Posted on 03/21/2004 3:38:55 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former White House anti-terrorism adviser has accused President Bush of ignoring terrorism threats before the Sept. 11 attacks and of making America less safe.
Richard Clarke, Bush's top official on counter-terrorism who headed a cybersecurity board, told CBS "60 minutes" in an interview to be aired on Sunday he thought Bush had "done a terrible job on the war against terrorism."
"I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11," Clarke told CBS.
Clarke, who was an adviser to four presidents, says in a book to be published next week that the Bush administration should have taken out al Qaeda and its training camps in Afghanistan long before the attacks of Sept. 11, for which the militant network was blamed.
"I think the way he has responded to al Qaeda, both before 9/11 by doing nothing, and by what he's done after 9/11, has made us less safe," Clarke told CBS.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the Bush administration followed former President Bill Clinton's policy on al Qaeda until it had developed its own terrorism strategy.
In a transcript of a NBC News interview, made available by the White House on Saturday, Rice said terrorism was a high priority for Bush from the outset of his term.
"We did pursue the Clinton administration policy and pursued it actively, until we could get in a place a more comprehensive policy -- not to roll back al Qaeda -- but to eliminate al Qaeda," Rice said.
She said Bush had only been in office 230 days when the Sept. 11 attacks happened.
"Even if we had been able to do it in 190 days, or 150 days, it was a policy that our counterterrorism people told us was going to eliminate al Qaeda over three to five years," she said. "This was not something that was going to stop September 11th."
Asked why the government did not retaliate after intelligence in Spring 2001 showed al Qaeda was behind the bombing of the USS Cole warship in Yemen, Rice said:
"We were concerned that we didn't have good military options, that really all we had were options like using cruise missiles to go after training camps that had long been abandoned and that it might have just the opposite effect, it might, in fact embolden the terrorists, not frighten them, or not think that they were being taken seriously."
CBS said Clarke asserts in his book, "Against All Enemies," that Bush ignored ominous intelligence "chatter" in 2001 about possible terror attacks, but Bush's National Security counsel, Stephen Hadley, said Bush did hear those warnings and was impatient for intelligence chiefs to develop a new strategy to eliminate al Qaeda. "All the chatter was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas. But interestingly enough, the president got concerned about whether there was the possibility of an attack on the homeland," Hadley told CBS.
He said "the president put us on battle stations. He asked the intelligence community: 'Look hard. See if we're missing something about a threat to the homeland."'
Clarke, who left his position in February 2003 after 30 years in government service when the White House transferred functions of the cybersecurity board to Homeland Security, said Bush's decision to invade Iraq had strengthened terror groups.
In other words, he's not "Bush's top official on counter-terrorism" ...
...Clarke, who left his position in February 2003 after 30 years in government service
That explains a lot... another useless 70s bureaucrat.
(snip) The close collaborator with Richard Clarke -- going back to Bush I at NSC was Rand Beers -- who quit last summer in disgust, and walked down the street and volunteered his services to Kerry, where he has been ever since. Beers eventually drew Joe Wilson into the Kerry camp.
A former White House anti-terrorism adviser has accused President Bush of ignoring terrorism threats before the Sept. 11 attacks and of making America less safe.
This is called chutzpah. Clarke has been the big antiterrorism guy for 30 years. The US was attacked throughout the 90's starting with WTC I in 1993, which was followed by Riyadh in 1995, Khobar towers, our embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole in 2000.
Bush is in office for 230 days, which included a shorter than usual transition period due to the Dems trying to steal the election in Florida. It takes him months just to get his team in place, including just getting a new FBI director in September. The terrorists who carried out WTC II were already in place in the US before Bush was even sworn in.
So the guy who was the architect of the failed Clinton antiterrroism policy is now criticizing Bush for ignoriing terrorism. Unf'ing believable.
The real point of the story?
The mention of the PDB's no longer being widely circulated is the key -- meaning, many senior CIA analysts saw them in the past.
As in, the Summer of 2001 -- back when DCI Tenet was nearly frantic about the pending Al Qaeda attack, and the Bush White House got tired of hearing his warnings.
The purpose of this article is to lay down a marker for the 9/11 comission -- if the 2001 PDB's are whitewashed, the originals will somehow find a way to be leaked to the press.
I've read that Richard Clarke gave the 8/6/01 PDB at the Crawford Ranch, and that George Tenet is the normal briefer.
We need to call Walter Pincus and Barton Gellman, to suggest they work together on a story -- in anticipation of the Richard Clarke book.
(* Note by piasa : If this is true, and it's a big if given the source, why wasn't Tenet there? Was it a preaarranged McAuliffe appointment of Clarke a setup to give Clarke more credibility later on? After all, truthout.org, one of the instigating websites in the Joe Wilson 'saga,' was registered on 9/10/01, a day before the 9/11 attacks. Note also the last paragraph about Walter Pincus- a prominent pusher of the Joe Wilson tale on Niger and a person married to someone in government to boot. Also note Gellman- I believe Gellman is a Wash Post writer who put out the false story on aluminum tubing, Dr. Kay and the Australian General Meekin, attributing quotes to them that were completely fabricated. Both shot back very blunt replies to the Post which were buried in the letters to the editor section after the Gellman garbage had already been published and spread.)
Ahh - another publicity stunt to announce his brand new book, "Buy it at a store near you."
It's even more than that. Viacom owns CBS, which produces 60 Minutes ... and Viacom also is the publisher of Clarke's book (and also Hillary's). Which gives Viacom a clear incentive to urge the creation of a biased book with spectacular claims (otherwise known as lies) that can be peddled in the guise of news on 60 Minutes. Don't expect to have Leslie Stahl give a disclaimer about the clear conflict of interest here.
We need to call Walter Pincus and Barton Gellman, to suggest they work together on a story -- in anticipation of the Richard Clarke book.
Barton Gellman responded with some articles on Richard Clarke:
Cybersecurity Chief Richard Clarke to Quit ... By Barton Gellman Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 13, 2003
You can't possibly expect these scum to do anything different? You'd think we'd be so used to this by now we wouldn't even acknowledge their B.S.
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