RICHARD CLARKE EITHER IS .. OR WAS .. A LIAR
The proceedings of the committee to elect John Kerry President continued yesterday, this time with walking contradiction Richard Clarke testifying. This is the guy that wrote the book blaming 9/11 on President Bush and praising Bill Clinton's 8 years of inaction on terrorism as somehow better. What an absolute crock...perhaps he's been hired to revise the Clinton legacy because the facts just aren't on this guy's side.
Surprisingly, this egomaniac's head actually fit through the door of the hearing room. Clarke kicked off his testimony with an apology to "the loved ones of the victims of 9/11....your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you." His statement should have more truthfully been "to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11...the Clinton administration failed you. Prior to the slaughter of your loved ones on 9/11 by Islamic terrorists, Bill Clinton turned down the direct handover of Osama Bin Laden on numerous occasions. The Clinton administration refused to allow the CIA to kill Bin Laden, with only capture as the stated policy. Those entrusted with protecting you, including myself, were abject failures who viewed terrorism as a law enforcement problem. And don't forget to buy my book."
Well ... let's get to the rest of Clarke's testimony. We can basically wrap it up this way. Clarke told the commission, as he told America in his book, that the Bush administration did virtually nothing to address the threat of Al Qaeda until the attacks of 9/11. Nothing. He said that Bush was virtually unprepared to act as though it's a major problem.
Uh oh. Small problem. The White House was a few steps ahead of Clarke yesterday ... as was Fox News Channel. Jim Angle is a reporter for Fox. As the news about Clarke's book started to hit Angle remembered a briefing he received from a White House spokesman in August of 2002. That briefing was for background. That means that the seven reporters on the telephone conference call could not identify who their source was .. .only what their source said. Angle remembered that the person who delivered that briefing was ... Richard Clarke.
As luck would have it, Angle had a recording of that briefing. He listened to it and found that what Clarke was saying then was markedly different from what Clarke was saying now. So Angle went to the White House to seek permission to release a transcript of that 2002 briefing, and to identify Richard Clarke as the source. The White House, after conferring with the National Security Council, agreed.
So what did Clarke have to say in the 2002 briefing?
Let's start with a statement Clarke made to the 9/11 Commission yesterday. Clarke told the commissioners that early on in the Bush administration he told the president: " ... and I said, well, you know, we've had this strategy ready ... ahh ... since before you were inaugurated. I showed it to you. You have the paperwork. We can have a meeting on the strategy anytime you want."
So .. there's Clarke telling the media and the commissioners yesterday that he had presented paperwork to Bush on a strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda and was ready to discuss it. But what did he say to Jim Angle in 2002? This: "I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush Administration."
Lying then? Or lying now?
And what about this "Bush did virtually nothing" claim?
In the 2002 background briefing Clarke said: "When President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that triggered the NSPD (National Security Presidential Directive) from one of roll back to one of elimination." "NSPD" is National Security Presidential Directive. So Clark was telling reporters in August of 2002 that the directive from the president in March of 2001 was to stop swatting at flies ... to eliminate Al Qaeda. This is what calls doing virtually nothing?
In the 2002 briefing Clarke also told Angle and the rest of the reporters that Bush had ordered an increase in CIA resources by five times .. .including funding for covert actions against Al Qaeda. Again ... doing virtually nothing?
Here's the kicker. It comes from the transcript of the 2002 Clarke briefing ... near the end.
Jim Angle: "So, just to finish up if we could then, so what you're saying is that there was no -- one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the months just after the administration came into office?
Richard Clarke: "You got it. That's right.
So .. while the terrorist threat was increasing Clinton made no changes in his plan of action against terrorism during the last two years of his presidency, but Bush got on the stick immediately. That is what Clarke is now describing as "doing virtually nothing."
Obviously Clarke is lying. We just have to figure out which statements are the lies? Was he lying in 2002 when he was working in the Bush White House? Or is he lying now when he's trying to sell a book?
Figure it out.
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