[cyncooper]

From today's White House briefing:

excerpt regarding Clarke and also the 9/11 commission:

Q Okay, the second question, on Richard Clarke. A lot has been made about Dr. Rice's testimony, whether she would testify. But not a lot has been made about the perjury charges that Bill Frist made on Friday, on the Senate floor. He said, basically, that Mr. Clarke had two different stories under oath. Isn't that perjury, and shouldn't he be prosecuted for that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, those are decisions that others make, obviously. I think that this is a decision that was made by Senate leaders. They made a request of us, and our role is to look at those issues and see what could be declassified.

Q The question is about the declassification --

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, that was a decision --

Q -- if they should --

MR. McCLELLAN: Can I finish? That was a decision by congressional leaders.

Q But if he did have two different, contradictory statements under oath, shouldn't he be prosecuted for perjury?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to get into speculating about that. We've made our views very well-known. I think most Americans view Dick Clarke and his contradictions as yesterday's story. This is about the war on terrorism and the important role that the 9/11 Commission plays in helping us move forward in the war on terrorism. We have taken significant steps since September 11th to make sure we are doing everything we can to prevent another attack from happening. And the work of the 9/11 Commission is very important, particularly if they can help provide us additional recommendations, beyond what we've already done, that would help prevent another attack from happening.

Q Can I stay on that subject -- we need to stay on that subject, briefly. Could you explain to us why the White House requested that the President and Vice President jointly answer questions, as opposed to separately?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one, we've said from the very beginning that it's important for the 9/11 Commission to have all the information they need to do their job. And we've worked very closely and cooperatively with the 9/11 Commission to make sure they have all that information. We have provided, as the Chairman and Vice Chairman have pointed out, unprecedented access to information from the administration to the 9/11 Commission, including our most sensitive national security documents. And that's the spirit in which we have worked.

Now, keep in mind that the 9/11 Commission already has more than 2.3 million pages of documents, there have been more than a hundred briefings, and that includes at the head-of-agency level, there have been more than 800 interviews and meetings with administration officials, some 900 audio cassette tapes of meetings and other materials that have been provided to them, and more than 60 compact discs of radar, flight and other information. So they already have a lot of information. And we want to work in a way that helps make sure that they have the information they need.

The commission very much welcomed the decision of the President and the Vice President to sit down together and meet with the entire commission and answer whatever questions they want to raise with the President and Vice President. This is a good way to make sure that they're getting the information that they need to do their job.

Q Why the specific insistence that they be together? I mean, they could --

MR. McCLELLAN: This is a good way to help them get the information they need and do so in a timely manner. Remember, they've already got a lot of the information, they've already conducted a lot of the interviews. And what they're trying to --

Q But they were separate interviews, right?

MR. McCLELLAN: What they're trying to do is get the information they need to complete their work and provide a full report to the American people. And we are helping every step of the way. And this is a way that will help them move forward in those efforts.

Q But why is the joint session better than separate sessions, which is what they --

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one, it will help make sure they get that information in a timely manner. They can talk to both of them and help better understand how to piece together all the information that they've already received.

~snip~

I included the part about Bush and Cheney appearing together because Clarke chose to whine about it on Hardball. Love the phrasing about "Dick Clarke and his contradictions". Sounds like a band!

[Howlin]

From Larry King Live last night:

SHAYS: No, I won't read a letter. I just -- I want to say, I have no ill will against Richard Clarke, but I am troubled that I feel he's rewriting history. He came before my committee, we had 20 hearings before September 11, 2001. And he came in in a closed-door meeting, we asked him what our strategy was to combat terrorism and he said it would be silly to have a strategy. We know who the bad guys are and we go after them. And we were so stunned by it. We wrote him a letter a few days later saying, what do you mean it's silly. And asking him to explain what our strategy was. What I would have liked to have asked him was, during the eight years he was there, what was the strategy -- first off, what was the assessment of the terrorist threat that all three commissions said that we needed to develop. What was our strategy. And I don't think there was one. The commission's asked for it. And the administrations of both parties should have produced it.

And I loved this part:

SCHIEFFER: Well, I'll tell you, Larry, I think that all of us were slow to recognize this threat of terrorism. When Bill Clinton first began firing those cruise missiles into the Sudan, and into Afghanistan, he was immediately challenged. People wondered, is he doing this to distract and to try to divert attention from Monica Lewinsky. Every one of his actions at that point, rightly or wrongly, were being questioned. I think that had Monica Lewinsky had not come along, I think all of us might have come to understand the threat of terrorism a lot quicker than we did. I think we were all slow to recognize this.


Again:

SCHIEFFER: Well, I think there were questions about President Clinton's credibility. As I was just saying a while ago. I think the whole Monica Lewinsky thing brought into question the president's judgment. He was questioned about everything he did. And I think perhaps because of that, perhaps some of the things that the Clinton people did pass on to the Bush people were not taken -- I don't want to say were not taken seriously, but perhaps they were questioned in the beginning.

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/30/lkl.00.html