Clarke lies in his book, Fox News reports today!

[Sparrowhawk]

Transcript: Clarke Praises Bush Team in '02

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

WASHINGTON — The following transcript documents a background briefing in early August 2002 by President Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke to a handful of reporters, including Fox News' Jim Angle. In the conversation, cleared by the White House on Wednesday for distribution, Clarke describes the handover of intelligence from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration and the latter's decision to revise the U.S. approach to Al Qaeda. Clarke was named special adviser to the president for cyberspace security in October 2001. He resigned from his post in January 2003.



RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.

Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office — issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy -- uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.

And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, mid-January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we've now made public to some extent.

And the point is, while this big review was going on, there were still in effect, the lethal findings were still in effect. The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided.

So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.

The sixth point, the newly-appointed deputies — and you had to remember, the deputies didn't get into office until late March, early April. The deputies then tasked the development of the implementation details, uh, of these new decisions that they were endorsing, and sending out to the principals.

Over the course of the summer — last point — they developed implementation details, the principals met at the end of the summer, approved them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance.

And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course [of] five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline.

QUESTION: When was that presented to the president?

CLARKE: Well, the president was briefed throughout this process.

QUESTION: But when was the final September 4 document? (interrupted) Was that presented to the president?

CLARKE: The document went to the president on September 10, I think.

QUESTION: What is your response to the suggestion in the [Aug. 12, 2002] Time [magazine] article that the Bush administration was unwilling to take on board the suggestions made in the Clinton administration because of animus against the — general animus against the foreign policy?

CLARKE: I think if there was a general animus that clouded their vision, they might not have kept the same guy dealing with terrorism issue. This is the one issue where the National Security Council leadership decided continuity was important and kept the same guy around, the same team in place. That doesn't sound like animus against uh the previous team to me.

JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?

CLARKE: All of that's correct.

ANGLE: OK.

QUESTION: Are you saying now that there was not only a plan per se, presented by the transition team, but that it was nothing proactive that they had suggested?

CLARKE: Well, what I'm saying is, there are two things presented. One, what the existing strategy had been. And two, a series of issues — like aiding the Northern Alliance, changing Pakistan policy, changing Uzbek policy — that they had been unable to come to um, any new conclusions, um, from '98 on.

QUESTION: Was all of that from '98 on or was some of it ...

CLARKE: All of those issues were on the table from '98 on.

ANGLE: When in '98 were those presented?

CLARKE: In October of '98.

QUESTION: In response to the Embassy bombing?

CLARKE: Right, which was in September.

QUESTION: Were all of those issues part of alleged plan that was late December and the Clinton team decided not to pursue because it was too close to ...

CLARKE: There was never a plan, Andrea. What there was was these two things: One, a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat. And two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years, and which were still on the table.

QUESTION: So there was nothing that developed, no documents or no new plan of any sort?

CLARKE: There was no new plan.

QUESTION: No new strategy — I mean, I don't want to get into a semantics ...

CLARKE: Plan, strategy — there was no, nothing new.

QUESTION: 'Til late December, developing ...

CLARKE: What happened at the end of December was that the Clinton administration NSC principals committee met and once again looked at the strategy, and once again looked at the issues that they had brought, decided in the past to add to the strategy. But they did not at that point make any recommendations.

QUESTIONS: Had those issues evolved at all from October of '98 'til December of 2000?

CLARKE: Had they evolved? Um, not appreciably.

ANGLE: What was the problem? Why was it so difficult for the Clinton administration to make decisions on those issues?

CLARKE: Because they were tough issues. You know, take, for example, aiding the Northern Alliance. Um, people in the Northern Alliance had a, sort of bad track record. There were questions about the government, there were questions about drug-running, there was questions about whether or not in fact they would use the additional aid to go after Al Qaeda or not. Uh, and how would you stage a major new push in Uzbekistan or somebody else or Pakistan to cooperate?

One of the big problems was that Pakistan at the time was aiding the other side, was aiding the Taliban. And so, this would put, if we started aiding the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, this would have put us directly in opposition to the Pakistani government. These are not easy decisions.

ANGLE: And none of that really changed until we were attacked and then it was ...

CLARKE: No, that's not true. In the spring, the Bush administration changed — began to change Pakistani policy, um, by a dialogue that said we would be willing to lift sanctions. So we began to offer carrots, which made it possible for the Pakistanis, I think, to begin to realize that they could go down another path, which was to join us and to break away from the Taliban. So that's really how it started.

QUESTION: Had the Clinton administration in any of its work on this issue, in any of the findings or anything else, prepared for a call for the use of ground forces, special operations forces in any way? What did the Bush administration do with that if they had?

CLARKE: There was never a plan in the Clinton administration to use ground forces. The military was asked at a couple of points in the Clinton administration to think about it. Um, and they always came back and said it was not a good idea. There was never a plan to do that.

[Sparrowhawk]

(Break in briefing details as reporters and Clarke go back and forth on how to source quotes from this backgrounder.)

ANGLE: So, just to finish up if we could then, so what you're saying is that there was no — one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the spring months just after the administration came into office?

CLARKE: You got it. That's right.

QUESTION: It was not put into an action plan until September 4, signed off by the principals?

CLARKE: That's right.

QUESTION: I want to add though, that NSPD — the actual work on it began in early April.

CLARKE: There was a lot of in the first three NSPDs that were being worked in parallel.

ANGLE: Now the five-fold increase for the money in covert operations against Al Qaeda — did that actually go into effect when it was decided or was that a decision that happened in the next budget year or something?

CLARKE: Well, it was gonna go into effect in October, which was the next budget year, so it was a month away.

QUESTION: That actually got into the intelligence budget?

CLARKE: Yes it did.

QUESTION: Just to clarify, did that come up in April or later?

CLARKE: No, it came up in April and it was approved in principle and then went through the summer. And you know, the other thing to bear in mind is the shift from the rollback strategy to the elimination strategy. When President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that changed the NSPD from one of rollback to one of elimination.

QUESTION: Well can you clarify something? I've been told that he gave that direction at the end of May. Is that not correct?

CLARKE: No, it was March.

QUESTION: The elimination of Al Qaeda, get back to ground troops — now we haven't completely done that even with a substantial number of ground troops in Afghanistan. Was there, was the Bush administration contemplating without the provocation of September 11th moving troops into Afghanistan prior to that to go after Al Qaeda?

CLARKE: I can not try to speculate on that point. I don't know what we would have done.

QUESTION: In your judgment, is it possible to eliminate Al Qaeda without putting troops on the ground?

CLARKE: Uh, yeah, I think it was. I think it was. If we'd had Pakistani, Uzbek and Northern Alliance assistance.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115085,00.html

[Sparrowhawk]

Clarke told, by member of the 9-11 commission, during today's hearing.

[MillRatUSMC]

SparrowHawk that Clark with an "e" as in Clarke...
When I read Clark, I thought General Clark U.S Army.
He was running for President, till John Forbes Kerry won too many states.
So he drop out of the race...
Wonder why they call it a race, when there will be only one front runner at the end...

"A man or woman is measured
by the footprint,
he or she leaves behind"

"They were the best you had, America,
and you turned your back on them".
~ Joe Galloway ~ Speaking about Vietnam Veterans

“Marines have always been physically and mentally tough.
We must keep squarely in our sights,
the fact that toughness can be decisive in combat.”
~ General Charles C. Krulak ~
31st Commandment of the Marine Corps

TO THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES
THAT OTHERS MAY SAY PROUDLY
I AM A MARINE

Semper Fidelis
Ricardo

PS It might be a lot to do about nothing but I thought I would clear, who we were talking about....

[Sparrowhawk]

fixed it.

[Sparrowhawk]

COMMENTARY <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Very Awkward Facts <br />
<br />
By LAURIE MYLROIE <br />
April 2, 2004; Page A8

[Sparrowhawk]

He comes not to praise Bill, but to bury George
MARK STEYN
Jerusalem Post - Israel; Mar 31, 2004



In January 2002, the Enron scandal broke and the media turned their attention to the critical question: How can we pin this on Bush? As I wrote that first weekend: "Short answer: You can't."

So Enron retreated to the business pages, and, after a while, the media and the Democrats came up with an even better wheeze: How can we pin 9/11 on Bush? Same answer: You can't.

But that doesn't stop them every month or so from taking a wild ride on defective vehicles for their crazy scheme. The latest is a mid-level bureaucrat called Richard Clarke, and by the time you read this his 15 minutes should be just about up.

Clarke was Bill Clinton's terrorism guy for eight years and George W. Bush's for a somewhat briefer period, and he's now written a book called If Only They'd Listened To Me - whoops, sorry, that should be Against All Enemies: Inside The White House's War On Terror - What Really Happened (Because They Didn't Listen To Me).

Having served both the 42nd and 43rd presidents, Clarke was supposed to be the most authoritative proponent to advance the Democrats' agreed timeline of the last decade - to whit, from January 1993 to January 2001, Bill Clinton focused like a laser on crafting a brilliant plan to destroy al-Qaida, but, alas, just as he'd dotted every "i," crossed every "t" and sent the intern to the photocopier, his eight years was up, so Bill gave it to the new guy as he was showing him the Oval Office - "That carpet under the desk could use replacing, but I've covered up the worn patch with my beautifully double-spaced brilliant plan to destroy al-Qaida, which you guys really need to implement right away."

The details of the brilliant plan need not concern us, which is just as well, as there aren't any. But the broader point, as The New York Times noted, is that "there was at least no question about the Clinton administration's commitment to combat terrorism."

Yessir, for eight years the Clinton administration was relentless in its commitment: no sooner did Islamists bomb the World Trade Center first time round, or blow up an American embassy, or a barracks, or a warship, or turn an entire nation into a terrorist training camp, than the Clinton team would redouble their determination to sit down and talk through the options for a couple more years.

THEN BUSH took over and suddenly the superbly successful fight against terror all went to hell.

Richard Clarke was supposed to be the expert who could make this argument with a straight face. And, indeed, his week started well.

The media were very taken by this passage from his book, in which he alerts Bush's incoming national security adviser to the terrorist threat: "As I briefed Rice on Al- Qaida, her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard of the term before, so I added, 'Most people think of it as Osama bin Laden's group, but it's much more than that. It's a network of affiliated terrorist organizations with cells in over 50 countries, including the US.'"

Clarke would seem to be channeling Leslie Neilsen's deadpan doctor in Airplane!: "Stewardess, we need to get this passenger to a hospital."

"A hospital? What is it?"

"It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now."

As it turns out, Clarke's ability to read "facial expressions" is not as reliable as one might wish in a "counterterrorism expert."

In October the previous year, Rice gave an interview to WJR Radio in Detroit in which she discoursed authoritatively on al-Qaida and bin Laden - and without ever having met Richard Clarke! I don't know how good Clarke was at counterterrorism, but as a media performer he's a total dummy.

He seemed to think he could claim the lucrative star role of Lead Bush Basher without anybody noticing the huge paper trail of statements he's left contradicting the argument in his book. The reality is that there's a Richard Clarke for everyone.

If you're like me and reckon there was an Islamist angle to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, then Clarke's your guy: He supports the theory that al-Qaida operatives in the Philippines "taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building."

On the other hand, if you're one of those Michael Moore-type conspirazoids who wants to know why Bush let his cronies in the House of Saud and the bin Laden family sneak out of America on 9/11, then Clarke's also your guy: He's the official who gave the go-ahead for the bigshot Saudis with the embarrassing surnames to be hustled out of the country before they could be questioned by anyone.

Does this mean Clarke is Enron - an equal-opportunity scandal whose explicitly political aspects are too ambiguous to offer crude party advantage? Not quite.

Although his book sets out to praise Clinton and bury Bush, he can't quite pull it off.

Except for his suggestion to send in a team of "ninjas" to take out Osama, Clinton had virtually no interest in the subject. In October 2000, Clarke and Special Forces Colonel Mike Sheehan leave the White House after a meeting to discuss al-Qaida's attack on the USS Cole: "'What's it gonna take, Dick?' Sheehan demanded. 'Who the **** do they think attacked the Cole, ****in' Martians? The Pentagon brass won't let Delta go get bin Laden - Does al-Qaida have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?'" Apparently so.

The attack on the Cole, which killed 17 US sailors, was deemed by Clinton defense secretary Bill Cohen as "not sufficiently provocative" to warrant a response. For eight years, Osama couldn't get the administration's attention.

In September 2001, he finally succeeded. And now the same people who claim Bush had no right to be "preemptive" about Iraq insist he should have been about 9/11.

As for Clarke's beef with Bush, that's simple. For eight years he'd pottered away on the terrorism brief undisturbed. The new president took it away from him and adopted the strategy outlined by Condoleezza Rice in that Detroit radio interview, months before the self-regarding Clarke claims he brought her up to speed on who bin Laden was: "We really need a stronger policy of holding the states accountable that support him," Rice told WJR. "Terrorists who are just operating out there without basis and without state support are a lot less dangerous than ones that find safe haven, as bin Laden does sometimes in places like Afghanistan or Sudan."

Just so. In the Nineties, when al-Qaida blew up American targets abroad, the FBI would fly in and work it as a crime scene - like a liquor-store hold-up in Cleveland. It doesn't address the problem. Sure, there are millions of disaffected young Muslim men, but, if they get the urge to blow up infidels, they need training and organization. Somehow all those British Taliban knew that if you wanted a quick course in jihad studies Afghanistan was the place to go.

Bush got it right: Go to where the terrorists are, overthrow their sponsoring regimes, destroy their camps, kill their leaders.

Instead, all the Islamists who went to Afghanistan in the Nineties graduated from Camp Osama and were dispersed throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, where they lurk to this day.

That's the Clarke-Clinton legacy. And, if it were mine, I wouldn't be going around boasting about it.