Richard Clarke - we knew before 9/11
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appeared on
CNN's American Morning show today. She talked about Richard Clarke's allegations that the government knew about the threat of 9/11 but failed to act. Hat tip to
Little Green Footballs
In her words:
bq. And what Dick Clarke gave me in that memorandum was a series of ideas, a series of steps, most of which, by the way, we did within a matter of months — steps like trying to accelerate the arming of the Predator, steps like increasing counterterrorism funding, increasing counterterrorism support to Uzbekistan. These were steps that he said would bring — would roll back al Qaeda over a three to five-year period. This was not going to address the — quote — “urgent threat” of September 11.
bq. We did ask Dick Clarke for a more comprehensive strategy, one that would not just seek to roll back al Qaeda, but would seek to eliminate al Qaeda that would have real military options, not just options of pinprick strikes against training camps that had already been abandoned. We asked for a strategy that could be effectively funded. We increased intelligence activities by a factor of three in the strategy that was developed.
bq. So, that’s what Dick Clarke was supposed to be doing. At the same time, he was to continue the Clinton administration strategy until we got a new strategy in place.
bq. But what’s very interesting is that, of course, Dick Clarke was the counterterrorism czar in 1998 when the embassies were bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar in 2000 when the Cole was bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar for a period of the ‘90s when al Qaeda was strengthening and when the plots that ended up in September 11 were being hatched.
Emperor Misha has a great outline of Richard's
job performance - I'm excerpting and starting at the end of the Clinton years:
bq. But all good things must come to an end, and Dick's fifteen minutes eventually ran out. A new administration came to town and on one September morning all Hell broke loose. Not only that, Dick had barely gotten around to order out for pizza and call his usual hooker when, all of a sudden, he was expected to know something about his job.
bq. He tried bravely to keep up a nice facade, but it didn't work, and pretty soon he found himself washing Mulder's jockstraps in the basement, so he, er, "resigned".
bq. All of a sudden, he was no longer a hotshot, just another burnt out has-been, and a has-been that nobody really knew what had been, if he had, indeed, been anything at all. Man, did that STING! After a while, he even got to missing the musty smell of the basement and the odor of Mulder's socks, that's how bad it was, and he'd spend night after lonely night hating, HATING the man that had taken what he felt was his birthright away from him.
bq. "Oh, I'm going to get him, I'm going to get him GOOD!", little Dickie thought to himself as he slumped over the kitchen table with an almost empty bottle of cheap scotch in his left hand, "one of these days, I'll be known all over the country and people will once again worship me and hang on my every word", and then he'd pass out as his cigarette burned another hole in the table.
A book...
This will blow over too. Nothing to see folks -- move along.
Posted by DaveH at March 22, 2004 7:11 PM