The CBS 60 Minutes Richard Clarke Interview

Why so secretive?

On April 27, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case known as Cheney vs. U.S. District Court, involving the secrecy of the vice president's task force that brought together government officials with energy industry representatives to craft the nation's energy policy in 2001. Cheney has fought the release of his task force-related documents all the way to the high court. (Follow the trail of legal briefs here.) But why so secretive? Is this just part of an administration secrecy fetish, or is there something really damaging in those papers? Say, revelations about a link between military plans in Iraq and the task force's mission of increasing sources of foreign oil for the United States?

For a glimpse of what might be in those sealed energy task force documents, let's revisit Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece on Cheney from last monthNY Link. This explosive excerpt didn't get too much press elsewhere, but it could, in the end, be what this task force legal drama is all about. "For months there has been a debate in Washington about when the Bush Administration decided to go to war against Saddam. In Ron Suskind's recent book 'The Price of Loyalty,' former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill charges that Cheney agitated for U.S. intervention well before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Additional evidence that Cheney played an early planning role is contained in a previously undisclosed National Security Council document, dated February 3, 2001. The top-secret document, written by a high-level N.S.C. official, concerned Cheney's newly formed Energy Task Force. It directed the N.S.C. staff to coöperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: 'the review of operational policies towards rogue states,' such as Iraq, and 'actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.'"

"A source who worked at the N.S.C. at the time doubted that there were links between Cheney's Energy Task Force and the overthrow of Saddam. But Mark Medish, who served as senior director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian affairs at the N.S.C. during the Clinton Administration, told me that he regards the document as potentially 'huge.' He said, 'People think Cheney's Energy Task Force has been secretive about domestic issues,' referring to the fact that the Vice-President has been unwilling to reveal information about private task-force meetings that took place in 2001, when information was being gathered to help develop President Bush's energy policy. 'But if this little group was discussing geostrategic plans for oil, it puts the issue of war in the context of the captains of the oil industry sitting down with Cheney and laying grand, global plans.'"

"Something strange is going on, and Dave smells a cover up. CNN is now saying the White House never called them. But why would CNN say the White House HAD called if the White House never did? Hmmm. And Dave reveals that our source, a very good source, confirms the White House DID call the CNN.

and on the David Letterman child snoozing as Bush speaks item...

Quote:

"Something strange is going on, and Dave smells a cover up. CNN is now saying the White House never called them. But why would CNN say the White House HAD called if the White House never did? Hmmm. And Dave reveals that our source, a very good source, confirms the White House DID call the CNN.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html/index.html#cnn

Clarke's Lesson for the Media

By STAN SAGER

April 4, 2004 -- RICHARD Clarke is sorry. Any American who read a newspaper or watched TV after the former White House anti-terrorism chief testified before the 9/11 commission knows that.

But just as it fell to Clarke to make unauthorized amends to those supposedly wronged by the Bush administration, it now falls to another innocent to apologize to the American public: We, your media, failed you. Those entrusted with informing you failed you - we tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed.

The media almost uniformly let the public know about Clarke's apology, and about his belief that the war in Iraq has been a distraction from the War on Terror. But there was almost complete silence when it came to his other confession.

Under hostile questioning, Clarke admitted that nothing he said or suggested while he was at the White House could even conceivably have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

The press corps top priority, it seems, was getting out word that Clarke implicitly blames President Bush for 9/11. But somehow his confession that Bush would have had virtually no way of preventing 9/11 was not only not urgent - it wasn't even important enough for most media outlets to mention.

Let's go to the tape - paying particular attention to the local media market in New York City, the site of the most deadly terrorist attack in America's history.

The Post reviewed the evening news broadcasts from New York City's six major local stations (CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, UPN, WB) and found that only one even mentioned Clarke's confession: ABC, at the tail end of its report.

Further, the Daily News, Newsday and the New York Times all failed to mention Clarke's confession in their stories the day after he testified. (Even The Post consigned mention of Clarke's statement to an editorial.)

The national networks fared a bit better, according to reports by the Media Research Center - but only a bit.

NBC's David Gregory, to his credit, mentioned Clarke's doubts that 9/11 could have been stopped right up top of his March 24 newscast.

The rest of the pack didn't fare so well.

The only other mention of Clarke's admission that the Media Research Center found was buried on the CBS Evening News. Anchor John Roberts started things off by characterizing Clarke's testimony as "electrifying" and saying it "captivated all who heard it." Then it was reporter Jim Stewart's turn. Stewart "reported" that Clarke's testimony had "knocked the White House on its heels," praised Clarke's "many credentials" and showcased a clip of Clarke insisting on his partisan neutrality.

Then came the clincher: "[Clarke] ended his testimony on a note of stark reality," Stewart said. "Even if the Bush administration had acted immediately on all of his recommendations, Clarke believes the plan and the men were in place, and 9/11 would have happened anyway."

Stark reality, indeed.

But does it matter? What's the point of rehashing history?

This inquiry isn't about laying blame or pointing fingers. It's simply about finding out what went wrong.

While those who work in the media have long known that the profession tilts leftward, perhaps we have not taken the threat seriously enough. Sure, there were warning signs, but we could hardly have expected the massive failure of objectivity that occurred on 3/24.

And for that, an apology is due.

Forum: Clashing with Clarke in class

The country is in an uproar over former White House terrorism expert Richard Clarke's recent contentions, which will continue to be debated.

Let me give some insight on my own very recent (February 2004) experience with Mr. Clarke, who teaches a class at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He teaches this class with Rand Beers, a former government official with National Security Council experience who now works on the Democratic presidential campaign.

As a national security fellow at the Kennedy School, I attended one of Messrs. Beers' and Clarke's classes to discuss U.S. experiences in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti and Kosovo. I was involved in the planning or execution of each of these military operations and wrote my master's thesis on U.S. Somalia policy while attending the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994-95.

I requested permission to sit in on the class, which Mr. Clarke cheerfully granted and told me to "pipe up" if I had anything to say, which I quickly did when I questioned his theory there were three major policy decisions during Somalia.

While we were debating U.N. actions in Somalia, Mr. Clarke incorrectly stated the U.S. military made a unilateral decision to pull forces out of Somalia. The defense secretary and the president decide deployment and redeployment of combat forces, not the military. So I questioned his statement to the contrary. I specifically asked him to clarify his statement.

He backed his contention, stating the military made the decision. He also said our participation in the U.N. mission in Macedonia proved how smooth U.N. operations could be. I reminded him of the soldiers taken prisoner by Serb forces and the ensuing crisis, but he ignored my comment.

After class, I asked him to explain who in the military ordered redeployment of forces from Somalia without permission of the president. I asked him specifically, "Who signed the redeployment order for those forces to leave Somalia?"

He finally clarified by saying "the secretary of defense." It seems Mr. Clarke was actually referring to the desire of the U.S. military leaders to leave Somalia rather than their ordering it without administration knowledge. Why is this important?

Because he purposely misled the class into believing the U.S. military, not the administration controlling the military, made the decision to leave Somalia at a critical time in the mission. When given a chance to correct the record, he chose not to do so. This was well before I knew Mr. Clarke had a book coming out or that he would have such a role in the current debate.

The CBS "60 Minutes" crew filmed the class and our discussion after the class. They should have verified his comments on Somalia and then investigated further to determine if he had a habit of obfuscating facts. Their investigation would have confirmed that, in at least this instance, Mr. Clarke chose to mislead.

I do not know why Mr. Clarke found it necessary to mislead his class or why he felt Bush administration pressure to make absolutely certain Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks was a request for him to lie.

The bottom line is Mr. Clarke obfuscated the truth in my presence for some unknown reason. After this experience with him, I cannot trust his judgment. The timing of his book release, his prior silence on the topic and his close relationship with campaign advisers, coupled with my personal experience, cause me to question his credibility on this subject and I now suspect it is for political and/or personal gain.

As September 11 commission member and former Navy Secretary John Lehman has noted, it is truly unfortunate for the country that, despite Mr. Clarke's personal knowledge and experience, he now lacks credibility. I am sorry to say I agree with that assessment.

CHUCK HARRISON

The writer is a national security fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Clarke Hasn't Apologized for Rwandan Genocide?

A former intelligence official that worked in the U.S. government during the Clinton years tells NewsMax that though the Rwandan genocide of the '90s was the subject of headlines blazing the word "genocide" throughout the world, U.S. officials were not allowed to use the "G" word.

The source told us that it was Richard Clarke's office at the National Security Council who decided in October of 1993 not to back up the Rwanda peace plan with adequate UN troops.

Then, in the spring of 1994, Clarke - Special Assistant to the President for Global Issues and Multilateral Affairs from 1993 to 1997 -- and Madeline Albright decided to allow the bloodshed to continue because of growing Congressional criticism on peacekeeping policy.

"They decided to hang the Rwandans out to dry because they feared losing points at home if they expanded peacekeeping further or more U.S. troops died," our source told us.

"Later, when the French tried to send troops after fighting broke out, Albright again tried to block sending in troops."

Though Albright later claimed that the administration did not understand how bad the situation was and that it happened too fast to react to, our source said the Clinton administration had warnings about the genocide in February of 1994.

Also, the Rwandan killings occurred over a 100-day period.

It was Clarke who was coordinating Clinton peacekeeping policy in late 1993 and throughout 1994. And Clarke was responsible for formulating the U.S. response, our source said.

"Their strategy at the time was to fall back on their flawed peacekeeping policy until after the November 1994 elections."

And in this passage from her book "A Problem from Hell," Samantha Power writes, "At the NSC the person who managed Rwanda policy was ... Richard Clarke, who oversaw peacekeeping policy ... Donald Steinberg managed the Africa portfolio at the NSC and tried to look out for the dying Rwandans, but he was not an experienced in-fighter, and, colleagues say, he 'never won a single argument' with Clarke."

We're not holding our breath waiting for Clarke to say he's sorry for failing the Rwandans.

After months spent trying to obtain more information about the classified Halliburton deals, Representative Waxman's staff discovered that the original oil-well-fire contract entrusted Halliburton with a full restoration of the Iraqi oil industry. "We thought it was supposed to be a short-term, small contract, but now it turns out Halliburton is restoring the entire oil infrastructure in Iraq," Waxman said. The Defense Department's only public acknowledgments of this wide-ranging deal had been two press releases announcing that it had asked Halliburton to prepare to help put out oil-well fires.

The most recent budget request provided by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq mentions the building of a new oil refinery and the drilling of new wells. "They said originally they were just going to bring it up to prewar levels. Now they're getting money to dramatically improve it," Waxman complained. Who is going to own these upgrades, after the United States government has finished paying Halliburton to build them? "Who knows?" Waxman said. "Nobody is saying."

When asked if connections helped, an executive whose firm has received several contracts replied, "Of course." One businessman with close ties to the Bush Administration told me, "Anything that has to do with Iraq policy, Cheney's the man to see. He's running it, the way that L.B.J. ran the space program."

"It's like Russia," the businessman said. "This is how corruption is done these days. It's not about bribes. You just help your friends to get access. Cheney doesn't call the Defense Department and tell them, ?'Pick Halliburton.' It's just having dinner with the right people."

So far, other than the irregularities at Halliburton, there has been no evidence of large-scale corruption in the rebuilding of Iraq. But a number of friends of the Administration have landed important positions, and others have obtained large contracts.

"I'm appalled that the war is being used by people close to the Bush Administration to make money for themselves," Waxman said. "At a time when we're asking young men and women to make perhaps the ultimate sacrifice, it's just unseemly." Many of those involved, however, see themselves as part of a democratic vanguard. Jack Kemp's spokesman, P. J. Johnson, told me, "We're doing good by doing well."

Defenders of Halliburton deny that it has been politically favored, arguing that very few other companies could have handled these complex jobs. As Cheney said last September on "Meet the Press,""Halliburton is a unique kind of company. There are very few companies out there that have the combination of very large engineering construction capability and significant oil-field services."

... the most important issue of our generation, global Islamic terrorism ...

A Job Well Done (Halliburton)

To listen to recent media accounts, you would think Halliburton's (HAL) performance in Iraq has been scandalously bad. That charge is closer to libel than the truth.

As with so many other things, the media often take their line on a story and run with it, regardless of the facts. That's exactly what has happened with Halliburton.

It has been pilloried by the media for supposedly overcharging the government, for its alleged sweetheart "no-bid" contracts, for its ties to Vice President ?- and former Halliburton CEO ?- Dick Cheney, and a long list of other supposed sins.

But, as usual, a look at the facts shows a radically different picture.

Let's focus on just one: Halliburton's performance. Just this week, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq told the New York Times Iraq is now pumping 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. That compares to 2.8 million barrels before the war.

"We're well ahead of the targets that we set in the aftermath of the war," noted Robert McKee, the retired oil executive in charge of getting Iraq's oil flowing again.

Ahead indeed. Earlier this week, U.S. administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer noted Iraq's electricity output has also reached prewar levels ?- and is set to expand rapidly from here, thanks to growing oil output. A huge success story.

And who deserves credit for much of this success? Halliburton Co. It has worked under extraordinarily tight deadlines in a war-damaged nation still wracked by violence to restore that country's energy grid. Yet, you rarely hear of the oil giant's contribution.

Gee, you might start to wonder: Are some Halliburton critics more interested in scoring points against Cheney and the Bush administration than getting Iraq back on its feet?

Which brings up the most irksome part of the charge: That somehow Cheney got Halliburton the Iraq contract, and Halliburton was thus an undeserving political recipient of government largesse.

In fact, Halliburton won its services contract from the Pentagon back in 1992 ?- three years before Cheney became CEO. Then-Defense Secretary Cheney wasn't the one who awarded the contract; career Pentagon officials did. This is undisputed.

Why? They needed a company that could rebuild things fast, in a war zone, on an emergency basis. Through competitive bidding, they picked the company with just that expertise.

By the way, Halliburton worked under the same basic deal in the Balkans under President Clinton. Was that also cronyism?

At least investors seem to recognize what's going on. Impressed by the company's performance under fire, they've pushed up Halliburton's share price by 69% since the start of 2002.

That's a sign Halliburton's doing something right ?- and that the petty charges now being hurled its way have little substance.

From NewsMax...

Quote:

Clarke Hasn't Apologized for Rwandan Genocide?

We're not holding our breath waiting for Clarke to say he's sorry for failing the Rwandans.

Tarantulas wrote:

... the most important issue of our generation, global Islamic terrorism ...

Hear, hear.

There was bi-partisan support in the USA to do nothing. Bob Dole, Minority Leader of the Republican Party in the U. S. Senate, said that we had no "national interest" in being in Rwanda and opposed contributing forces to the U.N.

Should we stop trying to change the subject and pull a well-you-did-something-bad-too, when confronted with concrete criticisms and allegations concerning what, after all, was the single largest attack on America in the past decades?

Richard A. Clarke, a Liar

by Srdja Trifkovic

Richard A. Clarke, the former top White House counter-terrorism official under Presidents Bill Clinton and (briefly) George W. Bush, caused a stir on March 22 with the publication of his book Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. The book can best be characterized as a strongly partisan all-out attack on Bush for his alleged failure to take the terrorist threat seriously in the seven months before 9-11, and for diverting American resources after the attacks in the wrong direction by waging war against Iraq. It is also an attempt to exonerate Bill Clinton and his national security team from much of the blame for the failure of the United States to act decisively in the preceding eight years to properly diagnose and treat the terrorist menace.

Two days after the book's launch Clarke was a featured witness before the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The key part of his testimony was the assertion that the Clinton administration had had "no higher priority" than combatting terrorists, while the Bush administration had made it "an important issue but not an urgent issue" in the months before September 11.

With his well-timed book and subsequent testimony Clarke and his publicists ensured that he was on every flickering screen and front page in the land for days on end. In an interview with Larry King he claimed that his motive for writing the book was twofold: to explain what happened on 9/11, and to examine "why we had failed to stop it."

Clarke forgot to mention two more motives, money and vengeance.

Money was the reason the book was published not a year earlier, when he retired from government, but on the eve of his appearance before the 9-11 Commission. In the event a mere three days after publication, and one day after his testimony, the book went into its fifth run with half a million copies in print. While the media supported the blitz for reasons mainly ideological?-Clarke appeared as Kerry's manna from heaven?-in at least one instance the motive may have been pecuniary: on March 21 CBS' 60 Minutes devoted two whole segments to Clarke's magnum opus but the viewers were not told that the book's publisher, Free Press, and CBS are both owned by the same media conglomerate, Viacom.

As for the revenge, having enjoyed the top White House position on counterterrorism under Clinton, Clarke was demoted to the position of "Cyberterrorism Coordinator" by Rice and Tenet. Bush's refusal to meet personally with Clarke or to keep his position cabinet level was deeply hurtful to civil servant with an inflated ego and a chip on the shoulder, both traits obligatory for a member of the Clinton inner team. Whereas Clarke had been a Democrat for years, as Federal Election Commission (FEC) records of his political contributions show, since his demotion he has been a Bush hater. In addition to making a lot of money he wants to bring the President down. This "mission" fits in with the obsessive tendency of many other disgruntled ex-government employees to claim that America would have been a better, safer and happier place only if their superior wisdom had been heeded.

The main shortcoming of Bill Clinton's, according to Clarke's book, his 9-11 Commission testimony, and his numerous subsequent media appearances, was to have bombed the al-Qaida training camps only once. On the whole, he maintained, Clinton was better at managing the threat than Bush because?-as he put it on CNN?-"35 Americans were killed by al Qaeda over eight years [of Clinton] and 3,000 were killed on 9/11."

In protecting Clinton Clarke engages in subterfuge, sins of commission and omission, and outright misrepresentation of reality. The usual litmus test is the Balkans. On pp. 136-140 of the book he thus claims, "[t]he predominantly Muslim province Bosnia had long been discriminated against by the Christian center, and Bosnia's attempt at independence in 1991 was brutally countered by the Serb-dominated Belgrade government." The administration of George H.W. Bush had done little to stop the slaughter, Clarke says, and the "hard-pressed Bosnians" reluctantly accepted help from foreign Islamic radicals who had been former Afghan mujahedeen. The "muj" engaged in "ghastly torture, murder, and mutilation that seemed excessive even by Balkan standards," but "Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic decided to take aid where he could." A whole host of extremist groups and individuals duly gravoitated from Bosnia, including many participants in subsequent terrorist plots and attacks. The Clinton Administration acted to counter the threat by hammering out the Dayton Accord, which "took the dedicated and diligent labor of Clinton, Lake, Berger, Albright, Ambassador Dick Holbrook, and General Wes Clark." In the end, despite Izetbegovic's lapses in expelling the "muj," Bosnia was largely a failure for al Qaeda:

"They invested men and money, but were unable to establish a major, permanent base… For the United States, Bosnia was largely a success. Although late to address the issue, the U.S. was the major reason that the Islamic government in Bosnia survived. The U.S. also blocked Iranian and al Qaeda influence in the country."

These four pages reveal a mix of Clarke's mendacity and ignorance. To start with, Bosnia and Herzegovina was not a "predominantly Muslim province" but a multi-ethnic republic of the Yugoslav federation in which the Muslims had the plurality of 43 percent but its two Christian constitutent nations, Serbs and Croats, had the simple majority. The Republic had not "long been discriminated against by the Christian center" because, in Tito's Communist Yugoslavia, the "Center" had been eminently anti-Christian. Bosnia's Communist nomenklatura had enjoyed a disproportionate share of top political posts in the last two decades of Communism and a large cut from the federal fund for underdeveloped regions.

"Bosnia's attempt at independence" did not occur in 1991 but in 1992. The attempt itself amounted to an illegal bid by Izetbegovic, in February-March 1992, to obtain statehood by outvoting the Serbs in a referendum, in clear violation of Bosnia's constitution that postulated unanimity of the three constituent nations as the only possible method of changing the status of the Republic. His ploy was not "brutally countered by the Serb-dominated Belgrade government"?-the Yugoslav Army withdrew in May 1992?-but by one-third of Bosnia's indigenous population, the Serbs. Before the war Izetbegovic had declared that he would "sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty." The civil war was the predictable outcome of his course.

Far from being a reluctant recepient of the "muj" assistance, Izetbegovic was an ethusiastic proponent of pan-Islamic solidarity his whole life. He wrote in his Islamic Declaration that "the Islamic movement must, and can, take over power as soon as it is morally and numerically so strong that it can not only destroy the existing non-Islamic power, but also build up a new Islamic one." He asserted the incompatibility between Islam and the rest: "There is no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions." His goal was umma, the creation of a single Muslim polity, "religious, cultural and political, since "Islam is not a nationality, but it is the supra-nationality of this community." This "united Islamic community" will rang "from Morocco to Indonesia."

Clarke's failure to mention any of that, and his ability to claim with a straight face that saving "the Islamic government in Bosnia" was for the United States "largely a success" is remarkable; but his assertion that the U.S. blocked Iranian influence in Bosnia simply defies belief. The Clinton Administration's complicity in the delivery of weapons from Iran to the Muslim government in Sarajevo?-a covert operation that enabled the government in Tehran to establish a strong power base in Sarajevo?-is by now well documented. According to a detailed report by the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee ("Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base"), that policy, personally approved by Bill Clinton, had played a key role in the dramatic increase in Iranian influence in Bosnia. The report warned that it was "irresponsible in the extreme for the Clinton Administration to gloss over the extent" to which such policies have put Americans at risk. Its findings remain as valid today as they were seven years ago:

1. In April 1994, President Clinton gave the government of Croatia what has been described by Congressional committees as a "green light" for shipments of weapons from Iran and other Muslim countries to the Muslim-led government of Bosnia. The policy was approved at the urging of NSC chief Anthony Lake. The CIA and the Departments of State and Defense were kept in the dark until after the decision was made.

2. Along with the weapons, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and VEVAK intelligence operatives entered Bosnia in large numbers, as well as thousands of mujahedin. The Clinton Administration's "hands-on" involvement with the Islamic network's arms pipeline included inspections of missiles from Iran by U.S. government officials.

3. Underlying the Clinton Administration's misguided green light policy was a complete misreading of its main beneficiary, the Bosnian Muslim government of Izetbegovic. Rather than being the tolerant, multiethnic democratic government it pretends to be, it had long been guided by the principles of radical Islam.

"To state that the Clinton Administration erred in facilitating the penetration of the Iranians and other radical elements into Europe," the report concluded, "would be a breathtaking understatement. A thorough reexamination of U.S. policy and goals in the region is essential."

Clarke does not address any of that. His bland assertion that "Bosnia was largely a failure for al Qaeda" is dangerously untrue. It is flatly contradicted by the U.S. Ambassador in Sarajevo, Clifford Bond, who declared on December 17 that there is a terrorist threat in Bosnia because of foreigners who arrived there during the war and stayed on. In that same week Greece announced that its national security interests were threatened by Al Qaida-aligned agents in Bosnia, and the former Socialist government of Prime Minister Costas Simitis expressed concern over the threat from Bosnia to the Olympic Games in August 2004. On December 29, 2003, the UN added the name of a Bosnian Islamic "charity" director to a list of 300 individuals whose assets should be frozen due to suspected ties to Osama bin Laden or his al Qaeda network. In the same week European media reported that the King Fahd mosque in Sarajevo?-the largest in Europe, on which the desert kingdom had spent a total of $20 million?-was considered a terrorist threat. "Western security experts" were quoted in the leading German news magazine Spiegel as saying that Bosnia could become "a hotbed of extremists ready to use force?-and would thus carry the fight of the Islamic terror syndicates against the ?'godless West' to the southeast of Europe." "We are extremely concerned," German intelligence chief August Hanning admitted: "in some mosques preachers are already openly inciting against the West."

Similar statements made over the past few months are too numerous to mention. The Bosnian problem of Islamic terrorism exists, it is freely admitted that it exists by Western policy analysts and government officials alike, it has acquired massive proportions, and may not be easily resolved any longer. Contrary to Clarke's wishful thinking, that threat is not limited to a few elusive extremists: the ruling establishment in Sarajevo has had a symbiotic relationship with the sources of Islamic radicalism for over a decade.

In the aftermath of 9-11 no effective anti-terrorist strategy is possible without recognizing past mistakes of U.S. policy that have helped breed terrorism. Eight years of the Clinton-Albright Administration's covert and overt support for the Islamist camp in the balkans have been a foreign policy debacle of the first order, and a major contribution to the world-wide threat America faces today. Its beneficiaries were Osama bin Laden?-since 1993 a Bosnian citizen, compliments of then-President Izetbegovic?-and his co-religionists in Sarajevo, Tirana, and Pristina. If we are to take the War on Terrorism seriously, such blunders need to be recognized and rectified. Far from making a contribution to that objective, Richard Clarke's book muddies the waters and misrepresents the past. It is contemptible in the author's intent and dangerous in its consequences.

The terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001, could have been prevented had the United States government acted sooner to dismantle Al Qaeda and responded more quickly to other terrorist threats, the chairman of the commission investigating the attacks said today, even as the White House sought to dispel the notion that the attacks were avoidable.

Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the commission and former Republican governor of New Jersey, said that had the United States seized early opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden in the years before Sept. 11, "the whole story would've been different."

Mr. Kean's comments on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" echoed statements he made in December and January. But he emphatically declared that additional months of testimony and investigation had not altered his view.

"What we've found now on the commission has not changed that belief because there were so many threads and so many things, individual things, that happened," he said. "And if some of those things hadn't happened the way they happened," the attacks could have been prevented.

His comments came four days before President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was scheduled to testify before the commission. Last week President Bush bowed to political pressure and agreed to allow her to testify.

The White House has insisted there was nothing that could have been done to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks. Karen P. Hughes, a top political adviser to President Bush, reiterated that position in a later appearance on "Meet the Press."

"I don't believe that anyone in the Bush administration ?- and I'm not an advocate of the Clinton administration, but I'll even include them in this ?- I don't believe that anyone in the Clinton administration either could have put together the pieces before the horror of Sept. 11," Ms. Hughes said. "I don't think we could have envisioned it and done anything to perhaps prevented it."

The panel's vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, who appeared alongside Mr. Kean this morning on NBC, was more circumspect than his colleague on the issue of inevitability. "You can string together a whole bunch of ifs," said Mr. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana. "If things had broken right in all kinds of different ways as the governor has identified and many more, and frankly, if you'd had a little luck, it could probably have been prevented."

The commission officials said they expected to finish their report by July. By law, they said, they have to submit the document to the White House for review before it is publicly released to ensure that it contains nothing that would compromise national security.

"They go through it line by line," Mr. Kean said.

Both men acknowledged that the law gives the White House exclusive control over the release of intelligence information, but Mr. Hamilton insisted the panel would not permit the White House to "distort" the report.

"We do not want to put out a report with heavy redactions in it," he said. Mr. Kean said he was confident that the White House would complete its review quickly in order to permit the report's public release well in advance of the presidential election in November.

"I think it's in the White House's interest, our interest, everybody's interest to get this out in July," he said.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are scheduled to appear together before the commission, an arrangement that has drawn criticism from some Democratic leaders. Mr. Kean said the members of the panel "don't see any problems with it," though he allowed that "maybe we would have rather had them one at a time."

While the date of Mr. Bush's and Mr. Cheney's testimony has not been publicly announced, Ms. Rice is scheduled to testify on Thursday. Mr. Kean said he expected her testimony, scheduled for two and a half hours, to reveal "what she heard and what she knew," and to shed light on the differences between the policies of the Bush administration and the policies of the Clinton administration.

"We expect it to be very exciting," he said.

John F. Lehman, Navy secretary in the Reagan administration and a Republican member of the commission, said today that he viewed Ms. Rice's testimony as "much more important" than either Mr. Bush's or Mr. Cheney's.

"She was right at the nexus 24 hours a day," he explained on the CBS News program "Face the Nation." "She was the conduit to the president and the coordinator of national security policy." He added: "She really has the view that we need to establish the facts."