Little Green Footballs - Clarke's Legacy of Miscalculation

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-♻RetweetClarke's Legacy of Miscalculation

Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 11:20:01 am PST

The man who was all over CBS’s 60 Minutes last night alleging that President Bush “ignored” terrorism before September 11, Richard Clarke, is known in the information security business for hyping the danger of cyberattacks—even as real terrorist threats developed elsewhere: Richard Clarke’s Legacy of Miscalculation.

With his retirement, Clarke’s career accomplishments should be noted.

In 1986, as a State Department bureaucrat with pull, he came up with a plan to battle terrorism and subvert Muammar Qaddafi by having SR-71s produce sonic booms over Libya. This was to be accompanied by rafts washing onto the sands of Tripoli, the aim of which was to create the illusion of a coming attack. When this nonsense was revealed, it created embarrassment for the Reagan administration and was buried.

In 1998, according to the New Republic, Clarke “played a key role in the Clinton administration’s misguided retaliation for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which targeted bin Laden’s terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.” The pharmaceutical factory was, apparently, just a pharmaceutical factory, and we now know how impressed bin Laden was by cruise missiles that miss.

Trying his hand in cyberspace, Clarke’s most lasting contribution is probably the new corporate exemption in the Freedom of Information Act. Originally designed to immunize companies against the theoretical malicious use of FOIA by competitors, journalists and other so-called miscreants interested in ferreting out cyber-vulnerabilities, it was suggested well before the war on terror as a measure that would increase corporate cooperation with Uncle Sam. Clarke labored and lobbied diligently from the NSC for this amendment to existing law, law which he frequently referred to as an “impediment” to information sharing.

While the exemption would inexplicably not pass during the Clinton administration, Clarke and other like-minded souls kept pushing for it. Finally, the national nervous breakdown that resulted from the collapse of the World Trade Center reframed the exemption as a grand idea, and it was embraced by legislators, who even expanded it to give a get-out-of-FOIA-free card to all of corporate America, not just those involved with the cyber-infrastructure. It passed into law as part of the legislation forming the Department of Homeland Security.

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32 comments

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Frank IBC Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:22:39am

Drudge is also reporting that CBS did NOT report the fact that this book is published by Simon & Schuster, which, like CBS, is a unit of Viacom.

Phoersst?

Frank IBC Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:24:01am

What I find most intriguing about Mr. Clarke's allegations, is that he ADMITS (albeit indirectly) that the first World Trade Center bombing was an Iraqi operation.

FH Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:26:25am

Seems like someone who just doesn' know when to quit...

lawhawk Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:29:31am

#1 FrankIBC,

You mean there might be a conflict of interests and that the hyping of Clarke's claims are for personal gain of a corporate interest.

Of course Clarke wants to slam BushCo. He was canned for inadequately dealing with the terrorist problems. If he thought al Qaeda was such a serious problem, how come he didn't sing from the highest mountains and tallest buildings (WTC anyone?) about the dangers of al Qaeda. Instead he claims the administration buried its head in the sand about the issue.

Wasn't it part of his job to make sure that wasn't the case, yet everything about this stinks - Clarke didn't do his job under Clinton or Bush, yet Bush kept him on for some time (although in a diminished capacity).

Bureaucracy in motion.

sgt striker Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:30:56am

The media makes me wanna puke. The guy runs around for 12 years as the terror Czar in the USA and then blames Bush for a terror attack from a network he allowed to develop under his own nose. I wish one media pussy would ask the guy why he did nothing for 12 years and then ends up writing a book to blame someone else for his inaction. This guy is a real wuss. Ignore him.

ralph Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:36:03am

Remember Paul O'Neill? Guess who his publisher was?

by Suskind Ron ISBN: 0-7432-5545-3 Category: Politics/Economics Publisher: Simon Schuster Inc

[Link: www.page1book.com...]

Gee I'm sensing a trend here S&S sells Bush slamming books, then the authors show up on 60 minutes and then the money flows to Viacom.

Rednek Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:36:04am

What Clinton did and didn't do about terrorism

Showstoppers

Tim K Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:38:36am

I wanted to vomit this morning listening to the news that some Clark charactor was going to make Bush look like shit on Iraq.
Thank you for the article.
I hope this guy get bodyslammed in the media over the next few days.
Maybe Rumsfelt can make a quip about this guy getting canned for incompetance.

Cousin Dave Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:41:38am

There is one thing that confuses me about this: the bit about the "corporate get-out-of-FOIA-free card". Either I'm confused and this isn't saying what I think it says, or some clueless liberal wrote that bit. The FOIA does not and has never applied to corporations.

hellcat Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:44:30am

Sour grapes. He wanted (and probably expected) to be appointed as Secretary of Homeland Security.

Spiny Norman Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:52:18am

#8 Tim K

I hope this guy get bodyslammed in the media over the next few days.

Not gonna happen. Quite the opposite: he'll be paraded about by the Democrats and their allies in the media as their knight-in-shining-armor that will finally give them their "Watergate" and then fade away when his claims fail to gain any traction with the public, just like Paul O'Neill.

andthenblammo! Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:53:07am

And, to further piss Clarke off, Charles Durning will play him in the made-for-TV movie.

Charles Durning

Buckaroo Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:58:48am

#10

If he actually thought that, he would be:

1) more egotistical than most in Washington (a difficult feat, that)

2) capable of delusional thought even more batty than his Libya idea ...

tyelperion Mon, Mar 22, 2004 10:04:56am

Frank IBC,

I didn't see the 60 minutes interview last night - where and how exactly did Clarke "ADMIT (albeit indirectly) that the first World Trade Center bombing was an Iraqi operation"?
I ask merely as someone with bad TV reception.

fireman Mon, Mar 22, 2004 10:10:59am

This link is from Newsmax, so the liberals at LGF may question it, but they cite no less than ABC News Bush-hater Terry Moran for Clarke's links to Kerry:

[Link: www.newsmax.com...]

lawhawk Mon, Mar 22, 2004 10:13:31am

#14:

From the cbsnews website 60 Minutes segment last nite:

For the Pentagon, it was Paul Wolfowitz.

Clarke relates, "I began saying, 'We have to deal with bin Laden; we have to deal with al Qaeda.' Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, 'No, no, no. We don't have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.'

"And I said, 'Paul, there hasn't been any Iraqi terrorism against the United States in eight years!' (emphasis added) And I turned to the deputy director of the CIA and said, 'Isn't that right?' And he said, 'Yeah, that's right. There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States."

Clarke went on to add, "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever."

There is no statute of limitations for correcting the wrongs of not going after Iraq back then. The time period that 8 year period would put it roughly in 1993 - which happens to coincide with the WTC attack.

Model4 Mon, Mar 22, 2004 10:13:42am

Yeah, and Clarke saw such serious problems that he has no choice but to sit on them until election year. But after Khobar Towers, embassy bombings, WTC I and the USS Cole, everything was being handled just fine and dandy.

His complaint is apparently that the Bush administration took seriously the Clinton-era (and Kerry supported) American policy of regime change in Iraq, yet waited til after the Taliban and Al Qaeda were routed in Afghanistan to act upon it. Thereby proving that the War on Iraq was a distraction from Afghanistan that was invented by Bush the moment he took office, and acted upon immediately.

What a massive tool.

lawhawk Mon, Mar 22, 2004 10:14:09am

fyi - link for above quote:

[Link: www.cbsnews.com...]

Jana Mon, Mar 22, 2004 10:14:15am

This may backfire on the Democrats. I wonder who will come across better at the 9/11 commission interviews this week. Rumsfeldt and Powell or Clark and Albright? Seems a no brainer to me. Rummy and Powell will eat them alive.

Glen Wishard Mon, Mar 22, 2004 10:15:16am

Interesting to note: Clarke was an admirer of Steve Emerson, and called him "The Paul Revere of Terrorism."

Richard Clarke. Former head of NSC Counterterrorism, in a feature article on Emerson in Brown Alumni Magazine (November-December 2002), said, "'I think of Steve as the Paul Revere of terrorism… [Clarke] credits Emerson with repeatedly warning of Al Qaeda sleeper cells in the United States. He adds that he would attend Emerson's speeches whenever possible because 'we'd always learn things we weren't hearing from the FBI or CIA, things which almost always proved to be true.'"

I wouldn't bet green money on this friendship, though, when Clarke joins the Chomsky crowd. Steve won't be welcome at their cocktail parties.

Glen Wishard Mon, Mar 22, 2004 10:19:14am

#20 - addition;

I also wouldn't bet green money on the NYT running a story that says "IS EVERYTHING STEPHEN EMERSON SAYS TRUE? Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke says it is ..."

torchy Mon, Mar 22, 2004 10:50:49am

I watched that shill invoke CIA intelligence as reasoning for not invading Iraq, the same CIA that touted Saddams continuing WMD capabilities. I believe here are still open questions about Saddams connections to terrorism on American soil beyond WTC I. Why would Saddam stop with WTC I being an obvious question. Some possible outstanding connections include OKC bombing, TWA 800, etc, up to and including 911.

BPP Mon, Mar 22, 2004 11:53:25am

Gee I'm sensing a trend here S&S sells Bush slamming books, then the authors show up on 60 minutes and then the money flows to Viacom.

Duh! Welcome to the world of the media conglomerate! If I'm a Viacom shareholder, I'd be pissed if this weren't happening.

I see its the typical open season on anyone who bashes the Bush Admin. publicly. Are you all that insecure about Bush's re-election prospects?

debriefed Mon, Mar 22, 2004 12:47:36pm

all, in the biz, we used to call this "preemptive strike with prejudice". the pitiful being is just trying to sell his book and sow some seeds of doubt before he gets destroyed on cspan this week.

i'm suprised that the dems don't just have him whacked? do they really think they can spin this or cover it up? toricelli HAS to be in open session, if hannity and rush can talk about it, right?

Jack Frost Mon, Mar 22, 2004 1:36:40pm

Charles, please return to objectivity. Surely you admit that Clarke's descenting opinion is of some value other than "moonbat-crazed bush hatred ranting" or whatever.

Geepers Mon, Mar 22, 2004 1:51:34pm

Jack Frost (#25),

It's not the descenting opinion. Anyone with half a brain values that. It's the content of Clark's "descenting" opinion, which relies on people having half a brain to accept it a valid criticism.

TalkinKamel Mon, Mar 22, 2004 2:17:15pm

#25 Jack Frost

Given his less than impressive record in battling terrorism, and the fact that he's waited until an election year to suddenly start accusing Bush of manuevering the country into attacking Iraq instead---yeah, I pretty much discount his dissenting opinion. I think it's self-serving, and done to help the democrats.

Grunter Mon, Mar 22, 2004 5:05:19pm

Harking back to Clarke's CV and the bombing of the Sudanese "pharmaceutical factory"- does anyone else think that it is simply unbelievable that the Sudan government, up to its neck in genocide, would bother making medicine?

energyforcapital Mon, Mar 22, 2004 5:13:15pm

I'm glad I remembered to look at this. The man definitely knows his colloquialisms.

e-effing-c

azul93gt Mon, Mar 22, 2004 5:18:43pm

According to this Clark character. Iraq was basically just an innocent country with no attachments to any terrorism, and Bush just attacked them out of the clear Blue.

When you listen to the people that work in important security related positions like this guy Clark and the other guy, Plame's husband, it's a miracle that we haven't suffered worse terrorist attacks. This idiot Clark didn't have the guts to go after an avowed enemy of the USA and terrorist state, which is what Iraq was. This clown Clark should never have been in that position. A position like that requires aggressiveness and the willingness to root out all potential sectors of terrorism. This guy refused to even consider Iraq's involvement in global terror.

KT Mon, Mar 22, 2004 6:12:48pm

I just wonder what rock this slug has been hiding under for 2-1/2 years. He obviously has not been too worried about how Bush has been dealing with terrorism. He got canned and he is getting his revenge.

sub_version Mon, Mar 22, 2004 9:46:32pm

Let's be a little bit fair - Clarke doesn't know a goddamn thing about the real dangers (and lacks thereof) of cyber-terrorism, but neither does anyone else who's come through Washington lately that I've seen. There are some good people working in cyber-security in the military and intel communities, and even at lower levels of the more political aspects of government, but the people up top are just out of their league when it comes to these issues.