism - and Clarke "was of little help in our oversight."
"When he briefed the subcommittee, his answers were both evasive and derisive," Shays said in his March 24, 2004 letter.
Shays noted that "no truly national strategy to combat terrorism was ever produced during Mr. Clarke's tenure."
http://www.cnsnews.com/pdf/2004/911commissionLetter.pdf
Shays also released a copy of a letter he wrote to Clarke on July 5, 2000, telling Clarke that Shays' subcommittee found the information Clarke had given them "less than useful," and asking him to answer additional questions.
And Shays released a Jan. 22, 2001 letter he wrote to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice complaining that Clarke had not answered the subcommittee's questions. "During a briefing to this Subcommittee, Mr. Clarke stated that there is no need for a national strategy," Shays wrote to Rice.
"This Subcommittee, and others, disagree with Mr. Clarke's assessment that U.S. government agencies do not require a planning and preparation document to respond to terrorist attacks," Shays wrote.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/3/26/91456.shtml
Friday, March 26, 2004
Sen. Frist Probes 'Appalling' Clarke for Perjury
Did Richard Clarke perjure himself this week before the 9/11 commission? Congressional Republicans hope to prove so by declassifying his testimony before the House and Senate intelligence committees in July 2002.
"Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in a fiery speech today on the Senate floor.
The Tennessee Republican said that Clarke was "the only common denominator" across 10 years of terrorist attacks that began with the first attack on the World Trade Center.
He accused Clarke of "an appalling act of profiteering" by cashing in on a book that exploited insider information about the worst terrorist attacks in America's history.
And Frist accused him of making a "theatrical apology" to the families of the terrorist victims before his testimony Wednesday, which was not "his right, his privilege or his responsibility" to do so.
"Mr. Clarke can and will answer for his own conduct, but that is all," the senator said.
He noted that Clarke's testimony in 2002 was "effusive in his praise for the actions of the Bush administration" and that Clarke had praised the administration's successes to reporters in 2002.
Though Clarke has tried to play down his earlier praise of Bush, Frist said, "Loyalty to any administration will be no defense if it is found that he has lied to Congress."
The Associated Press reported today, "No immediate information was available on how the declassification process works, but one GOP aide said the CIA and perhaps the White House would play a role in determining whether to make the testimony public."
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan took a separate jab at Clarke today. "With every new assertion he makes, every revision of his past comments, he only further undermines his credibility."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,565974,00.html
Dude...You're getting different news than me. Rice is scrambling to rebutt Clarke's testimony but still REFUSES to do it under oath. I'll go with the guy who has faith in what hes saying...You and Gonz should keep looking for the WMDs...
