{"id":1523,"date":"2004-04-05T12:55:47","date_gmt":"2004-04-05T17:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1523.html"},"modified":"2004-04-05T12:55:47","modified_gmt":"2004-04-05T17:55:47","slug":"richard-clarkes-charges-corroborated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/richard-clarkes-charges-corroborated\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Clarke’s charges corroborated"},"content":{"rendered":"

There were several important, must-read articles published over the weekend, but one of my favorites was a front-page item in the Washington Post<\/a> about Richard Clarke’s criticisms of the Bush White House’s handling of the terrorist threat.<\/p>\n

As the White House and Bush’s allies have attacked Clarke, the dynamic has taken on a he said\/he said feel. Clarke has charged the administration with being asleep at the wheel; the White House has said Clarke is disgruntled and was “out of the loop.” This is, in theory, supposed to be an example of competing versions of the same story.<\/p>\n

The Post report, however, noted that Clarke’s charges — unlike the White House’s counterattacks — have been bolstered by others.<\/p>\n

[T]he broad outline of Clarke’s criticism has been corroborated by a number of other former officials, congressional and commission investigators, and by Bush’s admission in the 2003 Bob Woodward book “Bush at War” that he “didn’t feel that sense of urgency” about Osama bin Laden before the attacks occurred.<\/p>\n

In addition, a review of dozens of declassified citations from Clarke’s 2002 testimony provides no evidence of contradiction, and White House officials familiar with the testimony agree that any differences are matters of emphasis, not fact. Indeed, the declassified 838-page report of the 2002 congressional inquiry includes many passages that appear to bolster the arguments Clarke has made.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nThe Post article does note some trivial debates over minor details Clarke outlined in his book. The article, however, explains that “Clarke’s alleged misrepresentations are largely peripheral to his central argument about Bush’s lack of attention to terrorism before Sept. 11.”<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of useful information here, but here’s another key section:<\/p>\n

The joint committee’s declassified report, released last July, contains dozens of quotations and references to Clarke’s testimony, and none appears to contradict the former White House counterterrorism chief’s testimony last month. In its July 2003 report, the congressional panel cited Clark’s “uncertain mandate to coordinate Bush administration policy on terrorism and specifically on bin Laden.” It also said that because Bush officials did not begin their major counterterrorism policy review until April 2001, “significant slippage in counterterrorism policy may have taken place in late 2000 and early 2001.”<\/p>\n

Eleanor Hill, staff director of the House-Senate intelligence committee inquiry, said last week that she heard some of Clarke’s March 24 presentation before the 9\/11 commission and remembered his six-hour, closed-door appearance.<\/p>\n

“I was there,” she said of Clarke’s 2002 testimony, “and without a transcript I can’t have a final conclusion, but nothing jumped out at me, no contradiction” between what he said last month and his testimony almost two years ago. She also noted that Rice refused to be interviewed by the joint intelligence panel, citing executive privilege.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which reminds me; we’re still waiting for word from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on whether he’ll apologize to Clarke for accusing him of perjury<\/a>. Looks like Frist climbed out on a limb without thinking about how he’d get back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There were several important, must-read articles published over the weekend, but one of my favorites was a front-page item in the Washington Post about Richard Clarke’s criticisms of the Bush White House’s handling of the terrorist threat. As the White House and Bush’s allies have attacked Clarke, the dynamic has taken on a he said\/he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}