Posted on 03/22/2004 9:22:57 PM PST by Indy Pendance
WASHINGTON -- The White House blasted former top terrorism adviser Richard Clarke on Monday in a coordinated effort to dismantle his allegations that President Bush had botched the U.S. approach to terrorism before and after the attacks of Sept. 11.
Vice President Dick Cheney countered in a radio interview that Clarke "wasn't in the loop" and added that the former aide "may have a grudge to bear," since he was moved into a more narrow area of cyberterrorism.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan derided the former White House adviser, saying, "This is Dick Clarke's 'American grandstand,' " and faulted Clarke for waiting until the heat of the presidential campaign to launch his scathing assessment of Bush's handling of the war on terrorism.
Clarke detailed his charges in a book, Against All Enemies, and in TV interviews, and is set to provide some of the most explosive public testimony yet before the national 9-11 Commission on Wednesday.
The former national security aide, who left his post more than a year ago, alleges that Bush has made the war against terrorism harder by diverting resources and troops for the Iraqi invasion.
Even as the White House was responding to Clarke, former President Jimmy Carter added more criticism of the Bush foreign policy, saying in a newspaper interview that the war against Iraq was based on "lies and misinterpretations."
But the Bush administration kept its focus on Clarke.
"Clearly, this is more about politics and a book promotion than it is about policy," said McClellan, one of several top officials who forcefully disputed Clarke's charge that the president had failed to heed the aide's early warnings about the terrorist threat before Sept. 11.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, making the rounds of morning TV programs, often reminded the public that the Bush administration had been in office only eight months when hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
She noted that Clarke had worked at the White House for every president since Ronald Reagan and had been part of the anti-terrorism effort that failed to detect years of preparation for the attacks, even after Al-Qaeda assaulted the USS Cole in Yemen and tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.
Moreover, Rice said that Clarke had failed to come up with a dynamic anti-terrorism strategy when asked to early in the Bush presidency. "What he gave me," Rice said on the CBS Early Show, "was a list of five ideas, most of which had been around since 1998, which were a kind of laundry list to, as he said, 'roll back Al-Qaeda over three to five years.' "
That was not enough, Rice said, adding that the president needed a tough military strategy "that was going to eliminate Al-Qaeda."
White House officials said the president has "no recollection" of an exchange that Clarke makes a centerpiece of his critique -- a brief discussion with Bush on the day after Sept. 11.
On CBS's 60 Minutes Sunday, Clarke said that "the president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' "
"Now, he never said, 'Make it up,' " he continued. "But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this."
Bush's aides said Monday they would not dispute whether a meeting occurred, but they forcefully rejected the interpretation that the president was fixated on Iraq.
"The president asked about Iraq," Rice told CBS. "It was a logical question, given our history with Iraq."
But when it became evident that Al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan were to blame for the attacks, the national security team gathered at the Camp David retreat on Sept. 15, she said. "And it was a map of Afghanistan that was spread on the table."
White House spokesman McClellan assigned an array of motives to the Clarke critique, including the suggestion that he was a disgruntled former employee who now criticizes the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, although Clarke had sought unsuccessfully to be its deputy secretary.
McClellan also suggested a partisan political motive. Clarke is a close associate of Rand Beers, the top national security adviser to the presidential campaign of Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Carter, meanwhile, in an interview with British newspaper the Independent, joined in faulting Bush for invading Iraqsaying he claimed "falsely that (then-Iraqi president) Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
What does that mean?
Kerry's Secret Weapon (from a Leftwing website)
The close collaborator with Richard Clarke -- going back to Bush I at NSC was Rand Beers -- who quit last summer in disgust, and walked down the street and volunteered his services to Kerry, where he has been ever since. Beers eventually drew Joe Wilson into the Kerry camp. Taken together this represents about 75 years of high level Bureaucratic Counterterrorism experience -- and it is super connected with every establishment going. To put it mildly, Kerry is not going into battle unarmed and with pacifist intents. If Bin Laden's been warehoused for use in October -- these are the guys who know it, and know who else knows
Kerry's foreign policy team is formidable and the fact that he has Wilson, Clarke and Beers on board, all of whom have been on the inside of the Cheney administration is very, very interesting.
Kerry Will Abandon War on Terrorism
Beers has a special history in Washington. A longtime National Security Council aide who served President Clinton and was carried over by the Bush White House, he resigned as the war in Iraq began in March 2003. Just weeks later, he volunteered for the Kerry campaign. The Washington Post heralded him in a profile as "a lifelong bureaucrat" who was an "unlikely insurgent." Yet the Post acknowledged that he was a "registered Democrat" who by resigning at such a critical moment was "not just declaring that he's a Democrat. He's declaring that he's a Kerry Democrat, and the way he wants to make a difference in the world is to get his former boss [Bush] out of office."
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