On CNN’s American Morning show today, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice laid a serious smackdown on anti-Bush would-be whistleblower Richard Clarke. Here’s the transcript.

O’BRIEN: In addition to that urgent memo, he talks about requesting cabinet-level meetings over eight months, denied each and every time until a week before 9/11. Are those charges true?

RICE: Dick Clarke in that memo responded to my request for initiatives that we ought to be undertaking. And what he did was after we had all been briefed on the al Qaeda threat and understood what the Clinton administration had been doing, he wanted another meeting. I didn’t think another meeting was necessary. The principals knew what the threat was. What we needed was a strategy.

And what Dick Clarke gave me in that memorandum was a series of ideas, a series of steps, most of which, by the way, we did within a matter of months — steps like trying to accelerate the arming of the Predator, steps like increasing counterterrorism funding, increasing counterterrorism support to Uzbekistan. These were steps that he said would bring — would roll back al Qaeda over a three to five-year period. This was not going to address the — quote — “urgent threat” of September 11.

We did ask Dick Clarke for a more comprehensive strategy, one that would not just seek to roll back al Qaeda, but would seek to eliminate al Qaeda that would have real military options, not just options of pinprick strikes against training camps that had already been abandoned. We asked for a strategy that could be effectively funded. We increased intelligence activities by a factor of three in the strategy that was developed.

So, that’s what Dick Clarke was supposed to be doing. At the same time, he was to continue the Clinton administration strategy until we got a new strategy in place.

But what’s very interesting is that, of course, Dick Clarke was the counterterrorism czar in 1998 when the embassies were bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar in 2000 when the Cole was bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar for a period of the ‘90s when al Qaeda was strengthening and when the plots that ended up in September 11 were being hatched.

The fact is, we needed a new strategy, and that’s what we asked Dick Clarke to give us.

This is another one of those gossamer controversies of which the left is so fond; look closely at them and they fade away into thin air.