Mr. Clarke

For a quarter-century there has been a consensus in the Senate that the [intelligence] committee's nonpartisan tradition must be carefully safeguarded. Nothing else is acceptable. Why? Because this committee deals with information that is unique, that is privileged information, because of the dangerous and sensitive nature of the subject matter for which the Intelligence Committee ... has unique oversight.


Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
As quoted by Insight Magazine
December 10, 2003

 

Anti-Bush books continue to sell

NEW YORK (AP) — Newsmaking allegations, White House rebuttals and a ready audience for anti-Bush books have helped make Richard A. Clarke's Against All Enemies a big best seller, publishing officials say.

Against All Enemies, released Monday, had an announced first printing of 300,000 copies and an additional 100,000 already have been ordered, according to the Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Clarke, a former anti-terrorism adviser, alleges that President Bush was so preoccupied with Iraq both before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that he failed to effectively confront threats from the al-Qaeda terror network.

"It's blowing out at our stores," says Bob Wietrak, a vice president of merchandising at Barnes & Noble, Inc. "There has been phenomenal publicity. The book has been talked about on every talk show and every news show you can think of. Also, he's an authority. He was there."

Clarke resigned his White House job 13 months ago, after holding senior posts under former Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton. He has appeared on 60 Minutes and Good Morning America and is scheduled to do other television interviews.

The Bush administration has accused Clarke of inaccuracies and election-year posturing. Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice are among the officials who have criticized Clarke.

"I fundamentally disagree with his assessment both of recent history, but also in terms of how to deal with the problem" of global terrorism, Cheney said Monday.

Wietrak says the White House criticisms have only helped the book. Against All Enemies was ranked No. 1 on Amazon.com's list of best sellers as of Tuesday afternoon and has raised sales for other works attacking Bush, including Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty and Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty, a collaboration with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

Anti-Bush books have been popular since last fall, when liberal pundits Al Franken, Joe Conason and Molly Ivins were among those with best sellers. Now the best sellers are being written by historians such as Phillips and former Bush officials such as Clarke.

"You needed to have enough time go by so these more substantial books could have been written. The O'Neill and Clarke books could not have been written any sooner," says Neil Nyren, publisher and editor-in-chief of Putnam, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), which published Franken last fall and the Phillips book this winter.

"Conservative books still sell, but liberals are in the same place where conservatives were during the Clinton administration. They're not in power and they have extremely strong feelings about Bush."

Books unfavorable to Bush will continue coming out, including Worse Than Watergate, by John W. Dean, a former aide to President Nixon, and The Politics of Truth, by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who has criticized the White House's uses of intelligence before the Iraq war.

This fall, a book on the Bush family is due from Kitty Kelley, known for her gossipy best sellers about Nancy Reagan and Frank Sinatra. Former President Clinton's autobiography is also expected some time this year.

"For the past three years, current events and political science books have had double digit increases at our stores," Wietrak says. "People since the 2000 election, from both sides, have been preparing for this 2004 election. There hasn't been a lull."

 

Via Josh Marshall...
_____________________
Maybe Richard Clarke lied in the July 2002 testimony. Maybe he's an al Qaida mole. Maybe instead of being 98% water like the rest of us he's 98% wax. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe ...

Earlier this afternoon I wrote a lengthy post (a few too many typos in the first iteration, for which I apologize, but I thought time was of the essence) on the shameless and I suspect (for himself) eventually quite damaging speech Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist gave on the Senate floor this afternoon, accusing Dick Clarke of being a perjuror and a profiteer on the blood of 9/11.

Though I didn't see it, I read it. And it's a truly egregious text. To have read it on the Senate floor is the sort of act that will, I think, permanently change how I see him. In any case, see the post below for more details and we'll be discussing it more later. But look at this short passage in a story tonight on MSNBC ...

“Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath,” Frist said in a speech from the Senate floor, alleging that Clarke said in 2002 that the Bush administration actively sought to address the threat posed by al-Qaida before the attacks.

Frist later retreated from directly accusing Clarke of perjury, telling reporters that he personally had no knowledge that there were any discrepancies between Clarke’s two appearances. But he said, “Until you have him under oath both times, you don’t know.”

That's astonishing.

I never cease to be amazed at these guys' ability to outpace my ability to impute bad faith to them.

A few hours after accusing Clarke of perjury, he admits that he has no idea -- not just no idea whether he perjured himself, which is a fairly technical question, but no idea whether there were any inconsistencies at all.

He was just running it up the flag pole. Maybe, maybe, maybe ...

As long as we're talking about it, let me share with you some highlights from Frist's speech ...

I am equally troubled that someone would sell a book, trading on their former service as a government insider with access to our nation’s most valuable intelligence, in order to profit from the suffering that this nation endured on September 11, 2001.
...

Mr. President, I do not know if Mr. Clarke’s motive for theses charges is partisan gain, personal profit, self promotion, or animus because of his failure to win a promotion in the Bush Administration. But the one thing that his motive could not possibly be is to bring clarity to the issue of how we avoid future September 11 attacks.

...

Third, Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath. In July 2002, in front of the Congressional Joint Inquiry on the September 11 attacks, Mr. Clarke testified under oath that the Administration actively sought to address the threat posed by al Qaeda during its first seven months in office.

Mr. President, it is one thing for Mr. Clarke to dissemble in front of the media. But if he lied under oath to the United States Congress it is a far more serious matter. As I mentioned, the intelligence committee is seeking to have Mr. Clarke’s previous testimony declassified so as to permit an examination of Mr. Clarke's two different accounts. Loyalty to any Administration will be no defense if it is found that he has lied before Congress.

...

In his appearance before the 9-11 Commission, Mr. Clarke’s theatrical apology on behalf of the nation was not his right, his privilege or his responsibility. In my view it was not an act of humility, but an act of supreme arrogance and manipulation. Mr Clarke can and will answer for his own conduct – but that is all.

Regardless of Mr. Clarke’s motive or what he says or implies in his new book, the fact remains that this terrible attack was not caused by the United States Government. No Administration was responsible for the attack. Our nation did not invite the attack.

Amazing stuff.

And speaking of amazing stuff, note this ...

If you recall last Sunday night's 60 Minutes, in which Clark first made his claims, Deputy National Security Advisor Steve Hadley essentially accused Clarke of lying about an alleged encounter between Clarke and President Bush just after 9/11. In this encounter, the president supposedly pressed Clarke to investigate Saddam's possible ties to the attacks.

Hadley was quickly tripped up by the fact that CBS had two sources who confirmed that the encounter had occurred, including one who was in fact present during the discussion.

The White House has kept calling Clarke a liar until today. From CBS this evening ...

Retracted White House statements do little to boost public trust. CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports, until today, the Bush administration denied a meeting had taken place between the president and Clarke, during which Bush allegedly instructed Clarke to investigate Saddam Hussein and Iraq after Sept. 11.

The White House today reversed that comment, and staff members now tell reporters, "We are not denying such a meeting took place. It probably did."

So they called him a liar. But it seems they either had no evidence or their evidence turned out to be wrong.

Now, consider this. Do you think the White House would have changed its tune if CBS didn't come up with another source?

And how about this?

My recollection is that this meeting was supposed to have been an impromptu encounter in the West Wing -- not something like an Oval Office meeting for which there would almost certainly be some sort of record. I also seem to recall that Clarke said this encounter included him and other unnamed persons.

If that's true, and the White House didn't know the identities of the other people (the unnamed persons), who else would have been able to deny that the encounter occurred except the president himself?

Others could confirm it, yes. But if Clarke and Bush were the only identified participants in the alleged encounter, and if the encounter didn't actually happen, who else but Bush himself would be able to say it didn't happen? One of the two or three other people in on this conversation which, in fact, never occurred?

Think about it.

Late Update: Several readers have noted that in Clarke's book, his description of this meeting does reference the names of two persons involved. But those may well have been the two sources who confirmed the account to CBS. If either had denied it, I have to imagine the White House would have gotten them on camera or in front of a notary public real quick. So, the question remains, what was the basis of the White House's denial that this incident occurred, if not a denial from the president?

-- Josh Marshall

 

Josh again...
______________

Through all this commotion and vitriol over Richard Clarke's 9/11 Commission testimony there is a pervading aura of the surreal. I say that because, at least in its broad outlines, little he has said is even that controversial.

I don't mean every conversation he recounts or each incident he says occurred in the White House, but the broad narrative -- for instance, the fact that the new administration did not place a high priority on transnational terrorism as a major threat to the United States, certainly not as high a priority as the previous administration.

The key, as we've noted before, was the new administration's abiding belief in the centrality of states as the actors in international affairs. That assumption not only preceded 9/11 but, perversely, survived it.

As we'll discuss in much greater depth in the future, the hidebound unwillingness to rethink that assumption after the 9/11 attacks is at the root of most of our greatest mistakes and strategic failures over the last two and a half years.

But, again, that's for another post.

Let me note an example.

At the beginning of 2000, Condi Rice wrote an article in Foreign Affairs outlining the sort of foreign and national security policy America should pursue. It was published as part of the journal's treatment of the 2000 election and in the article Rice was identified as one of then-candidate George W. Bush's foreign policy advisors. The article was intended to be a quasi-official statement of Bush's policies for the foreign policy elite -- the folks who read Foreign Affairs.

I read the piece at the time, or near after, and it was certainly very widely read by people in the foreign policy community.

I mention it now because this evening a reader reminded me of it and brought a now-pertinent fact to my attention. In the article Rice notes five key foreign policy priorities. Only the last made any mention of terrrorism and it was: "to deal decisively with the threat of rogue regimes and hostile powers, which is increasingly taking the forms of the potential for terrorism and the development of weapons of mass destruction."

Her article then elaborates on each of the five priorities and takes up the fifth toward the end of the piece.

It's well worth linking through and reading.

Not only does she not mention al Qaida or Osama bin Laden, she scarcely even mentions terrorism in the sense we now generally understand it. Her discussion is about North Korea, Iraq and Iran -- rogue states that might threaten the US with weapons of mass destruction (primarily with the use of missiles) -- and, to a much lesser extent, state-sponsored terrorism from Iran.

The key policy prescription for this section is contained in this paragraph ...

One thing is clear: the United States must approach regimes like North Korea resolutely and decisively. The Clinton administration has failed here, sometimes threatening to use force and then backing down, as it often has with Iraq. These regimes are living on borrowed time, so there need be no sense of panic about them. Rather, the first line of defense should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence -- if they do acquire WMD, their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration. Second, we should accelerate efforts to defend against these weapons. This is the most important reason to deploy national and theater missile defenses as soon as possible, to focus attention on U.S. homeland defenses against chemical and biological agents, and to expand intelligence capabilities against terrorism of all kinds.

The central policy recommendation is national missile defense -- a defensive capacity aimed at states. And though there is mention of chemical and biological agents and the need to "expand intelligence capabilities against terrorism of all kinds" even a quick read of the entire section shows clearly that ideologically-based transnational terrorism simply wasn't on her radar as a significant threat to the United States.

There's no mention of Afghanistan or the madrassas in Pakistan, the importance of knocking down terrorist financial networks, Islamist sleeper cells in American or Germany. None of it.

Rice's own words from 2000 provide a lot of back-up for one of the major arguments for which Clarke is now being villified by Rice and her allies.

-- Josh Marshall

 

Anyone see Clarke on Meet The Press? He was a machine... spraying singles and doubles to all fields. Also had some good triples slapping Krauthammer around and saying Bush shouls only apologize if he thinks he's at fault in some way. Knocked a couple out of the park when he brought out Bush's Thank You note and busted Timmy big time on the book profits.

Condi's on 60 Minutes tonight... I'm going to go ahead and predict that it will be a tactical mistake for the White House.

Clarke gets to respond to Condi on Hardline and The Daily Show this week.

 

Paraphrasing Rice on 60 Minutes...

"We have yet to find an example of a sitting National Security Adviser testifying before Congress about policy."

What?!!!!

paraphrasing Ed Bradley...

"The Chairman of the JCS says that you put terrorism on the back burner.

The Secretary of Treasury says it was not a priority.

The NSC Director of Counter-Terrorism says it was not a priority.

The President himself, according to Bob Woodward, says he did not feel a sense of urgency."

Rice's paraphrased answer...

"Ed....I don't know what we could have done differently if we had had a sense of urgency."

What?!!!

Otherwise, she didn't do half-bad.

 

Josh again (he's all over this)...
_______________

Department of threading it awfully fine.

From tonight's 60 Minutes interview ...

ED BRADLEY: The secretary of state, defense, the director of the CIA, have all testified in public under oath before the commission. If - if you can talk to us and other news programs, why can't you talk to the commission in public and under oath?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify. I would really like to do that. But there is an important principle here ... it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress.

ED BRADLEY: But there are some people who look at this and say, "But this - this was an unprecedented event. Nothing like this ever happened to this country before. And this is an occasion where you can put that executive privilege aside. It's a big enough issue to talk in public."

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: It is an unprecedented event. We've said that many, many times. But this commission is rightly not concentrating on what happened on the day of September 11.. So, this is not a matter of what happened on that day, as extraordinary as it is - as it was. This is a matter of policy. And we have yet to find an example of a national security advisor, sitting national security advisor, who has - been willing to testify on matters of policy.

To call this explanation tortured is to give human rights abusers a bad name.

Look again at these last two sentences of Rice's flagrantly bogus argument: "This is a matter of policy. And we have yet to find an example of a national security advisor, sitting national security advisor, who has - been willing to testify on matters of policy."

Each word of these two sentences was chosen to fit an unhelpful set of facts.

Sandy Berger twice testified in 1990s -- once in 1994 on Haiti and then again in 1997 during the Asian campaign contribution hearings. In 1994 though, Berger was Deputy National Security Advisor. Constitutionally, it's not at all clear to me why a Deputy National Security Advisor should be more obliged to testify before congress than his boss. But that's their out in this case.

Then in 1997, when he was NSC Director, he was testifying in the course of an investigation into a scandal -- but certainly one with policy implications, since I'm pretty sure what they were asking him about was whether money affected policy. Why this is a constitutionally significant distinction is lost on me too. But again, that's their out -- it wasn't about 'policy'.

National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski testified before congress in 1980. But again, that was in the context of an investigation -- into an accusation that Billy Carter, the then-president's brother, had tried to influence the US government on behalf of Libya.

But, again, that's not 'policy'. So apparently by Rice's standard, it doesn't count.

I think there's a growing realization in Washington this weekend that Rice is going to testify, whether she realizes it yet or not. Among several reasons why is the fact that her rationales for not testifying are just becoming more and more visibly bogus, drawing tortured distinctions of no clear constitutional import.

She might just as easily have argued that they have found no record of a National Security Advisor named Rice testifying before congress, or a female NSC Director testifying, or one who served under a Republican president. Each would have made about as much sense. And on top of this you have the fact that the separation of powers argument is questionable at best because the commission itself is not an arm of congress.

-- Josh Marshall

 

By the way, given Clarke's performance so far and his obvious interest in cyber-security, is anyone besides me thinking about printing everything out and stuffing dollars in the mattress?

 

Clarke masterfully sums up the case for the WOT does not equal Iraq side...
________________
MR. RUSSERT: Why do you think the Iraq war has undermined the war on terrorism?

MR. CLARKE: Well, I think it's obvious, but there are three major reasons. Who are we fighting in the war on terrorism? We're fighting Islamic radicals and they are drawing people from the youth of the Islamic world into hating us. Now, after September 11, people in the Islamic world said, "Wait a minute. Maybe we've gone too far here. Maybe this Islamic movement, this radical movement, has to be suppressed," and we had a moment, we had a window of opportunity, where we could change the ideology in the Islamic world. Instead, we've inflamed the ideology. We've played right into the hands of al-Qaeda and others. We've done what Osama bin Laden said we would do.

Ninety percent of the Islamic people in Morocco, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, allied countries to the United States--90 percent in polls taken last month hate the United States. It's very hard when that's the game where 90 percent of the Arab people hate us. It's very hard for us to win the battle of ideas. We can arrest them. We can kill them. But as Don Rumsfeld said in the memo that leaked from the Pentagon, I'm afraid that they're generating more ideological radicals against us than we are arresting them and killing them. They're producing more faster than we are.

The president of Egypt said, "If you invade Iraq, you will create a hundred bin Ladens." He lives in the Arab world. He knows. It's turned out to be true. It is now much more difficult for us to win the battle of ideas as well as arresting and killing them, and we're going to face a second generation of al-Qaeda. We're going to catch bin Laden. I have no doubt about that. In the next few months, he'll be found dead or alive. But it's two years too late because during those two years, al-Qaeda has morphed into a hydra-headed organization, independent cells like the organization that did the attack in Madrid.

And that's the second reason. The attack in Madrid showed the vulnerabilities of the rails in Spain. We have all sorts of vulnerabilities in our country, chemical plants, railroads. We've done a very good job on passenger aircraft now, but there are all these other vulnerabilities that require enormous amount of money to reduce those vulnerabilities, and we're not doing that.

MR. RUSSERT: And three?

MR. CLARKE: And three is that we actually diverted military resources and intelligence resources from Afghanistan and from the hunt for bin Laden to the war in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: But Saddam is gone and that's a good thing?

MR. CLARKE: Saddam is gone is a good thing. If Fidel were gone, it would be a good thing. If Kim Il Sung were gone, it would be a good thing. And let's just make clear, our military performed admirably and they are heroes, but what price are we paying for this war on Iraq?

 

I would say so... For the life of me I don't understand (sigh, yes, I do) why they went nuclear on him right away when the prudent defense would be... "We did some things but frankly it was not a priority... nothing was in the press, Gore didn't mention it during his campaign... 9-11 was a wake-up call for us and the rest of the world... Clarke's right in a sense, but he overemphasizes it because it was his responsibility..." Then make your point about Iraq being central to the WOT.
__________________

Clarke Charges on Bush Seem to Have Sticking Power
Mon Mar 29, 2004 12:32 PM ET


By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House may have mishandled accusations leveled by their former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke by attacking his credibility, keeping the controversy firmly in the headlines into a second week, political analysts said.

Clarke's charge that the Bush administration did not regard the threat posed by the al Qaeda organization as an urgent matter in the run-up to Sept. 11, 2001, has been superseded by a secondary issue of whether National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice should testify under oath before the national commission investigating that day's attacks.

"The administration's attempts to discredit Clarke have backfired. They have merely given the story legs and hurt the administration. The issue of whether Rice should testify should keep the story alive for several more news cycles," said University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape.

"The Bush administration and its allies have certainly not helped the story go away," said Howard Opinsky, a Republican operative who ran media relations for Arizona Sen. John McCain during his 2000 presidential bid.

"Instead, they adopted the risky strategy of trying to refute his charges, which makes it appear that they have something to hide," he said.

Clarke accuses Bush, who is running for re-election on his record of fighting terrorism, of being obsessed with ousting Iraq's President Saddam Hussein at the expense of fully focusing on the war against terrorism.

The White House at first questioned an assertion by Clarke that President Bush asked him immediately after Sept. 11 to investigate whether Saddam was involved but on Sunday it confirmed that the conversation had taken place.

When Republicans said they would seek to declassify testimony Clarke gave to Congress in July 2002 to demonstrate differences to what he is saying now, Clarke told them to go ahead. If that occurs, the issue will remain in the headlines even longer.

BUSH HURT

Polls have shown that 90 percent of U.S. voters were following the issue and that it was beginning to hurt Bush. A Newsweek poll released on Sunday found that 57 percent of voters approved of the way he had handled terrorism and homeland security, down from 70 percent two months ago.

But two thirds said Clarke's testimony had not influenced their overall view of Bush. Half said they thought Clarke was acting for personal and political reasons.

Looming over the summer is the commission's final report, due to be delivered in late July, when the presidential campaign will be at fever pitch.

Pressure for Rice to testify in public has come from family members of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks as well as members of the commission, including all five Republican members.

Rice has said she would like to testify but had to respect the precedent that national security advisers do not testify under oath before Congress as this could inhibit their ability to give candid advice to the president. She has spent four hours answering commissioners' questions in private.

Republican political consultant Scott Reed said the administration had succeeded in discrediting Clarke's motives to some extent. But the issue of Rice testifying was continuing to hurt the White House since many Americans wanted to hear what she had to say.

"It's hurting Bush politically," he said.

Opinsky said the White House needed to change the subject and begin talking about what it has done since September 2001 and what it is doing now to make Americans safer.

"There isn't a good way for them to spin this story. They need to get beyond it," he said.

 

The WH is starting a whispering campaign that Clarke is gay... if he is, I wonder if he's the only one.