When Rand Beers, Bush’s special assistant to the president for combating terrorism at the National Security Council, resigned in frustration over the administration’s attitude about the terrorist threat, he was dismissed as a disgruntled partisan. When Richard Clarke, Bush’s principle counterterrorism czar, came forward to criticize the White House for not taking the threat seriously, he, too, was dismissed as a disgruntled partisan.
It turns out there are a whole lot of disgruntled partisans in government these days.
Reuters ran an interesting item yesterday noting a “staff exodus” among counterterrorism officials, all of whom left the White House because of the same frustrations expressed by Clarke and Beers. Considering the number of people and the scope of their concerns, it’s impossible to simply dismiss the whole lot as angry employees with axes to grind.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism.
Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1/2 years since the attacks.
Some also left because they felt President Bush had sidelined his counterterrorism experts and paid almost exclusive heed to the vice president, the defense secretary and other Cabinet members in planning the “war on terror,” former counterterrorism officials said.
“I’m kind of hoping for regime change,” one official who quit told Reuters.
The exodus is not without consequences.
The attrition among all levels of the Office for Combating Terrorism began shortly after the attacks and continued into this year. At least eight officials in the office — which numbers a dozen people — have left and been replaced since 9/11. Several of the officials were contacted by Reuters.
The office has been run by four different people since the attacks, and at least three have held the No. 2 slot.
“There has been excessively high turnover in the Office for Combating Terrorism,” said Flynt Leverett, who served on the White House National Security Council for about a year until March 2003 and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.
“If you take the (White House) counterterrorism and Middle East offices, you’ve got about a dozen people … who came to this administration wanting to work on these important issues and left after a year or often less because they just don’t think that this administration is dealing seriously with the issues that matter,” he said.