Clarke OKs Release of His Testimony, Documents
Bush Critic Challenges White House to Do the Same
Reuters
Sunday, March 28, 2004; 12:23 PM
Former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke Sunday called on the White House to make public his own testimony to Congress as well as other statements, e-mails and documents about how the Bush administration handled the threat of terror.
Clarke, center of a firestorm over the level of engagement of President Bush in the issue before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was responding to Republican allegations that his earlier testimony to Congress contradicted statements he made last week that criticized Bush.
"I would welcome it being declassified, but not just a little line here or there. Let's declassify all six hours of my testimony," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, slamming Clarke on Friday, called for declassifying Clarke's July 2002 testimony to a joint hearing by the Senate and House of Representatives Intelligence committees.
Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said Clarke's words then, when, as a member of Bush administration he defended its policies, conflicted with last week's sworn public testimony before the bipartisan commission investigating the attacks, known popularly as the 9/11 Commission.
Clarke said he supported having that testimony declassified and also wanted testimony given in private to the commission by Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice made public.
He said he wanted everything out in the open. "The White House is selectively now finding my e-mails, which I would have assumed were covered by some privacy regulations, and selectively leaking them to the press.
"Let's take all of my e-mails and all of the memos that I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20th to September 11th, and let's declassify all of it," he said.
"The (9-11) victims' families have no idea what Dr. Rice has said," Clarke said. Rice has been criticized for appearing extensively on television but not in public before the panel.
Clarke rejected accusations by Republicans that he was speaking out for political reasons eight months before presidential elections.
A career government official, Clarke said he was not part of the campaign of Bush's rival, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry, and had no ambition to work in any administration of either party.
Clarke says many of his recommendations were ignored or downplayed by the Bush administration, and that he was marginalized when he urged the White House not to retaliate against Iraq for attacks by the al Qaeda network.
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