Richard Clarke: Now who was obsessed with other threats?
Half the blogosphere has been discussing Richard Clarke the last few days, and his accusations about the inner workings of the Bush administration. Clarke was terrorism czar under President Clinton and under President Bush until he, after 9/11-01, was demoted to cybersecurity czar and later resigned.
One of the two most serious allegations he makes is that before 9/11, Clarke tried in vain to convince the Bush administration that they needed to go after Bin Laden.
Clarke finally got his meeting about al Qaeda in April, three months after his urgent request. But it wasn't with the president or cabinet. It was with the second-in-command in each relevant department.
For the Pentagon, it was Paul Wolfowitz.
Clarke relates, "I began saying, 'We have to deal with bin Laden; we have to deal with al Qaeda.' Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, 'No, no, no. We don't have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.'
"And I said, 'Paul, there hasn't been any Iraqi terrorism against the United States in eight years!' And I turned to the deputy director of the CIA and said, 'Isn't that right?' And he said, 'Yeah, that's right. There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States."
Clarke went on to add, "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever."
The second serious allegation is that even after the horrible events on 9/11-01, the Bush administration didn't care about al-Qaeda but were obsessed with Iraq.
As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.
"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.
As far as I can remember, US forces did attack Afghanistan pretty soon after the WTC and Pentagon attacks, and Rumsfeld's men had no problems finding good targets for US planes there. Maybe Rummy was joking, or maybe Clarke just made this up. How can we know? We can't.
Condi Rice has made the rounds today denying the claims totally.
"Dick Clarke just does not know what he is talking about. He wasn't involved in most of the meetings of the administration," Rice told ABC's "Good Morning America."
Essentially, we have a word against word situation, not unlike that of a divorced couple, both accusing the other, and both remembering each episode, each conversation, very differently.
What it comes down to is that those who distrust the Bush administration, or especially those who really hate it, will believe every word Clarke has told. Those who support the Bush administration will disbelieve it all. And it is not just a cliche to say the truth lay somewhere in between, it is a fallacy, because it can easily be at either extremes.
However, there is some evidence we can find to verify Clarke's credibility.
Now, I knew the name Richard Clarke rang a bell, and a quite strong one, because one of my favourite tech industry pundits, Rob Rosenberger of Virus Myths, has had an eye on him for years.
The truth is that from a public perspective at least, Dick Clarke did not run around before 9/11 warning everybody about Bin Laden bringing about a new Pearl Harbour. He warned that computer viruses or hackers would bring about a "digital Pearl Harbour!"
President Clinton appointed Richard Clarke to the National Security Council as his coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counter-terrorism. Clarke developed a serious fetish for computer security hysteria -- think of him as the Internet's Joe McCarthy -- and he loves making comparisons to Pearl Harbor.
Make note that this chiding article was written in December 2000. Rosenberger continues:
He insisted no terrorist group "is even trying" to build up its information warfare skills -- yet, true to form, Clarke predicted the U.S. will suffer an unspecified cyber-catastrophe in the next few years. It will be a digital Pearl Harbor so large and so deadly that "the federal government needs a reconstitution plan" just to survive it.
If the US anti-terror czar were so deluded, we can perhaps better understand how 9/11 could happen. While being in charge of US security, Clarke was fantasising about an army of 14 year old hackers wrecking havoc on the US homeland through hi tech means At that exact time, Bin Laden and his brutes lay plans to inflict a Pearl Harbur-like strike using very crude, unsophisticated but highly effective methods.
A few months later, Clarke was demoted to cyberterrorism czar. Rosenberger fired off this shot:
Clarke used to advise the president about all types of terrorism, but now he'll just watch for terrorism on the Internet. To put it bluntly: Clarke got what he wished for. (He knows he got demoted, too. Big time.)
Clarke focused on the threat of 14yr-old wannabees -- and America paid the price for his folly. Don't ask me why Bush didn't fire the guy outright. But hey, at least Clarke will live to regret his cyber-terrorism fetish. I can't say the same for the 6,000+ people whose computers he took an oath to protect...
But apparently Clarke didn't please too many people now that he could devote his full attention to the danger of hackers, either. After all, he wasn't exactly a geek. More like a wannabe with a weird fetish. So when he released the draft "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace" he was chided from everybody for its lack of ambition and lack of teeth. Clarke quit shortly thereafter, to seek greener pa$tures elsewhere. We now know where.
In February 2003 columnist George Smith sums up Clarke's security carreer:
The retirement of Richard Clarke is appropriate to the reality of the war on terror. Years ago, Clarke bet his national security career on the idea that electronic war was going to be real war. He lost, because as al Qaeda and Iraq have shown, real action is still of the blood and guts kind.
No later than April 2003, we again find Rosenberger chiding Clarke for his past obsession with computer security:
Soon after 9/11, White House counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke decided to fly around the country to look at routers & hubs while the rest of Washington's counterterrorism task force fixated on Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
It is rather ironic when Clarke, who had a reputation for his obsession with cyberthreats, accuses the Bush administration of being obsessed with Iraq. His past history clearly puts the accusations in a new light.
The IDF has succeeeded in 
