Clarke shows a flair for the witness chair
miami.com
BY KEN FIREMAN
Newsday
WASHINGTON - By the end of Richard Clarke's testimony to the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks Wednesday, it was clear why the White House has been so anxious to discredit its former advisor on counterterrorism. Clarke had a story to tell, and it did not show President Bush or his administration in a favorable light.
Clarke also demonstrated two essential attributes of a star witness at a high-profile investigation: a flair for the dramatic moment and a taste for rhetorical combat. These became apparent when a Republican member of the commission, former Navy Secretary John Lehman, challenged his credibility as a Bush critic.
Lehman began by proclaiming himself a longtime ''fan of yours,'' then suggested that there was a major gap between Clarke's 15 hours of testimony to the commission staff and his blistering criticisms of Bush in a new book, Against All Enemies, and recent media interviews.
''Because of my real genuine long-term admiration for you, I hope you'll resolve that credibility problem, because I'd hate to see you become totally shoved to one side during a presidential campaign as an active partisan selling a book,'' Lehman concluded.
Given where Clarke's answer wound up, Lehman might have wished he'd never asked. After denying he was a partisan, Clarke got around to the differences between his testimony to the staff and his book.
''There's a very good reason for that,'' Clarke said. ``In the 15 hours of testimony, no one asked me what I thought about the president's invasion of Iraq. And the reason I am strident in my criticism of the president of the United States is because by invading Iraq . . . the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism.''
Clarke stopped there, letting his last sentence hang in the air as he awaited Lehman's next question. It never came, and Clarke finally leaned back, a small smile on his face. |
