Scrapbook
Scrapbook Dick Clarke: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly The Good... As the top National Security Council staffer on counterterrorism for the last decade—and a career national security bureaucrat...
...Even if we don't get the big guys, it will have a good effect...
...Clarke was asked about accusations that animus to the Clinton administration had made the Bush administration unwilling to take suggestions from their predecessors on going after al Qaeda: CLARKE: Over the course of the summer [of 2001, the Bush team] 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...
...There was every reason, then, given Clarke's unique vantage point, to expect that his memoirs would one day provide an authoritative account of what went wrong (and what went right) in the long war with al Qaeda...
...Shelton looked pained...
...They would say, 'He's a rogue, he's uncooperative, he's out of control, he's stupid, he makes bad choices.' It's very damaging...
...Clarke was not alone...
...In fact, one of these former officials emphasized, "when we would carry back from the counterterrorism group one of those SOF counterterrorism proposals, our job was to figure out not how to execute it, but how we were going to say no...
...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...
...Clarke's new fans on the Bush-bashing left preposterously demand that his book deserves serious rebuttal...
...Fine...
...And when Clarke fought back at being branded "wild" and "irresponsible," they added "abrasive" and "intolerant" to the counts against him...
...First, the simple fact that Clarke, who resigned in January 2003, should rush to publish his volume before the end of Bush's first term is a precedent-setting act of bad faith from a National Security Council staffer who reports on conversations with the president and his national security adviser...
...The Bad..._ The appearance of Clarke's Against All Enemies last week betrayed those expectations...
...You get to the point where you don't even raise issues like that...
...As the top National Security Council staffer on counterterrorism for the last decade—and a career national security bureaucrat for the last 30 years— Richard Clarke had a ringside seat from which to view the full catastrophe o] Osama bin Laden's war on America...
...who (little known to the public) quelled anti-American terrorism by Iraq and Iran and defeated an al Qaeda attempt to dominate Bosnia...
...It's no surprise that the Washington press corps hasn't lingered over this breach of trust...
...Too bad...
...For nearly a decade, this career civil servant began and ended his workday with the burgeoning terrorist threat to America...
...26, 2004...
...Showstoppers," Jan...
...When Clarke says in his preface that he will tell the story of "Bill Clinton, who identified terrorism as the major post-Cold War threat and acted to improve our coun-terterrorism capabilities...
...Clarke's philosophy was to go get the terrorists," one former senior Pentagon special operations official told me, "Go get them anywhere you can...
...but who, weakened by continued political attack, could not get the CIA, the Pentagon, and FBI to act sufficiently to deal with the threat"—he is echoing the thesis of Blumenthal, whose tedious 2003 memoir The Clinton Wars blamed all of Clinton's failures in combatting al Qaeda on Clinton's political foes...
...CLARKE: All of that's correct...
...Anything Dick Clarke suggested, the Joint Staff was going to be negative about," said one...
...Both books tell some of the same supposedly Clinton-exculpating anecdotes: What was particularly frustrating was that Clinton had pulled Joint Staffs Chairman Hugh Shelton and me aside after the Cabinet Room meeting, saying to the former Special Forces commander, "Hugh, what I think would scare the shit out of these al Qaeda guys, more than any cruise missile . . . would be the sight of U.S...
...Sheehan explained: Suppose one civilian starts beating the drum for special operations...
...it would not work to order the military to undertake a mission it believed to be suicidal...
...Mike Shee-han also pushed for assisting the Northern Alliance and striking al Qaeda with SOF [special forces...
...Clarke was similarly well placed in the critical first year of the Bush administration...
...By turning Clarke into a pariah, the Pentagon brass discredited precisely the options that might have spared us the tragedy of September 11...
...Nonetheless, America's top military officer agreed to "look into it...
...They were no doubt the recipients of so many leaks from Clarke through the years that it would be an act of deep ingratitude for them to criticize the man now...
...If someone did, like me or Clarke, we were labeled cowboys, way outside our area of competence...
...It's a bit shortsighted of alleged defenders of good government (viz...
...Clarke, Against All Enemies, pp...
...It would get us enormous deterrence and show those guys we're not afraid...
...189-190) Still frustrated, President Clinton tried to get the Pentagon to think about a Special Forces operation...
...Is that correct...
...That is in fact the timeline...
...Here is Shultz's description of the frustrations Clarke faced: When events finally impelled the Clinton administration to take a hard look at offensive operations, the push to pursue them came from the civilians of the National Security Council's Counterterrorism and Security Group...
...And the Ugly But the real disappointment is that whole chunks of Clarke's book sound as if they were dictated by Sidney Blumenthal, the most partisan and conspiratorial of the Clintonites...
...Such measures worried the senior brass, who proceeded to weaken those officials by treating them as pariahs...
...Several officials who served on the Joint Staff and in the Pentagon's special operations office remembered the senior brass characterizing Clarke in such terms...
...He explained that the camps were a long way away from anywhere we could launch a helicopter raid...
...In late 1999, he suggested to [Joint Chiefs Chairman Hugh] Shelton, "You know, it would scare the shit out of al Qaeda if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas rappelled out of helicopters into the middle of their camp...
...Defensive measures were just not enough...
...The establishment "systematically starts to undermine you...
...That meant portraying them as cowboys, who proposed reckless military operations that would get American soldiers killed...
...He knew in detail the danger the bin Ladens of the world posed, and it worried him greatly...
...One of the hardest of the hard-liners was the group's chief, Dick Clarke...
...Blumenthal, The Clinton Wars, p. 661) Then there's the condescending character assassination (also a Blumenthalian touch): "As I briefed [National Security Adviser Condi Rice] on al Qaeda, her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard of the term before...
...Some generals had been vitriolic, calling Clarke "a madman, out of control, power hungry, wanted to be a hero, all that kind of stuff...
...But Shelton "blanched": The generals subsequently argued to the NSC that a small operation was too risky: "The White House had little recourse...
...She had in fact heard of and used the term...
...Let's fast forward to an August 2002 press briefing unearthed last week by Fox News's Jim Angle, when Clarke was still on the Bush NSC staff...
...To paraphrase Clarke: As we read his book, he gives us the impression that he is as obsessed with destroying the Bush presidency as he once was with destroying al Qaeda...
...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...
...His efforts to stir a more forceful U.S response to al Qaeda were described in these pages two months ago by Richard H. Shultz Jr...
...commandoes, Ninja guys in black suits, jumping out of helicopters into their camps, spraying machine guns...
...the New York Times editorial page) not to notice the fact that Clarke has singlehandedly all but guaranteed a partisan purge of national security staff in future transitions...
Vol. 9 • April 2004 • No. 29
