March 22, 2004
Coming out of the woodwork
Like rats jumping off a burning ship, an election year must seem to be a nice cleansing moment for Washington D.C., with their own version of the ship-board vermin leaving town to write books and blast whoever is currently in power, such as Clinton and Bush terror advisor Richard Clarke has recently done. The real trick for America is trying to tell just who the heck is telling the truth, and who doesn’t mind playing hard and fast with the truth in order to sell books. While not at all easy, little clues will appear that often put us in the right direction.
While I was certainly no fan of President Clinton, I also could not finish Unlimited Access by Gary Aldrich. Whether he was telling the truth or not, I don't know. But his writing seemed to harp on what seemed to me to be petty grievances, mixed in with a bunch of outlandish, hard to believe ones (pornographic Christmas tree decorations?). In wasn't Clinton's attack machine, but rather Aldrich's own words that put me off and made me look at the author himself with one eyebrow raised. The truth seemed secondary to what seemed to be a personal campaign of 'shock and awe'.
The upcoming book by Clarke, to me, has set off the same red flags. First, some major Democrats, never known for ignoring political expediency, especially in an election year, have refused to go along with some of the conclusions drawn by Clarke. Next, this close associate of Kerry 's foreign policy advisor Rand Beers, queries, "One shudders to think what additional errors (Bush) will make in the next four years...". Hmm.. Geez, wondering about that during an election year, huh? No, no, I believe you have no ulterior motive here.
Finally comes the allegation that National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice did not seem to know who al-Qaida was. This is the pornographic Christmas ornament of 2004. The allegation is ridiculous enough that it shines the light of inquiry back on the author, not on the subject of his 'tell-all'.
I think the Bush hating nuts wing of the Democrat party will laud this book, with superlatives as 'scary', a 'shock to the system', a 'beacon of truth', much as the Clinton haters lauded Aldrich's book back when it came out. But to me, both books are cut out of the same cloth, a cloth where the most revealing passages were written in invisible ink.
Watching him on 60 minutes yesterday, I did not think Clarke came off as particularly petty or unbelievable. What he said was certainly surprising, and delivered with bitterness, but he did provide specific facts and evidence to support his conclusions.
I think you’re overblowing the connection with Beers - he teaches a course at Harvard with the guy. If working side by side with someone makes you a close associate, then wouldn’t Clarke be a close associate of many in the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II Administrations, since he worked in all four?
Finally, the most compelling argument Clarke made was that when the Clinton Administration recieved “chatter” intelligence, they responded by holding meetings every other day with the Director of the CIA, the Director of the FBI, Clarke, and the NSA, where each had to tell the President what they personally had done to stop this attack. This strategy, called “battle stations,” successfully thwarted the January 1st, 2001 attempted Al Qaeda bombing of LAX. When the Bush Adminstration received the same kind of chatter intelligence before 9/11, they responded not by going to “battle stations,” but by demoting the position of Coordinator of Counter-terrorism from Cabinet level to staff level and refusing to hold a cabinet level meeting with Clarke until 1 week prior to 9/11. That’s some compelling information.
Those assertions look pretty strong in the face of weak refutations by the Deputy National Security Advisor, who is responsible for the public claims about Iraq buying Nuclear materials from Niger. Still, I’ll reserve my final judgement until I actually READ the book.
Posted by: Adam Elend at March 22, 2004 10:27 AMWhen you consider the standard operating condition of the federal bureaucracy (don’t contradict the boss its bad for your career). Then add in the forces that drive the election process and the resulting quality of presidential candidates (both republican and democrat). Is it really surprising that we end up with obsessed egomaniacs that don’t what to be bothered by impending doom and timid bureaucrats that don’t want to rock the boat? I would take an extraordinary bureaucrat to force a new president away from his personal agenda and onto a subject that has never previously occurred.
September 11 was so unprecedented and bush was so new at the job you could have shown him videos of the bomber describing the plot in detail and he would have ignored it. As would any president in a similar situation.
I didn’t get any pettiness from that interview. He’s angry, certainly, but that is justified.
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at March 22, 2004 12:34 PMI find it hard to discount Clark’s version of event given the level of smugness and arrogance emanating from the Bush White House like a unwelcome order from a swamp. The almost daily stream of allegations of falsehoods perpetrated by the Administration should give every American pause.
I too watched the interview and came away lauding Clark’s courage for telling the American public the truth. I totally discount Ms. Rice’s version of events as white wash upon an already sullied canvas. Being new the job is not an excuse for negligence, and incompetence. Bush is the President; it a tough job, one he was never the measure of a man to occupy. How many more people have to yell at the top pf their lungs that he sucks (for lack of a better more descriptive term), before the loyalist put the good of the country before politics and asinine self interests? Better yet, how many more Americans have to die while Bush, the Average Joe plays at being President? We are already at some 4,000…
Here, here, Edward.
If it was only this one guy, I would discount it and give the Administration the benefit of the doubt. But people have been talking about a “credibility gap” with this Administration for over a year now. The stack of negative material about Bush is overwhelming, and corraborated from too many different sources. After the Medicare malfeasance, I find it hard to give Bush the benefit of the doubt on anything.
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at March 22, 2004 10:57 PMBlix, Kay, and Clark make a credible group of folks crying about the emperor’s new clothes. Add to that the growing number of GOP Senators and Rep’s dissenting on domestic issues, it would appear the Pres. does have a credibility problem and it ain’t going away - it just keeps getting worse.
Posted by: David R. Remer at March 23, 2004 02:30 AMAlthough I am a dyed-in-the-wool Bush hater (as anyone can tell by looking at my blog), I must confess that I feel rather ambivalent about this whole affair. If Bush had fired Clarke right away and replaced him with an incompetent lapdog crony then Bush wouldn’t be experiencing the problem that he is now. I fear that in the future newly-elected presidents will look back at what is happening now and be afraid to hold onto prickly, independent professionals like Clarke.
Another thing that bothers me is the similarity to Dick Morris, who got fired by Clinton and has since made a career of going on Fox and trashing him. There is a fine line between being a whistleblower and a rat, and Morris is on the wrong side in my book. I don’t know about Clarke yet.
On the flip side, it is appropriate that we are finally debating whether Bush could have prevented 9/11. I just wish the issue hadn’t come to the forefront this way.
Posted by: Woody Mena at March 23, 2004 06:57 AMThanks everyone for all the comments. I can’t respond to them all, at least right now, but wish I could. :)
Adam, you make some good points, no doubt. Perhaps I am overblowing the connection to Beers, but even if it is a small item, it’s one small item mixed with many others, all leaning in the direction of straining credibility. We can have no doubt that when writing a book, there is a strong and direct monetary motivation to be flashy and controversial. Usually that includes stretching the truth or obliterating it entirely. You can’t say that’s happening here necessarily, but neither can we ignore it.
V Edward, you state that you applaud Clarke for ‘telling the truth’ and totally discount what Condi Rice has said as a ‘white wash’. I would sure be interested in hearing why you completely embrace one and completely reject another. Both have strong motivations to make themselves look as good as possible, AND to make the other look as bad as possible. And I’m assuming that since you’re laying blame for the deaths of 4000 people on the inaction during President Bush’s first 8 months in office, you would support the notion that Clinton is almost criminally responsible for those deaths as well as thousands more for doing NOTHING for eight YEARS in office, while all that time the WTC was bombed, the USS Cole was bombed, Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies, UBL declaring war on us, etc? al-qaeda became a terrorist organization, trained thousands of people, and hatched ALL of these plots, including 9/11, under Bill Clinton’s watch. How can that possibly be George Bush’s fault?
Thanks again for the comments! I love these chances for debate…
I fear that in the future newly-elected presidents will look back at what is happening now and be afraid to hold onto prickly, independent professionals like Clarke.
Actually, Woody, there has been a steady stream of experienced, lifelong government servants, “independent professionals”, forced out or resigning in disgust because of the Bush administration’s actions. Clarke may not actually be all that “prickly”.
Perhaps it’s just that the Bush administration’s policies are so mind-bogglingly divergent from rationality that future presidents won’t immediately think that Bush is any kind of relevant precendent.
-Cf
