Ijaz: Clarke Blocked bin Laden Extradition

NewsMax ^ | Monday, March 22, 2004 | Carl Limbacher

[Kaslin]

Clinton administration diplomatic troubleshooter Mansoor Ijaz charged Monday that one-time White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke blocked his efforts to have Osama bin Laden extradited from the Sudan to the United States five years before the 9/11 attacks.

"I was personally asked to brief Condoleezza Rice's deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, on exactly what had gone wrong in the previous efforts to get bin Laden out of the Sudan, to get the terrorism data out of the Sudan," Ijaz told Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends."

"In each case of things that were involved in the Clinton administration, Richard Clarke himself stepped in and blocked the efforts that were being made over and over and over again."

Ijaz said that if Clarke hadn't put up roadblocks to obtaining Sudanese intelligence, the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 might have been prevented.

He called Clarke's account of the Sudanese episode "absolutely disingenuous; it comes very close to flat-out lying."

After months of denials from his former aides, ex-President Clinton finally admitted that he personally turned down the offer by Sudan to arrest bin Laden.

"We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again," Clinton told a New York business group in February 2002.

"They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.

"So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan."

In his book, "Against All Enemies," Clarke called reports that Clinton had turned down the Sudanese offer "a fable."

To hear NewsMax.com's exclusive audiotape of ex-President Clinton exposing Richard Clarke's account as false, Click Here.

[Kaslin]

I did a search, and have not found this posted yet

[Redcoat LI]

Good work.

[Jewels1091]

I heard Mansoor and he CHALLENDGED Clarke to any place, any time, any TV show...he said that he has the proof and the evidence that will show that Clarke is a liar!!!

[SpinyNorman]

I wonder if this book of Clarke's will hold the record for hitting the remainder shelves....

[Adrastus]

I heard it as well and the otherwise cool and collected Ijaz was, to say the least, hot. If Clark had any integrity at all (a stretch) he'd take up the challenge. That's never going to happen.

[zip]

ptng

[FlashBack]

Has Mr. Ijaz written any books on this sort of subject?
I've seen him on more than a few of the news programs and it would seem that he would have enough info to write a few books!

[olde north church]

I would have to agree with your observation regarding Mr. Ijaz normally composed demeanor. He was totally PO'ed. I love when diplo-speak is dropped.

[Steven W.]

So who do the liberals believe? Bill Clinton or Clarke?

[Fledermaus]

Yep, Mansoor was ticked!

[Howlin]

I wonder if this book of Clarke's will hold the record for hitting the remainder shelves....

The DNC will buy it for their gift bags.

But I believe that "honor" belongs to Jayson Blair; out of a 250,000 run, his book has sold about 1600 copies.

[CyberAnt]

Rush played the audio today - and he said that he had never seen Monsoor so angry!!

[philetus]

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.

In happier times prior to 9/11, Clarke -- as Bill Clinton's counter-terror point man in the National Security Council -- devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing. While ostensibly involved in preparations for bioterrorism and trying to sound alarms about Osama bin Laden, Clarke was most often seen in the news predicting ways in which electronic attacks were going to change everything and rewrite the calculus of conflict.

September 11 spoiled the fun, though, and electronic attack was shoved onto the back-burner in favor of special operations men calling in B-52 precision air strikes on Taliban losers. One-hundred fifty-thousand U.S. soldiers on station outside Iraq make it perfectly clear that cyberspace is only a trivial distraction.

Saddam will not be brought down by people stealing his e-mail or his generals being spammed with exhortations to surrender.

Clarke's career in subsequent presidential administrations was a barometer of the recession of the belief that cyberspace would be a front effector in national security affairs. After being part of the NSC, Clarke was dismissed to Special Advisor for Cyberspace Security on October 9th in a ceremony led by National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and new homeland security guru Tom Ridge. If it was an advance, it was one to the rear -- a pure demotion.
Saddam will not be brought down by people stealing his e-mail or his generals being spammed with exhortations to surrender.
Instead of combating terrorists, Clarke would be left to wrestle with corporate America over computer security, a match he would lose by pinfall. Ridding the world of bad guys and ensuring homeland safety was a job for CIA wet affairsmen, the FBI, the heavy bomb wing out of Whiteman Air Force Base -- anyone but marshals in cyberspace.

Information "Sharing" and Cruise Missiles
The Slammer virus gave Clarke one last mild hurrah with the media. But nationally, Slammer was a minor inconvenience compared to relentless cold weather in the east and the call up of the reserves.

But with his retirement, Clarke's career accomplishments should be noted.

In 1986, as a State Department bureaucrat with pull, he came up with a plan to battle terrorism and subvert Muammar Qaddafi by having SR-71s produce sonic booms over Libya. This was to be accompanied by rafts washing onto the sands of Tripoli, the aim of which was to create the illusion of a coming attack. When this nonsense was revealed, it created embarrassment for the Reagan administration and was buried.

In 1998, according to the New Republic, Clarke "played a key role in the Clinton administration's misguided retaliation for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which targeted bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan." The pharmaceutical factory was, apparently, just a pharmaceutical factory, and we now know how impressed bin Laden was by cruise missiles that miss.

Trying his hand in cyberspace, Clarke's most lasting contribution is probably the new corporate exemption in the Freedom of Information Act. Originally designed to immunize companies against the theoretical malicious use of FOIA by competitors, journalists and other so-called miscreants interested in ferreting out cyber-vulnerabilities, it was suggested well before the war on terror as a measure that would increase corporate cooperation with Uncle Sam. Clarke labored and lobbied diligently from the NSC for this amendment to existing law, law which he frequently referred to as an "impediment" to information sharing.

While the exemption would inexplicably not pass during the Clinton administration, Clarke and other like-minded souls kept pushing for it. Finally, the national nervous breakdown that resulted from the collapse of the World Trade Center reframed the exemption as a grand idea, and it was embraced by legislators, who even expanded it to give a get-out-of-FOIA-free card to all of corporate America, not just those involved with the cyber-infrastructure. It passed into law as part of the legislation forming the Department of Homeland Security.

However, as with many allegedly bright ideas originally pushed by Richard Clarke, it came with thorns no one had anticipated.

In a January 17 confirmation hearing for Clarke's boss, Tom Ridge, Senator Carl Levin protested that the exemption's language needed to be clarified. "We are denying the public unclassified information in the current law which should not be denied to the public," he said as reported in the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News.

"That means that you could get information that, for instance, a company is leaking material into a river that you could not turn over to the EPA," Levin continued. "If that company was the source of the information, you could not even turn it over to another agency."

"It certainly wasn't the intent, I'm sure, of those who advocated the Freedom of Information Act exemption to give wrongdoers protection or to protect illegal activity," replied Ridge while adding he would work to remedy the problem.

Thanks for everything, Mr. Clarke.

George Smith is a Senior Fellow at GlobalSecurity.org, a defense affairs think tank and public information group. He also edits the Crypt Newsletter and has written extensively on viruses, the genesis of techno-legends and the impact of both on society.

[goldstategop]

Mansoor Iljaz is right. Richard Clarke failed to carry out a fraction of the steps he charges President Bush with not taking. His new book should be considered a feeble attempt to refurbish the Clinton Administration's failure to address the most dangerous threat confronting the United States during its eight years in power.

[TimPatriot]

Something fishy about this Clarke. I wonder if he isn't an agent of another country beyond being a partisan democrat. You look at his statements over the years and the stances he takes are inconsitant. Some of his schemes are down right ridiculous. Thankfully this Bush administration had removed him from where he can do more damage. First he says in 92 that Bush senior wasn't tough enough on Iraq, wasn't paying attention, then he does everything he can to prevent Bin Laden from being apprehended during Clinton's years, now he says Bush wasn't looking at the danger of bin laden but focusing on Iraq, which contradicts obvious facts, such as the timing of events. This guy is beyond incompetent, he is a dangerous man. I hope somebody is investigating him.

[Enduring Freedom]

Q: The American people, by and large, do not know the name bin Laden, but they soon likely will. Do you have a message for the American people?

Bin Laden: I say to them that they have put themselves at the mercy of a disloyal government, and this is most evident in Clinton's administration.

Anyone remember who was counterterrorism czar during Clinton's administration?

[RushLake]

...........we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America." per hillary clinton's "husband"

I have an old clipping with a picture of oslima that I clipped out of the paper years ago where he is quoted as saying, "We--with god's help--call on every Muslim...to comply with god's order to kill the Americans." (I did not capitalize "god" in the quote because the god of the muslim trash does not deserve that respect) I know I've had that picture and quote since before George W. Bush was president. Clinton is a cowardly liar.

[Kaslin]

Clinton is a cowardly liar.

That's a fact

[Gritty]

Who are you going to believe; your lyin' eyes or somebody who headed bill clinton's terrorism effort for 8 years and got shut out of the Bush Administration?

[Kaslin]

Tell me what Clinton's terrorism effort was. If he had done his job 9/11 could have perhaps been avoided