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WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Barack Obama's foreign policy advisers said Tuesday that Osama bin Laden, if captured, should be allowed to appeal his case to U.S. civilian courts, a privilege opposed by John McCain. Responding to questions from The Examiner, Sen. John Kerry and former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said bin Laden would benefit from last week's Supreme Court decision giving terrorism suspects habeas corpus, the right to appeal their military detention to civilian courts. “If he were to be brought back,” Clarke said of bin Laden, “the Supreme Court ruling holds on the right of habeas corpus.”...

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Friday he would be willing to comply with a rumored congressional subpoena to discuss the administration’s handling of pre-war intelligence, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer he’d be “glad to share my views” if asked to testify. Facing a firestorm over his book, McClellan also confirmed reports that he had apologized to Richard Clarke for questioning his honesty after the former counterterrorism official published his own book critical of the White House. “That was part of our talking points at the time. I didn’t even read the book,” McClellan admitted Friday....

Bush's War Monday, March 24 and Tuesday, March 25, 2008 9 P.M. (check local listings) From the horror of 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq; the truth about WMD to the rise of an insurgency; the scandal of Abu Ghraib to the strategy of the surge-for six years, FRONTLINE has revealed the defining stories of the war on terror in meticulous detail, and the political dramas that played out at the highest levels of power and influence. Now, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the full saga unfolds in the two-part FRONTLINE special Bush's War, airing Monday, March...

Why Bush really demoted Richard Clarke by Jack Cashill This is the fourth in a six-part series detailing the risks to American national security if Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) should ever choose to let Richard Clarke back into government. Clarke is currently one of Obama’s top national security advisors. “When George Bush came into office, though he kept Clarke on at the White House, he stripped him of his cabinet level rank.” So lamented Leslie Stahl during the March 2004 60 Minutes profile that would make Richard Clarke ace crowd surfer in the intellectual mosh pit of the anti-war...

This is the first in a five-part series detailing the risks to American national security if Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) should ever choose to let Richard Clarke back into government. Clarke is currently one of Obama’s top national security advisors. At the beginning of the campaign season, top Democratic candidates scrambled after Clinton national security veterans with almost as much urgency as the U.S. and the Soviets once pursued German rocket scientists. In either case, the winner would corner a certain market on national security expertise, a virtue in glaringly short supply among top Democratic candidates in this year’s...

You can tell the man who boozes, by the company he chooses ... and the pig got up and slowly walked away. The poem by Clarke Van Ness warns people that they will be judged by the actions of those with whom they choose to associate -- and even a pig has enough sense to walk away from disaster. Hillary Clinton has a big problem with her associates, and it's self-inflicted. Lost in the Norman Hsu shuffle, the news that Hillary has asked former Clinton national-security adviser Sandy Berger to join her campaign should cause even more questions about her...

Mohammed Warsame seen in an undated photograph. (The photograph's background has been obscured to protect the source. ABCNEWS independently confirmed that the photograph shows Warsame.) U.S. Attempt to Turn Al Qaeda Suspect Into U.S. Informant Soured by Press Leak By Pierre Thomas Feb. 13 — When a Somali-born computer student was arrested in Minneapolis last December on suspicion of helping al Qaeda, federal counterterrorism officials thought they might finally have found what they desperately need — a way of getting inside Osama bin Laden's shadowy network. The counterterrorism officials developed a plan to turn the man, Mohammed Warsame, into a...

Large teams of newly trained suicide bombers are being sent to the United States and Europe, according to evidence contained on a new videotape obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com. Teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany were introduced at an al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9. A Pakistani journalist was invited to attend and take pictures as some 300 recruits, including boys as young as 12, were supposedly sent off on their suicide missions. "These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places," Dadullah...

Does the President think terrorists are puppy dogs? He keeps saying that terrorists will "follow us home" like lost dogs. This will only happen, however, he says, if we "lose" in Iraq. The puppy dog theory is the corollary to earlier sloganeering that proved the President had never studied logic: "We are fighting terrorists in Iraq so that we will not have to face them and fight them in the streets of our own cities." Remarkably, in his attempt to embrace the failed Iraqi adventure even more than the President, Sen. John McCain is now parroting the line. "We lose...

That Oswald assassinated President Kennedy by himself and shot Kennedy and Governor Connally with one single, magic bullet. That President Clinton knew nothing about Janet Reno’s order that resulted in the massacre of 26 children at Waco, Texas. That Flight 800 was brought down by a spark in the fuel tank instead of by a missile that most of the witnesses saw.

Paul Pillar Speaks, Again The latest CIA attack on the Bush administration is nothing new. by Stephen F. Hayes 02/10/2006 4:15:00 PM IN A BREATHLESS front-page, above-the-fold article in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports that a former senior CIA official named Paul Pillar accuses the Bush administration of "misusing" intelligence to take the country to war in Iraq. According to the Post account, Pillar uses a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs to claim that the Bush administration "politicized" the intelligence on Iraq. Bush administration policymakers did this subtly, Pillar says, by repeatedly asking the CIA questions about Iraq, its...

  Could USS Cole tragedy have been avoided? October 18, 2000 By John MetzlerSPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM     UNITED NATIONS — The terrorist attack on the USS Cole (12 October 200), refueling in the port of Aden again sharply focuses the stark vulnerability of American interests in the Middle East. While it's easy to play "Monday morning quarterback" after such a tragedy, its equally prudent to question the set of circumstances which witnessed a planned suicide attack on the destroyer Cole tragically sending seventeen American sailors to their untimely deaths.   All the pieces were in place; An...

September 25, 2006 -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making "flatly false" claims that the Bush administration didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks. Rice hammered Clinton, who leveled his charges in a contentious weekend interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel, for his claims that the Bush administration "did not try" to kill Osama bin Laden in the eight months they controlled the White House before the Sept. 11 attacks. "The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false...

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. 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.

Laurie Mylroie, a noted author and middle east expert as well as 1992 Clinton campaign advisor on Iraq, evaluated the Richard Clarke book which President Clinton repeatedly and heatedly based his defense of his terror record to Chris Wallace on Fox News. Ms. Mylroie, described the Clarke book as "riddled with errors" and statues further that, "Clarke's book, Against All Enemies is, essentially, an attempt to blame the Bush administration for 9/11, while exonerating Clinton (and therefore Clarke). The reality is quite the reverse." Ms. Mylroie contends that Clarke's story "systematically distorts" key information, and she explains the central failing...

As horrified Americans watched the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, unfold on their television sets, Vice President Dick Cheney directed the U.S. government's response from an emergency bunker.

This pile of leftist propaganda has been "critically acclaimed", by rags such as NY Post, WaPo, etc. Richard Clarke puts on a performance worthy of an Oscar for Worst Actor. Clarke has been widely discredited. This "documentary" places nearly all the blame on the Bush Administration and barely touches on all the travesties of the Clinton Administration. Court TV's credibility is going off the deep end with the likes of Catherine Crier and Haunted Evidence

First, you have to frame the problem. How to orchestrate a multiple hatchet job on those men who, in a time of national fear and anxiety, stood a trembling nation back on it's feet, and said, "We will respond, and with vigor. No more swatting flies." At the same time, however, you have to find some magic way of presenting those discredited, terminated and bitter ex-employees of the agency which apparently failed in their duties to faithfully watch at the walls, but yet not expose them as bitter, disgruntled employees. Apparently, no one was supposed to notice your one-sided lineup,...

by Mark Finkelstein June 8, 2006 - 10:37. Interviewed on ABC's Good Morning America this morning, Richard Clarke - former White House advisor, turned author and bitter Bush-administration critic - scoffed at the significance of the killing of Zarqawi. GMA: "First question has to be this morning, is it any safer in Iraq and will the war end any sooner?" Clarke: "Well, unfortunately the answer is no. The man was a terrible man. He was a symbol of terrorism. He was the face of terrorism, the only real name we knew of a [terrorist] leader in Iraq. But he commanded...

The punditry world is abuzz with talk of a recent New Yorker article (no link available) by writer Jeffrey Goldberg, who has interviewed Brent Scowcroft, the former national security advisor for the Ford Administration and the Administration of George H.W. Bush. In a number of passages in the piece, Scowcroft takes on the current Bush Administration over the issue of Iraq, something for which he has earned applause from many Democrats and other Bush critics. But when one reads the entire New Yorker piece, one finds that Scowcroft's critique is directed at foreign policy idealism in general. And it's a...

If Mary O. McCarthy should ever be so desperate as to need a character witness, or to require one so badly that she must stoop to my level, I declare in advance that I shall step forward pro bono. I am quite willing to accept that whatever she did or did not do or say about the surreptitious incarceration of al-Qaida suspects overseas (and let's not prejudge this), she did it from the most exalted motives. I accept this because, however much of her hard-earned money she threw away on making a donation to the John Kerry presidential campaign, she...

RUSH: I'll tell you what, folks, if you doubt that these are treacherous times, you need to awaken. A former Clinton National Security Agency official leaking top secret information for a bunch of reasons, of course, because she disagreed with subsequent policies of an elected president but I also think that there's an ongoing effort here to cleanse the dirt in the Clinton administration to keep it secret, to keep the blame focused on George W. Bush and subsequent administrations after Clinton, and to cover up the Clinton administration incompetence. We are truly dealing with a Democratic Party that is...

Out of the societal revolution of the 1960's, and in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, many changes have taken place in the fabric of American society. Since then, the following concepts have been under attack from within: Religion in general and Christianity in particular; America's role as a beacon of hope in a cruel world; The authority of government, church and school leaders; The whole concept of duty, honor, country; The superiority of western and American culture over other cultures; The military's role in advancing and defending American interests; In the place of these concepts, people, who I will...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to America's interests than the war with Iraq, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke wrote in Sunday's New York Times. In an op-ed article co-authored with Steven Simon, a former State Department official who also worked for the National Security Council, Clarke wrote reports that the Bush administration is contemplating bombing nuclear sites in Iran raised concerns that "would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process." Iran's likely response would be to "use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the...

Although the Dubai ports controversy may be disappearing, questions linger about the role high-ranking United Arab Emirates officials played in supporting Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida in the years leading up to Sept. 11. In fact, some U.S. government reports suggest that the United States lost a clear opportunity to kill bin Laden because he was too close to U.A.E. officials traveling in his entourage – officials Clinton security adviser Richard Clarke may have thought were too important to harm. On Feb. 8, 1999, the Pentagon and the CIA were preparing a military strike on a luxury hunting camp in...

The latest in a stream of eye-opening Iraqi documents shows Saddam Hussein's regime was planning suicide attacks on U.S. interests six months before 9-11. Why won't Washington get the word out?Last month the Pentagon began releasing records captured during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Among the documents is a letter dated March 11, 2001, written by Abdel Magid Hammod Ali, one of Saddam's air force generals.According to an unofficial translation, Page 6 of the letter asks for "the names of those who desire to volunteer for suicide mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American interests." Assuming the document's accuracy, this shows...

Proving that he’s just as adept at stuffing an election candidate’s coffers as he is at stuffing his own socks, Sandy Berger hosted an "almost secret" Washington fund-raiser for a recently retired three-star vice admiral last night. Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr, as the Village People would say, is "In the Navy". And when you want to take an Able Danger Congressman Curt Weldon down, what better way than to send in the Navy? Berger, dubbed "Sandy Burglar" by radio meister Rush Limbaugh, gained notoriety for trying to stuff classified documents into his socks and other attire. The man, who...

Several members of President Bill Clinton’s national security team are hosting a Washington fund-raiser tonight for retired Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr., the Democrat running against U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon in November. Officials at Sestak’s campaign headquarters in Media will not comment on the event, though an invitation sent out to potential donors and obtained by the Daily Times lists Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger as a host. "As a general rule, campaigns don’t comment on fund-raisers or people who hold them," said Sestak’s campaign chairman, Myles Duffy. Berger, who served as Clinton’s second-term national security adviser, pleaded guilty last year...

Before President Bush gets anywhere near casting his first veto to ensure that the government of the United Arab Emirates can manage elements of six U.S. ports, someone ought to put before him pages 137-139 of “The 9/11 Commission Report.” If Bush doesn’t then cancel the UAE port deal, Congress must demand testimony from every person named in those pages and the footnotes. That includes former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet; former CIA Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt; former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger; Gen. Hugh Shelton, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Maj. Gen....

How the CIA Funds Anti-Bush Propaganda By Bill Gertz The Washington Times | September 14, 2004 The CIA's Counterterrorist Center has spent more than $15 million in the past three years funding studies, reports and conferences produced by former Democratic administration officials and other critics of the Bush administration. The latest effort was a $300,000 grant by the CIA to the Atlantic Council for a study co-authored by Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism official who wrote a best seller accusing the Bush administration of failing in the war on terrorism by invading Iraq.

George Soros is an exacting  taskmaster. In return for his money, he demands productivity. What he requires of employees and business associates in the investment world, Soros also demands from the political operatives he funds. “Mr. Soros isn't just writing checks and watching,” notes Wall Street Journalreporter Jeanne Cummings. “He is also imposing a business model on the notoriously unruly world of politics. He demands objective evidence of progress, and assigned an aide to monitor the groups he supports. He studies private polls to track the impact of an anti-Bush advertising campaign, and he is delivering his money in installments,...

The Bush administration's surveillance policy has failed to make a dent in the war against al Qaeda. U.S. law enforcement sources said that more than four years of surveillance by the National Security Agency has failed to capture any high-level al Qaeda operative in the United States. They said al Qaeda insurgents have long stopped using the phones and even computers to relay messages. Instead, they employ couriers. "They have been way ahead of us in communications security," a law enforcement source said. "At most, we have caught some riff-raff. But the heavies remain free and we believe some of...

NEW YORK - Former White House counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke says the random search by police of bags on New York subways is a program that should be copied in other cities. Terrorists who plan attacks with multiple bombs set to go off at the same time rely on the knowledge that they will not encounter surprises by police, Clarke said last week in a deposition for a federal court case challenging the search program. "They rehearse that, they train it, they do dry runs," Clarke said in response to questions posed by New York Civil Liberties Union Legal Director...

Oct. 5, 2005 — Both the FBI and CIA are calling it the first case of espionage in the White House in modern history. Officials tell ABC News the alleged spy worked undetected at the White House for almost three years. Leandro Aragoncillo, 46, was a U.S. Marine most recently assigned to the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney. Top Stories * Espionage Case Breaches the White House * Death with Dignity or Criminal Act? * Person of the Week: Complete Coverage "I don't know of a case where the vetting broke down before and resulted in a spy being...

AHMED HIKMAT SHAKIR IS A shadowy figure who provided logistical assistance to one, maybe two, of the 9/11 hijackers. Years before, he had received a phone call from the Jersey City, New Jersey, safehouse of the plotters who would soon, in February 1993, park a truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center. The safehouse was the apartment of Musab Yasin, brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who scorched his own leg while mixing the chemicals for the 1993 bomb.When Shakir was arrested shortly after the 9/11 attacks, his "pocket litter," in the parlance of the investigators, included contact...

The 9/11 Commission raises more questions than it answers. The 9/11 Commission's staff has come down decidedly on the side of the naysayers about operational ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. This development is already being met with unbridled joy by opponents of the Iraq war, who have been carping for days about recent statements by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that reaffirmed the deposed Iraqi regime's promotion of terror. The celebration is premature. The commission's cursory treatment of so salient a national question as whether al Qaeda and Iraq...

Statement by Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson August 22nd, 2005 The Bush White House and its right wing allies are responding to Cindy Sheehan and the military families’ vigil in Central Texas in the same way that they always respond to bad news –by unleashing personal attacks and smears against her. This White House never wants an open public discussion, and it certainly never wants to be told that it is wrong. It always tries to change the message by attacking the messenger. They did it with former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill when he wrote a book that suggested that the...

Crawford, TX Several major liberal groups and mainline news outlets had to retreat from their latest anti-war campaign this week when they lost their latest human shield, grieving Army-mom Cindy Sheehan. Mrs. Sheehan, who lost her son, Casey, in the Iraq war 14 months ago, announced today that she was leaving her makeshift camp here to care for her ailing mother amid loud protests from MoveOn.org, MANBLA and Alec Baldwin.

This interview first aired in November, but it's worth a second look in light of the Able Danger controversy.

If you read the papers or watch TV , you’ve probably heard that an Army Intelligence unit called Able Danger (may have) identified four of the 9/11 hijackers as much as a year before they struck – but was unable to pass the information on to the FBI because Pentagon lawyers said it would be a “no-no”….but shouldn’t Richard Clarke have known about it ? Richard Clarke was President Clinton’s Counter-terrorism Director- but I suspect he was kept “out of the loop” as far as any real or valuable intelligence was concerned. I believe, had he known about Able Danger,it...

THE report of the 9/11 commission, once a best seller and hailed by the news media as the definitive word on the subject, must now be moved to the fiction shelves. The commission concluded, you'll recall, that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon couldn't have been prevented, and that if there was negligence, it was as much the fault of the Bush Administration (for moving slowly on the recommendations of Clinton counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke) as of the Clinton administration. Able Danger has changed all of that. The 9/11 commission wrote history as it wanted it...

Clarke: Bush didn't see terrorism as 'urgent' 9/11 panel hears from Berger, Tenet Wednesday, May 19, 2004 Posted: 1:16 AM EDT (0516 GMT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's former counterterrorism chief testified Wednesday that the administration did not consider terrorism an urgent priority before the September 11, 2001, attacks, despite his repeated warnings about Osama bin Laden's terror network."I believe the Bush administration in the first eight months considered terrorism an important issue, but not an urgent issue," Richard Clarke told a commission investigating the September 11 attacks....He said that prior to 9/11, people within the FBI knew that two...

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission), an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation...is chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks...

Fred Friendly Seminars Presents IN THE BALANCE, a Provocative Look at the Social, Political, Economic, Legal and Health and Safety Implications of Terrorist Threats - Wednesday August 3, 12:42 pm ET Programs To Air During National Preparedness Month In September Presented on PBS by Thirteen/WNET New York NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 3, 2005-- A videotape claiming that a terrorist attack will happen at a shopping mall in the next few days is sent to a major national news organization. How does the organization respond? On the one hand, this is an exclusive news event; on the other, it's a potential national...

Slow to awaken after the 9/11 attacks, Hollywood has finally come around to contributing what it can in the War on Terror: namely, glossy, star-studded movies that sympathize with the enemy. Snip - "V For Vendetta." From Warner Brothers and the creators of "The Matrix" comes this film about a futuristic Great Britain that's become a 'fascist state.' A masked 'freedom fighter' named V uses terror tactics (including bombing the London Underground) to undermine the government - leading to a climax in which the British Parliament is blown up. Natalie Portman stars as a skinhead who turns to 'the revolution'...

7/26/2005 Sony to Acquire Richard Clarke Novel Filed under: General — Jason @ 9:51 am Looking to cash in.Some of you may remember Richard Clarke, former anti-terrorism czar, 9-11 Commission showboater and Bush Administration turncoat. Clarke has apparently been writing a novel of late, which Sony Pictures is now trying to acquire. Here are the relevant details, supplied by Hollywood Reporter: His [Clarke’s] novel, The Scorpion Gate, will be published in October by Putnam Adult. The studio hopes the film adaptation will be the first in a series of Tom Clancy-style political thrillers. The project will be produced by...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Sony Pictures is negotiating to acquire film rights to the first novel from Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism expert who accused the Bush administration of ignoring the terrorist threat before the Sept. 11 attacks. His novel, "The Scorpion Gate," will be published in October by Putnam Adult. The studio hopes the film adaptation will be the first in a series of John Clancy-style political thrillers. The project will be produced by former studio chief John Calley. The realistic geopolitical thriller is set five years in the future as oil-hungry forces in Washington are ready to reshape...

The Author of this hatchet piece: Daniel Benjamin, co-author of "The Age of Sacred Terror" (Random House, 2002), was on the National Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999. Now to the excerpts: === In reporting for our book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," Steven Simon and I found that Clarke was not alone. Several top U.S. government officials agreed in interviews that the new administration had been unwilling to revise its understanding of America's security position and too slow to recognize the danger of Al Qaeda. A three-star general, Kerrick had served at the end of the Clinton administration...

The very same day that the Clintons go to Long Island to meet with the TWA Flight 800 families, security guard Richard Jewell is patrolling the grounds of Centennial Park in Atlanta. He's a little Barney Fife-ish, but a good guy and very observant. Right around midnight, Jewell spots a large, olive-green, military-style backpack, known as an Alice pack, under a bench. He immediately shares this information with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. When the GBI cannot find the pack's owner, the GBI officer and Jewell begin to clear an area around the pack. Soon afterward, the pack explodes. Two...

With surprisingly little fanfare, Richard A. Clarke, the former antiterrorist chief for the Clinton and Bush Administrations, and best selling author of “Against All Enemies,” has become a regular columnist for The New York Time Magazine. His second “The Security Adviser” column will appear this Sunday. But does this new relationship pose an ethical dilemma for the newspaper, where Clarke sometimes turns up in the news pages in coverage of pre-9/11 warnings and preparedness? “The idea is to try and focus on things people face in their day-to-day lives involving security,” Clarke told E&P in a telephone interview. “It's more...