Clarke saw connection in 1999 but that wouldn't sell books now would it?

Sodium Pentethol V · Mar 23, 2004

In '99, Clarke saw
Iraq-al-Qaida link
But Bush critic told '60 Minutes' Sunday there was 'absolutely' no evidence 'ever'

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Posted: March 23, 2004
11:10 a.m. Eastern

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism official promoting a book critical of the Bush administration, insists Saddam Hussein had no connection to al-Qaida, but in 1999 he defended President Clinton's attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant by revealing the U.S. was "sure" it manufactured chemical warfare materials produced by Iraqi experts in cooperation with Osama bin Laden.

Richard Clarke

Clarke told the Washington Post in a Jan. 23, 1999, story U.S. intelligence officials had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, which was hit with Tomahawk cruise missiles in retaliation for bin Laden's role in the Aug. 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Africa.

The sample contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, which Clarke said when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas.

Clarke told the Post the U.S. did not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it.

"But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan," the paper reported.

However, Sunday night in an interview with Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes," Clarke denied Saddam had any connection to al-Qaida.

Stahl pressed Clarke further, asking, "Was Iraq supporting al-Qaida?"

Clarke replied: "There is absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaida ever."

Clarke, who served under the Clinton and Bush administrations, has accused President Bush of ignoring threats to al-Qaida prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and focusing on Saddam Hussein at the expense of the war on terror.

In an interview with Rush Limbaugh yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed Clarke's criticism as coming from an ineffective former official.

"He was the head of counterterrorism for several years there in the '90s, and I didn't notice that they had any great success dealing with the terrorist threat," Cheney said.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had a similar reply in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"I really don't know what Richard Clarke's motivations are, but I'll tell you this: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to."

Clarke, the author of "Against All Enemies," is scheduled to testify tomorrow before the independent federal commission probing the 9-11 attacks.

The "60 Minutes" interview Sunday has raised ethical concerns for not disclosing the connection between Clarke's book publisher, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster, and CBS News. Both are owned by Viacom.

At the time of the 1999 Post interview, Clarke occupied the newly created post of national coordinator of counterterrorism and computer security programs under President Clinton.

The Post story concluded with Clarke affirming the U.S. strategy of fighting terror by legally prosecuting perpetrators of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.

"The fact that we got seven out of the eight people from the World Trade Center [bombing], and we found them in five countries around the world and brought them back here, the fact we can demonstrate repeatedly that the slogan, 'There's nowhere to hide,' is more than a slogan, the fact that we don't forget, we're persistent – we get them – has deterred terrorism," he said.

wilheim · Mar 23, 2004

March 23, 2004
Debating 9/11

Richard Clarke is an angry man. Mr. Clarke, the former counterterrorism coordinator for the Bush and Clinton administrations, seemed to be seething during an interview on the CBS News program "60 Minutes" on Sunday night, when he said the president had "done a terrible job on the war against terrorism." The more colorful anecdotes he offered up in support of that judgment are bound to be cited over and over in the presidential campaign — like his contention that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued for post-9/11 strikes against Iraq rather than the Taliban's Afghanistan by saying "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan."

Mr. Clarke is scheduled to testify this week before the special presidential commission investigating the 9/11 attacks, as are members of the Clinton administration who warned top Bush officials during the transfer of power about the terrorism threat. The hearings are sure to produce fireworks — both from Mr. Bush's critics and his defenders, who will demand to know why the Democratic administration didn't act more aggressively against Al Qaeda if the Clinton White House was so aware of the threat it posed to the United States.

Since the hearing is taking place during a presidential campaign, it's unlikely that a spirit of bipartisan decorum will prevail. Nevertheless, it's good to bring this debate out in the open. The memories of Sept. 11, 2001, are still so raw that it has been hard to regard anything about that terrible day as a subject for political debate. But now President Bush is running for re-election on his record in responding to the terrorist attack, and that transition needs to take place.

Richard Clarke has served honorably under presidents of both parties, going back to Ronald Reagan. His words are very much worth listening to, but it's not necessary to find all of his criticisms of the current administration equally persuasive. Mr. Clarke's central complaint — that the president failed to respond to his urgent request for a cabinet-level meeting on terrorism until days before 9/11 — is far from conclusive evidence that the administration failed to take the threat seriously until disaster struck.

The most persuasive part of the critique by the former anti-terrorism czar concerns the administration's obsession with Iraq. Mr. Clarke says he and intelligence experts repeatedly assured top officials — and Mr. Bush himself — that Iraq was not involved in 9/11 or in supporting Al Qaeda. This fall, when the public has to judge Mr. Bush's decision to invade, voters will know that the president's own counterterrorism adviser had warned him that he was on the wrong track.