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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (128400)	4/4/2004 2:27:51 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Forum: Clashing with Clarke in class The country is in an uproar over former White House terrorism expert Richard Clarke's recent contentions, which will continue to be debated. Let me give some insight on my own very recent (February 2004) experience with Mr. Clarke, who teaches a class at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He teaches this class with Rand Beers, a former government official with National Security Council experience who now works on the Democratic presidential campaign. As a national security fellow at the Kennedy School, I attended one of Messrs. Beers' and Clarke's classes to discuss U.S. experiences in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti and Kosovo. I was involved in the planning or execution of each of these military operations and wrote my master's thesis on U.S. Somalia policy while attending the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994-95. I requested permission to sit in on the class, which Mr. Clarke cheerfully granted and told me to "pipe up" if I had anything to say, which I quickly did when I questioned his theory there were three major policy decisions during Somalia. While we were debating U.N. actions in Somalia, Mr. Clarke incorrectly stated the U.S. military made a unilateral decision to pull forces out of Somalia. The defense secretary and the president decide deployment and redeployment of combat forces, not the military. So I questioned his statement to the contrary. I specifically asked him to clarify his statement. He backed his contention, stating the military made the decision. He also said our participation in the U.N. mission in Macedonia proved how smooth U.N. operations could be. I reminded him of the soldiers taken prisoner by Serb forces and the ensuing crisis, but he ignored my comment. After class, I asked him to explain who in the military ordered redeployment of forces from Somalia without permission of the president. I asked him specifically, "Who signed the redeployment order for those forces to leave Somalia?" He finally clarified by saying "the secretary of defense." It seems Mr. Clarke was actually referring to the desire of the U.S. military leaders to leave Somalia rather than their ordering it without administration knowledge. Why is this important? Because he purposely misled the class into believing the U.S. military, not the administration controlling the military, made the decision to leave Somalia at a critical time in the mission. When given a chance to correct the record, he chose not to do so. This was well before I knew Mr. Clarke had a book coming out or that he would have such a role in the current debate. The CBS "60 Minutes" crew filmed the class and our discussion after the class. They should have verified his comments on Somalia and then investigated further to determine if he had a habit of obfuscating facts. Their investigation would have confirmed that, in at least this instance, Mr. Clarke chose to mislead. I do not know why Mr. Clarke found it necessary to mislead his class or why he felt Bush administration pressure to make absolutely certain Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks was a request for him to lie. The bottom line is Mr. Clarke obfuscated the truth in my presence for some unknown reason. After this experience with him, I cannot trust his judgment. The timing of his book release, his prior silence on the topic and his close relationship with campaign advisers, coupled with my personal experience, cause me to question his credibility on this subject and I now suspect it is for political and/or personal gain. As September 11 commission member and former Navy Secretary John Lehman has noted, it is truly unfortunate for the country that, despite Mr. Clarke's personal knowledge and experience, he now lacks credibility. I am sorry to say I agree with that assessment. CHUCK HARRISON The writer is a national security fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.