The contradiction chief
It's Dick Clarke's American grandstand
Jack Kelly: The Pittsburg Post Gazette
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We now know how Campaign 2004 will unfold: A Democrat will
accuse President Bush of having started the Chicago fire,
or poisoning Halloween candy or whatever. The news media
will trumpet the charges, no matter how preposterous. When
Bush aides deny the charges, and provide evidence refuting
them, journalists will accuse Bush of making "personal
attacks."
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Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1476).
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Exhibit A for this pattern is the sordid saga of Richard Clarke, arguably the least credible whistleblower in American history. The counterterrorism chief in the Clinton administration who was held over by Bush charged in testimony before the 9/11 commission that Bush wasn't much concerned about waging war on terror before Sept. 11, and then tried to bully Clarke into falsely fingering Iraq for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Clarke's testimony is refuted not only by every other
national security official who was around Bush during the
period in question, but by Clarke himself, in a background
briefing he gave reporters on Aug. 4, 2002; in interviews
he gave to author Richard Miniter, PBS and The New Yorker
magazine; in an e-mail he sent to National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sept. 15, 2001, and even by
what he wrote in his own book.
In his August 2002 briefing, Clarke told reporters (1) that the Clinton administration had no overall plan on al-Qaida to pass on to the Bush administration; (2) that just days after his inauguration, Bush said he wanted a new, more comprehensive anti-terror strategy; (3) that Bush ordered implementation of anti-terror measures that had been kicking around since 1998, and (4) that before Sept. 11, Bush had increased fivefold the funding for CIA covert action programs against al-Qaida.
In the Sept. 15, 2001, memo, Clarke reminded Rice that in July, the White House ordered a message (written by Clarke) sent to domestic agencies warning them to prepare for the possibility of a "spectacular al-Qaida attack." He listed a number of meetings in June and July in which the FBI, Secret Service, Customs, etc. were urged to take special measures to increase security.
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It's reasonable enough to argue that Bush could have done
more to guard against terror, though it isn't clear what.
What is incredible is to argue -- as Clarke did before the
9/11 commission -- that President Clinton was more
concerned about al-Qaida than Bush was.
Clarke told the commission that Clinton "had no higher
priority" than terrorism. But not even Clarke believes
this. In his book, Clarke said that trying to obtain a
Middle East peace agreement was more important to Clinton
than retaliating for the attack on the USS Cole.
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Commissioner James Thompson asked Clarke which was true:
What he said in the August 2002 briefing, or what he said
in his book. "Both," Clarke replied. But it's not possible
to reconcile the two. It's difficult even to reconcile
what Clarke said in his book with the embellishments he's
made in television interviews, said Time magazine's Romesh
Ratnesar.
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Clarke has credibility problems which make those of
Clinton and Nixon seem mild by comparison. But it's hard
to find a hint of this in the "mainstream" media. In a
lengthy "analysis" piece ("Insider Clarke Weathers his
Critics"), Mark Matthews and Tom Bowman of the Baltimore
Sun somehow fail to mention at all that what Clarke is
saying now contradicts what he said before. Dana Milbank
of The Washington Post ("Clarke Stays Cool as Partisanship
Heats Up") does mention the August 2002 interview, but
only to criticize the White House for permitting Fox News
to make public a transcript of it.
The news media sometimes go to ludicrous lengths to blame
Bush for the sins of his predecessor. A story on the MSNBC
Web site March 24 took Bush to task for not having acted
against al-Qaida in 1998, when Bush was governor of Texas.
In a story that same day, the New York Daily News moved
the attack on the USS Cole to "early 2001," during the
Bush presidency, when in fact it happened on Oct. 12, 2000.
Americans already have plenty of reasons to distrust
the "news" they are being given. They'll have plenty more
before November. |
