Back in March, in a classic example of GOP McCarthyism, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist effectively accused Richard Clarke of perjury.
“Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath. In July 2002, in front of the Congressional Joint Inquiry on the September 11 attacks, Mr. Clarke testified under oath that the [Bush] Administration actively sought to address the threat posed by al Qaeda during its first seven months in office.
“Mr. President, it is one thing for Mr. Clarke to dissemble in front of the media. But if he lied under oath to the United States Congress it is a far more serious matter.”
The McCarthy-like twist was simple: we couldn’t see Clarke’s original testimony, which was classified. Frist could accuse a veteran public official of a serious crime, but there was no way to check the veracity of his claim. We were just supposed to take Frist’s word for it, though, as Frist later admitted, he never even saw the original Clarke testimony before he slandered him on the Senate floor.
We’ve known for a long while that Clarke’s charges against the Bush White House have been proven correct, but to help take on Frist’s attacks, Clarke’s 2002 testimony has also been released. Again, Clarke was right and the GOP smear machine was wrong.
Frist insisted that Clarke’s 2002 testimony explained that Bush “actively sought to address the threat posed by al Qaeda during its first seven months in office.” Clarke had said no such thing.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Clarke’s recently declassified testimony from 2002 is effusive in its praise of the Bush administration’s efforts targeting al-Qaida before the Sept. 11 attacks.
The declassified version neither criticizes nor strongly praises the Bush administration. It focuses instead primarily on the Clinton administration.
“I believed it was important to recognize that Mr. Clarke’s character was unfairly attacked for political purposes,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who worked with the Senate Intelligence Committee to have the testimony released. “A detailed review shows that his testimony is not inconsistent with his testimony before the 9/11 Commission.”
In a just world, there’d be some consequence when a high-ranking government official viciously smears a dedicated public servant with bogus attacks. But this is Bush’s America, where accountability and responsibility are meaningless and Republican leaders can levy outrageous attacks with impunity. Clarke won’t even get an apology, though Frist obviously owes him one.
But as long as we’re talking about Clarke’s testimony, now might be a good time to point another important tidbit from Clarke: Bill Clinton took the terrorist threat seriously while George W. Bush did not.
The Clinton administration was deeply concerned in 2000 that al-Qaida sleeper cells existed in North America and considered ways to move against them, according to newly released testimony.
[…]
[Clarke testified that in] the Clinton years, “there were people in the administration who were very seized with this issue, beginning with the president. … It is very rare in my experience when the president of the United States picks an issue after his administration has begun, because the world has changed, and says, this is a priority, guys. … If 9/11 hadn’t happened, I think historians could go back and look at what the Clinton administration did … and say, ‘boy, were those guys overreacting.'”
Of course, as we now know, Clinton and Clarke weren’t overreacting; Bush and his team didn’t take the threat seriously enough.