Clarke's Testimony
I watched a bit (about 45 minutes) of the Clarke testimony to the 9.11 commission today, and was really impressed with this guy. He came across as very competent at fighting terror and based on his answers, I'm confident that at least he did everything he could to protect us from terrorism.
The questioning of him that I saw was almost exclusively limited to what went on during the Clinton administration. Despite the reports that Clarke's book give Clinton a pass, I didn't think his testimony did the same thing. While there was never any point where he said anything overtly negative about Clinton, it appeared to me that Clarke had for years been frustrated at the level of cooperation he got from the higher ups with his terrorism initiatives.
In the Clinton years, Clarke described a 'DaLinda' memo that he drafted that asked for a 4 pronged approach to fighting Bin Laden - Diplomacy, Cash, Covert Ops, and Military responses. Though it was never officially enacted, Clarke said he had the green light to use everything he felt necessary, except the Military. After the embassy bombings in 1998(?), Clarke wrote something called a 'Blue Sky' memo which tried to hash out issues he felt were mucking up the US response to terror attacks - such as settling on a consistent standard of evidence for assigning blame to a particular group. He seemed particularly upset that nothing was done to retaliate for the USS Cole bombing even though it was 'obvious' who was responsible within 2-3 days. One of the questions to him, pointed out that the Clinton admin had rejected military responses against Bin Laden each time the opportunity arose, with only one exception. This lack of military response seemed to piss off Clarke.
Now, as impressed w/ Clarke as I was during the little bit I watched, I don't think he was particularly good at his job. Clarke wasn't an intelligence gatherer, he was a summarizer, and a policy proposer. What I view as his job, would be to take the intelligence, formulate the best possible response, and then sell that reponse to his superiors - basically the President. From what we know, Clarke wasn't very good at selling his policies. Clinton wouldn't enact his DaLinda model, and never gave Clarke the go ahead to use Military force where necessary. And apparently, Bush just didn't want to hear from Clarke, and Clarke didn't do a good enough job of selling his case to Tenet to in turn sell to Bush.
I don't fault Clarke for this. He was put into a job that perhaps he wasn't the best fit for - even though he pretty clearly has a great grasp of both the threat and the way to fight it. He was simply unable to convince anybody more important than himself that he was right.
The questioning of him that I saw was almost exclusively limited to what went on during the Clinton administration. Despite the reports that Clarke's book give Clinton a pass, I didn't think his testimony did the same thing. While there was never any point where he said anything overtly negative about Clinton, it appeared to me that Clarke had for years been frustrated at the level of cooperation he got from the higher ups with his terrorism initiatives.
In the Clinton years, Clarke described a 'DaLinda' memo that he drafted that asked for a 4 pronged approach to fighting Bin Laden - Diplomacy, Cash, Covert Ops, and Military responses. Though it was never officially enacted, Clarke said he had the green light to use everything he felt necessary, except the Military. After the embassy bombings in 1998(?), Clarke wrote something called a 'Blue Sky' memo which tried to hash out issues he felt were mucking up the US response to terror attacks - such as settling on a consistent standard of evidence for assigning blame to a particular group. He seemed particularly upset that nothing was done to retaliate for the USS Cole bombing even though it was 'obvious' who was responsible within 2-3 days. One of the questions to him, pointed out that the Clinton admin had rejected military responses against Bin Laden each time the opportunity arose, with only one exception. This lack of military response seemed to piss off Clarke.
Now, as impressed w/ Clarke as I was during the little bit I watched, I don't think he was particularly good at his job. Clarke wasn't an intelligence gatherer, he was a summarizer, and a policy proposer. What I view as his job, would be to take the intelligence, formulate the best possible response, and then sell that reponse to his superiors - basically the President. From what we know, Clarke wasn't very good at selling his policies. Clinton wouldn't enact his DaLinda model, and never gave Clarke the go ahead to use Military force where necessary. And apparently, Bush just didn't want to hear from Clarke, and Clarke didn't do a good enough job of selling his case to Tenet to in turn sell to Bush.
I don't fault Clarke for this. He was put into a job that perhaps he wasn't the best fit for - even though he pretty clearly has a great grasp of both the threat and the way to fight it. He was simply unable to convince anybody more important than himself that he was right.
# | March 24, 2004