Hello Thread,
I just received this response to a query I sent:
"Having worked with Clarke on the NSC staff back in the day, my impressions of him are the following. He's a hard-driving, obnoxious, self-important a$$hole, somebody who jealously guarded his own bureaucratic turf while at the same time trying to horn in on whatever action was going on elsewhere. That said, he's also a serious professional who made himself indispensable for a succession of important bosses over the years by virtue of his brains, energy, and (mostly) his ability to get things done. Regarding al Qaeda, he was obsessed with the group from way back, and by the end of the 90s onward was regarded as almost something of a crank about the threat it posed and the need to take more aggressive measures to deal with it. At the time, I and others were a little skeptical; in retrospect, he and his shop (which included Rand Beers, Steve Simon, and Dan Benjamin among others) were right and we were wrong. Bottom line, he knows and cares more about this stuff than just about anybody else in the country, and I'd listen carefully to what he has to say (even if I don't like him much personally)." |
