Ex-Terror Aide Clarke calls Bush's bluff: Declassify It All

Ex-Terror Aide: Declassify It All
March 28, 2004
CBS News

The former chief counterterrorism adviser at the White House says he would welcome the attempt by leading Republicans to damage his credibility by declassifying 2-year-old congressional testimony.

Richard Clarke suggested they also declassify all e-mails, memos and all other correspondence between him and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, as well as her private testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.

Asked about Clarke's request for the declassification, Secretary of State Colin Powell on CBS' "Face the Nation," said, "My bias will be to provide this information in an unclassified manner not only to the commission, but to the American people."

White House spokesman Jim Morrell said decisions on declassification "will be made in discussion with the 9/11 commission."

Meanwhile, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks will not relent in its pursuit of public testimony from Rice but is unlikely to subpoena her, the panel's chairman said Sunday.

The White House is declining to let Rice appear at the commission's televised hearings, citing the constitutional principle of separation of powers.

However, the Bush administration has asked the commission for a second private session with Rice to clear up "a number of mischaracterizations" of her statements and positions about the attacks. She met with the panel for about four hours at the White House on Feb. 7.

"We will accept any testimony" from Rice, who was "very, very forthcoming in her first meeting with us," said former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican named by President Bush to lead the Sept. 11 commission.

"But we do feel unanimously as a commission that she should testify in public. We feel it's important to get her case out there. We recognize there are arguments having to do with separation of powers. We think in a tragedy of this magnitude that those kind of legal arguments are probably overridden," Kean said in a broadcast interview.

Republican lawmakers hope to show discrepancies between Richard Clarke's recent attacks on the administration's terrorism policies with flattering statements he made as a White House aide.

Rice, a chief critic of Clarke, has said Clarke praised Bush's anti-terror efforts while working for the president, but then began telling a different story after leaving his post and writing a book that has become a best seller since going on sale last week.

Clarke said in a broadcast interview that he "would welcome" that declassification. "Let's declassify everything," Clarke said.

He also accused the administration of waging a "campaign to destroy me professionally and personally," and called on the White House to "raise the level of discourse."

Sharpening his criticism of the Bush administration, Clarke said President Clinton was more aggressive than President Bush in trying to confront al Qaeda, Osama bin-Laden's organization.

"He did something, and President Bush did nothing prior to September 11," said in a broadcast interview.

"I think they deserve a failing grade for what they did before" Sept. 11, Clarke said of the Bush's administration. "They never got around to doing anything."

On Capitol Hill last week, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn, said Clarke "has told two entirely different stories under oath" ?- one before the commission and one in classified testimony in July 2002 before a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks.

Clarke also fired back at the administration by reading Bush's response to his resignation letter.

Noting it was in the president's handwriting, Clarke said the letter read that he would "be missed. You served our nation with distinction and honor," and had "left a positive mark on our government."

"He thinks I served with distinction and honor," Clarke said, while "the rest of his staff is out there to destroy me."

Commissioner John Lehman, a Republican, said Rice "has nothing to hide, and yet this is creating the impression for honest Americans all over the country and people all over the world that the White House has something to hide, that Condi Rice has something to hide.

"And if they do, we sure haven't found it. There are no smoking guns. That's what makes this so absurd. It's a political blunder of the first order," Lehman said in a broadcast interview.

Kean said commissioners "are still going to press" for her public testimony. Asked about issuing a subpoena in an attempt to compel her appearance, Kean said it is not clear that such a legal step is the best way to get the information sought and whether it would be successful given the doctrine of executive privilege.

"We've only got a certain life on this commission, and to get into a court battle over a subpoena we don't think is really appropriate right now, or will it help us leading to our conclusion, so we can issue a report in July, which is now our mandate," Kean said.

Rice, who will appear on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday night, has spoken at length to reporters about the administration's commitment and strategy for fighting terrorism.

She also has taken a leading role in criticizing Clarke, who testified last week that the administration was preoccupied with Iraq and ignored the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network.

Earlier Sunday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld insisted that Iraq was not a distraction for the administration in the days before and after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Even before New York and Washington were struck, al Qaeda was a concern, Rumsfeld said. "We were thinking about what to do about al Qaeda. Any suggestion that the administration was not would just be incorrect," he said in a broadcast interview.

Asked if Bush should apologize to the Sept. 11 families for the government's failure to prevent the attacks, Rumsfeld said the president has made clear his sorrow.

"I think the president has recognized the failure that existed and the concern he has for those people and the fact that the government, our government, was there and that attack took place. I don't know quite what else one would do," the defense secretary said.

In public hearings last week before the commission, Clarke apologized to the families of Sept. 11 victims. He said their government failed them and he did, too.

John Kerry said the White House is committing character assassination with its treatment Clarke to avoid responding to questions about national security that Clarke raised.

"I don't think people want questions about character; I think they want questions about our security to be answered," Kerry said Saturday. "That's what this is about."

Kerry also said Rice should testify in public.

"If Condoleezza Rice can find time to do `60 Minutes' on television before the American people, she ought to find 60 minutes to speak to the commission under oath," Kerry told reporters. "We're talking about the security of our country."