Sunday, March 21, 2004
Richard Clarke on 60 Minutes.
Pretty damning stuff.
I'm sure some will be claiming, as discussed in the interview, that Clarke was "disgruntled" because his cabinet-level counter-terrorism czar position was reduced to a staff-level position. But if anything the fact that *the position was devalued* tells us all we need to know about how much a priority counter-terrorism was in the pre-9/11 days of the administration.
The other interesting item brought up, that we don't hear much about, was that in the early days of December 1999, when Al-Qaeda "chatter" was prevalent, Clinton called for daily urgent staff meetings on the threat, and later that month, the planned Al-Qaeda attack on LAX on 12-31-99 was foiled. When the "chatter" got hot again in the summer of 2001, the same prioritizing of counter-terrorism didn't take place.
So far in response, at least as was presented on the show, all we have are the blandishments that "terrorism was a priority" and that to think it wasn't is "absurd". Hopefully, we'll hear a detailed response or rebuttal to Clarke instead of a plan to discredit the man, but I'm not holding my breath.
I'm sure we'll hear a lot about how he's trying to sell a book (which he is), but again just because he's promoting a book doesn't mean the book is untrue.
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I'm sure some will be claiming, as discussed in the interview, that Clarke was "disgruntled" because his cabinet-level counter-terrorism czar position was reduced to a staff-level position. But if anything the fact that *the position was devalued* tells us all we need to know about how much a priority counter-terrorism was in the pre-9/11 days of the administration.
The other interesting item brought up, that we don't hear much about, was that in the early days of December 1999, when Al-Qaeda "chatter" was prevalent, Clinton called for daily urgent staff meetings on the threat, and later that month, the planned Al-Qaeda attack on LAX on 12-31-99 was foiled. When the "chatter" got hot again in the summer of 2001, the same prioritizing of counter-terrorism didn't take place.
So far in response, at least as was presented on the show, all we have are the blandishments that "terrorism was a priority" and that to think it wasn't is "absurd". Hopefully, we'll hear a detailed response or rebuttal to Clarke instead of a plan to discredit the man, but I'm not holding my breath.
I'm sure we'll hear a lot about how he's trying to sell a book (which he is), but again just because he's promoting a book doesn't mean the book is untrue.
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