Part 3 Clarke Salon interview
salon.com
Richard Clarke terrorizes the White House , 3
Did you see a memo to that effect? I wondered about that when I was reading the book, because you don't say how you know they gave the president that advice.
No, I don't say ... It was from oral conversations in the White House.
In the first chapter of your book, which I must say is gripping, you give your account of your actions on 9/11, when great authority was turned over to you [by Cheney and Rice]. Is there an issue of disloyalty or ingratitude there? To be honest, it seemed to me that you saved their asses that day.
Well, that's for other people to say. As regards my loyalty to President Bush, I was a career civil servant. I wasn't loyal to any particular political machine. When the president makes a big mistake -- like he has in the way that he has fought the war on terrorism by going into Iraq -- I think personal loyalty or party loyalty has got to be put aside.
Did you speak up about the U.S. going into Iraq? Now, one of the more substantive criticisms of you by the White House is that you didn't say anything about it. You let that go, you kept your job and didn't resign in protest -- or according to them, do anything that suggested you were so strongly opposed to their plan for war.
If they were listening, they would have heard me. I started saying on Sept. 11 and Sept. 12 that their idea of responding to the terrorist attacks by going to war with Iraq was not only misplaced but counterproductive.
Before Sept. 11, I was so frustrated with the way they were handling terrorism that I had asked to be reassigned to a different job. And the job I proposed was a job I helped to create -- a job to look at the nation's vulnerability to cyber-attack. So that job was supposed to be one that I went into on Oct. 1 [2001]; the actual transfer was delayed, of course, because Sept. 11 intervened. But it's important to realize that I asked for that transfer out of the counterterrorism job before Sept. 11, out of frustration with the Bush administration's handling of terrorism.
When I was doing the cyber-security job, toward the end of 2001 and into 2002, I wasn't asked for my opinion on Iraq. I wasn't in a position to give my opinion on Iraq. I was carrying a different portfolio. They certainly didn't come and ask me. But I made it very clear to Condi Rice, although she may choose to forget it, that I thought going into Iraq was a mistake. And I thought if you did have to go in -- if the president was determined to do that -- then it had to be done within the United Nations context.
What is your estimation of Dr. Rice, given that you have known and worked with the past seven or eight national security advisors?
I don't want to get involved in personal attacks on her just because she's involved in personal attacks on me. I think she has a great personal relationship with the president, and that's one of the best things a national security advisor can have. I think she has a great understanding of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Central Europe, which was the area of her expertise before she became national security advisor ... She's very, very knowledgeable about that.
You criticize both the Bush and Clinton administrations, although I have to say the press coverage of your discussion of the Clinton administration varies considerably from what is actually in your book ...
I'm glad you noticed.
I did notice that ... How different were the two administrations in their approaches to terrorism?
Well, prior to 9/11, the Bush administration didn't have an approach to terrorism. They'd never gotten around to creating an administration policy. It was in the process of doing so, but it hadn't achieved that. And it was clear that the national security advisor didn't like this kind of issue; she didn't have meetings on this issue. The president didn't have meetings on the issue of terrorism.
Now the White House is saying, oh, they had meetings every day. But let's be clear about what those meetings every day were. Every day George Tenet, the CIA director, would do the morning intelligence briefing of the president, and he would raise the al-Qaida threat with great frequency. That's not the same as having a meeting to decide what to do about it. That's not the same as the president shaking the lapels of the FBI director and the attorney general and saying, "You've got to stop the attack."
Apparently on one occasion -- of all these many, many days when George Tenet mentioned the al-Qaida threat -- the president on one occasion said, "I want a strategy. I don't want to swat flies." Well, months or certainly weeks went by after that, and he didn't get his strategy because Condi Rice didn't hold the meeting necessary to approve it and give it to him. And yet George Bush appears not to have asked for it a second time.
In fact, he told Bob Woodward in "Bush at War" that he kind of knew there was a strategy being developed out there, but he didn't know at what stage it was in the process. Well, if he was so focused on it, he would have kept asking where the strategy was. He would have known where it was in the process. He would have demanded that it be brought forward. He had a fleeting interest.
Did you have access to the president's daily briefings?
On a daily basis, no; I did see some of them. There was never any system in place that worked to get them to me every day.
Did you see the PDB for Aug. 6, 2001 [which reportedly contained references to an impending attack by al-Qaida]?
I really can't recall it. I think its importance has been overblown. What happens in the presidential daily briefing is that the president asks questions of the briefer, which is usually Tenet on Monday through Friday. And the briefer then takes notes of the questions and goes back to CIA to get papers written to respond to the questions.
In response to the drumbeat day after day of intelligence that there was going to be an al-Qaida attack, the president apparently said, "Tell me what al-Qaida could do." And in response to that the CIA went off and wrote a paper that listed everything possible that al-Qaida could do. It didn't say we have intelligence that tells us the attack will be here or there, the attack method will be this or that. It was rather a laundry list of possible things they could do.
Do you think it's true that the Saudis gained added influence when the Bush crowd returned to the White House?
The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, had worn out his welcome in the Clinton White House. But he had very, very good ties to the Bush family. His standing, his influence greatly increased when the Bush people came back into power.
Were you aware of the Saudi airlifts of their nationals after 9/11, at the time that they were happening?
What I am aware of is that sometime after 9/11, in the days immediately thereafter, the Saudi embassy requested to evacuate some of its nationals because it feared there would be retribution. That information came to me and I was asked to approve it. I said no, I would not approve it, until the FBI approved it. And I asked the FBI to approve it, to look at the names of people on the flight manifests, and the FBI approved it.
Now, there's a big tempest about this in retrospect. People think the FBI should have done a better job of looking at the names. The FBI could have called me and said they wanted more time, and I would have given it to them. They could have said they want this individual or that individual detained, and I would have said fine. I am still unaware to this day of anyone who left on any of those flights who the FBI now wants.
Were you concerned about your friendship with Rand Beers being used, as it is now, to suggest that you did this in order to help John Kerry in his presidential campaign?
This is the most interesting charge against me -- that I am a friend of Rand Beers, as if that's some terrible thing. Who is Rand Beers? Until a year ago, he was someone who was working for George Bush in the White House. He worked for George Bush's father in the White House. He worked for Ronald Reagan in the White House. But now it's a terrible thing to be a friend of Rand Beers? He and I have been friends for 25 years. I'm not going to disown him because he's working for John Kerry. He's my friend, he's going to stay my friend, we teach a course together [at Harvard]. He works for John Kerry. I don't.
salon.com |
