Clarke Requested Own "Demotion" (PBS Frontline Interview - "The Man Who Knew [John O'Niell]")

PBS Frontline ^ | 2002 | Richard Clarke (PBS Interview)

[Stultis]

You tried to convince him [John O'Niell], it has been written, to take your job. Can you tell me a little bit about that what happened?

Shortly after the Bush administration came into office, we were asked to think about how we organized the White House for a number of issues, including cybersecurity, computer security, homeland security, and counterterrorism. I was asked for my advice, and I proposed that the counterterrorism responsibility be broken off be a separate job, and that the cybersecurity job be broken off as a separate job. I said I had done counterterrorism for about a decade, and I wanted to start working on cybersecurity, which I think is terribly important. That was later approved by the president.

So the question came, "Well, who would you recommend to do the terrorism job?" I came up with four or five names. The first name that came to mind was John O'Neill, because he had the right combination of talents. He had an incredible drive. He never took his eye off the ball. He was never satisfied with halfway measures when it meant saving American lives. He would never let people think about this as just another job. He knew the bureaucracy, and he knew how to make things happen. He was incredibly intelligent. I thought he had all the right sets of skills to do the job at the White House.

But he was not terribly excited about that. I think he either wanted to come to work in headquarters of the FBI again, or he wanted to get out and start making a decent living. He chose to do the latter, I guess, and I respect that. Government servants frequently don't get paid what they get paid on the outside. You can only ask them to sacrifice for so long, because they're not just sacrificing for themselves, they're sacrificing for their families.

[Stultis]

Clarke also said as much in his testimony, but I thought it might be worthwhile having another source.

Not that the press will stop claiming that Bush/Condi demoted him.

[sarasota]

What did Condi say about the "demotion" vs. request for demotion?

[Stultis]

Ooops! I duplicated. Here's the prior thread:

Clarke Asked for the Cybersecurity Job (my title) ^
			Posted by NonValueAdded On News/Activism ^ 03/25/2004 8:25:06 PM CST with 25 comments Frontline / PBS ^ | March 20, 2003 | Richard A. Clarke In an interview for the Frontline feature on John O'Neill, Richard A. Clarke describes how he made the recommendations for the reorganization: Q: [Frontline] "You tried to convince [John O'Neill], it has been written, to take your job. Can you tell me a little bit about that what happened?" A: [Clarke] "Shortly after the Bush administration came into office, we were asked to think about how we organized the White House for a number of issues, including cybersecurity, computer security, homeland security, and counterterrorism. I was asked for my advice, and I proposed that the counterterrorism responsibility be broken off...

[arjay]

Condi said it was not a demotion.

[RichardW]

There is a very, very interesting article in the New Yorker magazine regarding O'Neill. What is interesting is that Condi Rice asked Clarke to name his replacement since he wanted to move on to Cybersecurity. His choice was O'Neill. The gist of the article implied that the relationship between Rice and Clarke was quite cordial at that point. I have this theory that his friend Rand Beers who is an operative of the Democratic party has persuaded Clarke to come out in favor of trashing Bush to the benefit of Kerry. Sort of like getting a spy to "flip." Obviously Clarke is so focused that he might be amenable to such an agenda especially if he felt he had been slighted. This would be his way of effecting payback. His actions today do not correspond to his words he had at the time in the Bush administration.

[BigWaveBetty]

Q: Let me ask you about a couple of events. In 1997, he gives the Chicago speech where he says, "We should expect an attack." He's talking in that same period of time about, or a little after, of cells within the country. How common was this belief at FBI and NSA?

RC: In 1997, I think there were only a handful of us who knew that there were Al Qaeda cells in the United States. When my boss, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, would ask the FBI in a formal meeting, "Is there an Al Qaeda presence in the United States?" their formal answer would be, "We don't know of one, and we don't think there is one." But if you asked O'Neill, or you had asked me, a few others, including some people in the CIA, the answer would have been, "We can't prove it yet, but we see the smoke, and where there's smoke, there's fire." Sure, there were cells. We weren't able to prove it at the time.

Golly, kinda like a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda without the paperwork evidence.

The ability of Clarke to ignore his own words is astounding.

[wildbill]

Forget the demotion angle.

There is a lot of stuff in here that is different to what he says in interviews and the book and his testimony.

There are a lot of nuggets of info about what did or didn't happen under Clinton--and some additional supporting info about the Bush administration actions before 9/11.

[Stultis]

I have this theory that his friend Rand Beers who is an operative of the Democratic party has persuaded Clarke to come out in favor of trashing Bush to the benefit of Kerry. Sort of like getting a spy to "flip."

The most interesting theory, although I'm not saying I believe it, but, you know, it's been discussed on the internet, is that Richard Clarke was the Valerie Plame leaker...