Former White House Adviser Richard Clarke

DATE March 24, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Richard Clarke discusses his book "Against All Enemies"
accusing the Bush administration of not heeding warnings of major
attack by al-Qaeda against the US
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest is Richard Clarke, President Bush's former counterterrorism chief.
His new book, "Against All Enemies," contends that before September 11th, the
Bush administration failed to take adequate action in response to warnings
that al-Qaeda was preparing a major attack. His accusations have been on the
front pages of newspapers, debated on the talk shows and, of course, discussed
at the September 11th commission hearings. He is one of today's witnesses.
The commission was created by Congress to investigate the circumstances
surrounding the terrorist attacks, America's preparedness for the attacks and
its immediate response.

Richard Clarke was appointed by President Clinton as the first national
coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counterterrorism in
1998. He continued in that position under President Bush, and in 2001 he
became the president's special adviser for cyberspace security and chair of
the Critical Infrastructure Protection board. He resigned early last year.
Clarke also served in the administrations of President Reagan and President
George H.W. Bush. I spoke with Richard Clarke yesterday morning.

What warnings did you feel you had that a big terrorist attack was imminent
shortly before September 11th?

Mr. RICHARD CLARKE (Former Counterterrorism Chief): Well, Terry, for about
two months--actually more than that; well, probably more like 10 weeks--the
CIA director had been calling me and had also been briefing President Bush
every morning saying that there was increasing intelligence evidence that
al-Qaeda was planning a major attack. Now he didn't know where. In fact, the
CIA analysts thought it was most likely going to be in Saudi Arabia or Israel.
But I asked him `Could you rule out that it would be in the United States?'
And he said, `No.' So we did initiate some steps in the United States as best
we could to raise defenses.

GROSS: What did you do?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, we issued warnings through the FBI system to 18,000 police
departments, state and local. We issued warnings to the airlines, through the
FAA, and to airports. We issued warnings to the federal law enforcement
agencies--Customs, Immigration, Secret Service, Coast Guard--and told them
that an al-Qaeda terrorist attack was imminent and that they should take
appropriate measures. We also, in case it was overseas, told the Defense
Department, which went on an increased alert, defensive posture. And we told
the State Department, which increased the security of its embassies overseas.

GROSS: What did you try to tell the president and other people in Defense
within the Bush administration about imminent al-Qaeda attacks?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, I knew that the president was being told every morning by
George Tenet, the CIA director, that this was happening. I had asked early
on, I think two or three days into the Bush administration, in January to have
a Cabinet-level meeting, following which we could have a presidential meeting.
And I was told `Well, no, we're not going to do that. You're not going to get
to see the president on terrorism. We're going to have a policy development
process and review terrorist policy in general, and we'll do that in a couple
of months. We'll start at the deputy secretary level.' And that process
dragged on until September 4th, when finally we had the Cabinet-level meeting
that I had requested urgently in writing very early in the administration,
three days into the administration.

GROSS: What is your interpretation of that slow process that prevented you
from actually speaking directly to the president and prevented you from
getting to the top with the analysis you had about the need for more attention
to al-Qaeda?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, I think if you look at what the president himself said to
Bob Woodward, The Washington Post reporter who wrote the book "Bush At War,"
in an interview with Woodward, the president says, `This was not on the top of
my list or my national security team. I was not on point. I did not feel a
sense of urgency about al-Qaeda.' Now, frankly, how he could not feel a sense
of urgency, given the fact that he was being briefed every day by CIA about an
impending attack, I still don't understand.

GROSS: Some people have speculated that because al-Qaeda was a priority of
the Clinton administration, it was dismissed by the Bush administration, which
didn't want to be associated with anything that seemed Clintonesque.

Mr. CLARKE: Well...

GROSS: Do you give any credibility to that?

Mr. CLARKE: ...you know, it's an awful thing to believe, but there's some
reason to believe that, and here it is. The Clinton people, the president
himself and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and others, said to the
incoming team, in a very civil, polite way, i.e. even after the election
fiasco in Florida, `There are three issues that you have to focus on: One is
al-Qaeda; two is the Arab-Israeli peace process, and three is the process
we've created to negotiate with North Korea about their nuclear weapons
program.' Somehow all three of those issues slipped to the bottom of the
agenda when the Clinton people left and the Bush people took over. And the
issues that were on the top were Star Wars, the anti-ballistic missile
program; Iraq; relations with Russia. These were issues that the Bush people
had developed as their agenda over the course of the preceding year. And they
were undeterred in that set of priorities for--well, at least until September
11th on terrorism and on the Arab-Israeli peace process. And North Korea,
they were deterred for even longer.

GROSS: What do you think the Bush administration could have done, if
anything, to prevent September 11th from happening with the information that
had been coming in?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, I don't know that anything could have been done, and it's
very facile, I think, to say that if this or that happened, we could have
prevented September 11th. We'll never know. But I do like to contrast the
months prior to September 11th during the Bush administration with the month
prior to the millennium roll-over in December 1999 in the Clinton
administration because they're similar. In both time frames George Tenet and
the CIA were reporting that there might be a large-scale al-Qaeda attack in
the near future. In December 1999, President Clinton ordered his national
security adviser, Sandy Berger, to hold meetings, if not daily, at least every
other day with the attorney general, with the head of the FBI, the secretary
of Defense, the head of the CIA and get daily or every-other-day reports from
them on what they were doing to stop this possible attack.

Now when that kind of thing happens, when the attorney general or the FBI
director knows that he or she has to go back to the White House the next day
and report on what they have done, they leave the White House meeting, they go
back to their departments and they shake the trees. And that ripples through
the department, throughout the FBI, and it did in December of 1999. One of
the things that happened as a result of the warnings and alerts in December
1999 was that the Customs agency's police was on high alert. And a Customs
agent in Washington state saw a suspicious character, and she chased him and
she arrested him. And it turned out that this fellow was going to be part of
an attack team that was going to attack and blow up Los Angeles Airport.

Now there were three planned attacks around the millennium, and as you know,
none of them took place. Some of that's because of good police work, good
intelligence work; some that's because of luck. Now contrast that with June,
July and August of 2001 when similar warnings were coming in, but the
president did not say, `I want to chair a meeting on this to find out how
you're stopping the attack.' He did not order his national security adviser
to do so. They left it at my level, the staff level. Now there's a lot I can
do at the staff level, and I did. I sent out the warnings I talked about.
But it's not quite the same as the regular drumbeat of having to go into the
White House as a Cabinet member or the head of an agency and say what you've
done to stop the attack.

GROSS: Are you suggesting that you think the Bush administration basically
had blinders on? They saw only what was on their agenda and didn't see
anything that wasn't on their agenda, no matter how urgent that other thing
may have been?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, I think there's a good case to be made for that. You know,
if the FBI director had been dragged over and the attorney general had been
dragged over every day to say, `What are you doing?' and if they had gone back
to their department and shaken the trees, they would have found out that,
buried in the FBI, there was knowledge that two al-Qaeda members, two
terrorists, had infiltrated the United States. That information had not
reached the top of the FBI; it had not reached me. But if we had had a
process where the Cabinet-level people, the attorney general and the FBI
director, were being asked every day in a meeting in the White House, `What
are you doing?' they probably would have found that information.

Now if you had that information, what would you have done? Probably put their
names and pictures on the front page of every paper in the country and on
"America's Most Wanted." We probably would have found them. Now if we had
found two of the hijackers, could we have stopped the entire attack? We'll
never know.

GROSS: My guest is Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief in the
Clinton and Bush administrations. His new book is called "Against All
Enemies." Our interview was recorded yesterday. We'll hear more after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Clarke. He was
national security coordinator under President Clinton and President Bush. He
also worked in the first Bush administrations and the Reagan administration on
security. And his new book, which I'm sure you've been hearing about, is
called "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror."

You had warned the Bush administration that al-Qaeda was planning a major
attack. You didn't know that it would be in the United States, but you
thought it was coming. And you think that they virtually ignored the
warnings. After September 11th did the president, did Donald Rumsfeld, did
Wolfowitz, did anybody who you think had basically ignored your warnings come
to you and say, `Well, you were right'?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, to say they virtually ignored the warnings, I think
that's...

GROSS: Did I overstate that?

Mr. CLARKE: Perhaps a little. They knew that I was sending out alerts. They
knew that I was holding meetings. They didn't think it was important enough
for them to hold meetings. So the president never held a meeting with the
attorney general and the other Cabinet members on the impending al-Qaeda
attack. He got these briefings every morning from George Tenet, and on one
occasion he said, apparently, to Condoleezza Rice, `I don't want to just swat
flies,' meaning, `I don't want to just go after one terrorist here and one
terrorist there.' `I want a strategy.' So on one of these many, many days
when he was told there was an impending al-Qaeda attack, he did make a comment
that he wanted a strategy. Condoleezza Rice then called me and said, `Well,
this is what the president wants.' And I reminded her that I had a strategy,
a plan, which we had shown her, in fact, before the inauguration and I had
been hoping to get her to hold a meeting on. And she said, `Well, we'll get
to it.'

GROSS: So after September 11th did anybody in the Bush administration come to
you and say, `You were right'?

Mr. CLARKE: Not that I remember.

GROSS: After September 11th you were told to investigate connections between
Iraq and al-Qaeda. You said there were none. You did the report. You found
no connections. And you say that the president then said to you, `Iraq,
Saddam--find out if there's a connection.' You said he said this in a very
intimidating way, as if you should come back with that answer. You wrote
another report. It got bounced back, and the aide giving you back the report
said, `Wrong answer. Do it again.'

Mr. CLARKE: Well, Terry, the chronology's a little bit different, but
essentially that's correct.

GROSS: Correct me.

Mr. CLARKE: Well, on September 12th we were still in the crisis room, in the
Situation Room, and the president wandered in and wandered about and saw me
and pulled me aside, with three of my staff, and closed the door in a
conference room. Now the president apparently now says he doesn't remember
this ever happening. I have these three other staff members who were with me
who have all said to newspapers and television, media, that yes, indeed, it
did happen. So first thing is it did happen, even if the president has a
senior moment about it.

What did he ask? The White House now says that if the meeting took place,
what he was asking was merely that I do due diligence; that I look into all
possibilities; that I not assume it was just al-Qaeda. Well, that's not
exactly what happened. What happened was he spoke about Iraq, not all
possibilities, not Iran, not Hezbollah, not other terrorist groups. He spoke
to me in very firm, almost angry, tones about the need for me to write a paper
about Iraq's role or links. And I said, `Well, there aren't any significant
links between al-Qaeda and Iraq, and I doubt very much that there will be any
in the intelligence. We've looked at this issue before. We looked at the
issue of Iraqi involvement with al-Qaeda before the attacks on 9/11.' And he
was very upset by that answer.

So we then went off and wrote a memo, and we cleared that memo with the CIA,
and we cleared that memo with the FBI. And we sent it up the chain to the
national security adviser and her deputy. Well, the memo came back very
quickly with the instructions that we should redo it and update it. And we
said, `Well, wait a minute. How can we update it? It's brand new. It's got
all the latest information.' We did it again, sent it back up, and they never
showed it to the president because it concluded that there was no Iraqi
involvement.

GROSS: Why do you think it was never shown to the president?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, you know, my impression is that the people around the
president don't show him things that don't accord with their views or his
views. This is not a White House that is interested in analysis, pros and
cons, evaluation. They kind of have the conclusions, and they want only
information that supports the conclusions. The conclusions are received
wisdom.

GROSS: You have worked for four administrations: the Reagan administration,
the first President Bush administration, the Clinton administration and the
current Bush administration. Have reports that you have handed in ever been
treated that way? Have you ever seen information treated in that kind of
selective way that you're describing?

Mr. CLARKE: No. I think this administration is unique in that it really
rejects the kind of analysis that--the professional intelligence analysis and
the professional policy analysis that I grew up in the government doing and
that every administration wanted. You know, before going into a war with
Iraq, for example, one might have wanted an analysis that said, `Show me all
the evidence that they are an imminent threat to the United States. Let's see
the case for that. Let's see the case against that.' That was never done.
`Assuming we go into Iraq and we try to set up a Jeffersonian democracy there,
what are--and there are obviously pluses if we can do that--the minuses? What
are the unintended consequences in the Islamic world and in the war on
terrorism of doing an invasion of Iraq?' That was never done because even if
we succeed over the long term--and it will take a long time--to make Iraq a
democracy, in the meantime the more immediate effects of our having gone into
Iraq are that we have radicalized even further a generation of young Muslims
from Morocco to Indonesia. We have given great fuel and ammunition to the
terrorist movement.

GROSS: You write that after September 11th you `realized, with almost a sharp
physical pain, that Rusmfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage
of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the
beginning of the administration--indeed, well before--they had been pressing
for a war with Iraq. My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that word
was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002.' You're saying that Iraq was
on the agenda from the very start. And before September 11th, what were the
reasons that were given at administration meetings for paying that much
attention to Iraq, and were there actual discussions about invading Iraq
before September 11th?

Mr. CLARKE: There were discussions about what to do with Iraq, and among the
options discussed were options to invade. But this goes back to even before
these people in the Pentagon and in the vice president's office--even before
they came into the government, even before Bush was inaugurated. They were
talking publicly in meetings in Washington, they were writing monograms and
distributing them around, about why we needed to reshape the Middle East by
knocking off Saddam Hussein, going in and building a democracy there. They
have this sort of messianic view that the United States, as the great
superpower, could just put its hand into the middle of the Middle East and rip
out a regime and remold a country, and then that would have ripple effects
throughout the Middle East.

And then after September 11th the president signed what's called a National
Security Presidential Directive, an NSPD. In the National Security
Presidential Directive, he instructed the Pentagon to begin planning for a war
with Iraq right after September 11th, even though the CIA and FBI were telling
him that September 11th had nothing to do with Iraq.

GROSS: Did you express skepticism about invading Iraq or focusing on Iraq at
any meetings before September 11th?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, I wasn't invited to most of those meetings, Terry. After
September 11th, and including on September 11th, I said, `You must be joking?
I mean, this has got nothing to do with al-Qaeda. We've just been attacked,
America's just been attacked, in a very major way. We need to have all of our
energy, all of our resources, on the war on terrorism. Why divert resources
into something else, particularly into something else that will only
strengthen the terrorists?'

GROSS: Richard Clarke served as the counterterrorism chief in the
administrations of Presidents Clinton George W. Bush. Our interview was
recorded yesterday. We'll hear the rest of it in the second half of the show.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Coming up, we continue our conversation with Richard Clarke, former
counterterrorism chief in the Clinton and Bush administrations. He says the
invasion of Iraq has actually made the US more vulnerable.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview
I recorded yesterday morning with Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism
chief in the Clinton and Bush administrations. He also served under
Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In his new book "Against All
Enemies," he contends that before September 11th the Bush administration
`failed to adequately respond to warning that al-Qaeda was planning an attack.
In response to the attacks, we invaded Iraq in spite of the fact that there
was no evidence connecting it to al-Qaeda.' Clarke's book has been used by
the September 11th commission in the questioning of witnesses. Clarke is one
of today's witnesses.

You say that after September 11th, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld complained
that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan. And we did end
up bombing in Afghanistan. What is your interpretation of what he meant by
that, `There are no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan'?

Mr. CLARKE: I think he and, actually, the president, too, wanted to
demonstrate American power after September 11th. They wanted to say, `You
can't pull on Superman's cape.' Well, we were all willing to think about
demonstrating American power. The question was using it in a way that made
sense, using it in a way that strengthened our defenses, not just using it for
the hell of it. And by suggesting that there weren't enough things to bomb in
Afghanistan but there were in Iraq, the secretary of Defense seemed, to me, to
be saying, `Let's just blow things up for the hell of it to prove to people
that we're big and tough.'

GROSS: Now you say in your book that you think invading Iraq has actually
increased the problem of terrorism. How?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, in three ways. First of all, it's costing us $180 billion
in the first two years and may be even more than that. That money could have
been used to reduce our vulnerabilities here at home. In the wake of the
Madrid bombing of the trains recently, people have realized what's been true
along; that our railroads in the United States, our subways, our commuter
rails are not protected. Well, many things in the United States are not
protected. There's a long list of vulnerabilities which we could reduce. It
would cost money. We're not spending money reducing those vulnerabilities
very much; there's some token efforts. There should have been an all-out
national effort akin to the Apollo project or the Manhattan Project. But we
didn't do that, and in large part we didn't do that because the money that
would have been necessary is being spent on Iraq. So that's the first thing.
It's costing the alternative of reducing our vulnerabilities.

Secondly, actual military and intelligence assets that were in Afghanistan
looking for al-Qaeda, looking for bin Laden, were removed and sent to Iraq.
Now, in the last few weeks, they have been returned, but that's two years too
late, two years during which al-Qaeda has morphed into a hydraheaded
organization with independent organizations, independent cells, throughout the
world, likely grew up in Madrid. So we didn't go after al-Qaeda the way we
should have, and we didn't secure Afghanistan. We went into Afghanistan in a
very slow way after September 11th. A few special forces troops were put up
north with the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban. We did not send people
into where we thought bin Laden was for almost two months, during which, of
course, he escaped. And then we only deployed 11,000 US troops in
Afghanistan.

Now let's compare that. There are more police in Manhattan--not the city of
New York but just Manhattan--there are more police in Manhattan than the
United States put troops into Afghanistan. And yet we were supposed to secure
and stabilize the country, so that never again could it be a base for
terrorism? We were supposed to be draining the swamp? Well, we haven't, and
one of the reasons we haven't is that we withheld forces that should have been
going into Afghanistan. We withheld them for the war on Iraq.

GROSS: Now one of the things that you just said is that money that is being
spent on Iraq should have been spent on homeland security. Are you saying
that you think we're actually pretty vulnerable in the United States to
another terrorist attack?

Mr. CLARKE: I think since September 11th, we've done a great deal to improve
the security of passenger aircraft. There are many, many other things that
need to be secured: containers, shipping, chemical plants, trains, lots of
things where there are plans and there are projects. And there are very
frustrated people in the Department of Homeland Security who would like to be
reducing these vulnerabilities, but they can't get the money. Terry, there's
a third way in which going into Iraq hurt the war on terrorism.

GROSS: Go ahead.

Mr. CLARKE: The third way is that al-Qaeda had been saying, bin Laden had
been saying, that the United States is the new crusader, the new Westerner,
come to occupy an oil-rich Arab country. And we did exactly that; we did
exactly what bin Laden said we would do. We invaded and occupied an oil-rich
Arab country that had not been threatening us. And the sights on Arab
television of American troops fighting in Iraq and now occupying Iraq have
infuriated Arab opinion. The Pew Charitable Trust does opinion polling and
very reliable opinion polling in countries such as Morocco and Jordan and
Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan. Many of those countries the government, at
least, is our friend. And we consider them allies, and we consider them
moderates. And yet the opinion polls now show that up to 90 percent of people
in those countries either hate the United States or have a very negative
opinion of the United States. Osama bin Laden is a very popular figure in
some of those countries. The most often given name to new children in
Pakistan after 9/11 was Osama.

So we played right into their hands by invading and occupying, without any
provocation, a Muslim country and at the very time when we should have been
doing the opposite. We should have been embracing our Islamic friends and
saying, `Work with us to have an ideological counterweight to al-Qaeda.' They
won't do that now with us because many of these governments don't want to be
seen to be working too closely with us now in the Islamic world. We can't
just arrest and kill terrorists; even Donald Rumsfeld figured that out. In
his internal memo in the Pentagon, which leaked, he said, `It may be the case
that we're turning out new terrorists faster than we're killing and arresting
them.' He's right, we are. And we have to win for ideas, and we can't do
that as long as we are reviled by occupying a country like Iraq.

GROSS: Say you became president tomorrow and you had the power to change
policies, change our approach to the war on terrorism, change what we're doing
in Iraq. What do you think could be done to...

Mr. CLARKE: And, see, this is the...

GROSS: Go ahead.

Mr. CLARKE: This is the real problem, Terry. President Bush, by putting us
in Iraq, has created a fait accompli. And whether he stays in office or some
other person, Senator Kerry, whoever, replaces him, there's still going to be
this situation of the United States owning Iraq and having a hundred plus
thousand troops there and being responsible for its future. So no matter
who's president, they have that problem. We should never have been put in
this position. And it's going to take an awful lot of work to get us out of
this position in a way that preserves our security interests.

GROSS: My guest is Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief in the
Clinton and Bush administrations. His new book is called "Against All
Enemies." Our interview was recorded yesterday. We'll hear more after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Clarke. And he served
as national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and
counterterrorism under Presidents Clinton and in the current Bush
administration. He also held security positions under the Reagan
administration and the first Bush administration.

Richard Clarke, when did you resign from the Bush administration?

Mr. CLARKE: In February of last year.

GROSS: In one way, I should be asking you why did you resign. Why didn't you
stay? And in another way, I should be asking you why did you wait so long to
resign, given how wrong-headed you thought the Bush administration policies
were.

Mr. CLARKE: Well, I probably should have resigned earlier. I kept hoping
that the war with Iraq would not happen. I had asked to work on other issues.
I had asked to work on the issue of cybersecurity and critical infrastructure
protection. And I thought I was getting a lot done in that field which needed
to be done, and so I thought I was making a difference in an area. But the
more and more that I saw where the administration was going and the fact that
they couldn't be stopped by rational argument and Colin Powell and others were
not going to win the day and we were going to go to war and largely in a
unilateral way, I felt I had to end my career. And I was at the 30-year point
of federal service, so I decided to leave.

I was replaced by, among others, a fellow named Rand Beers, with whom--I had
worked with him for 25 years in the State Department and the White House. He
had worked in the Reagan White House and the first Bush White House and the
Clinton White House. And so he started working on the terrorist account, and
shortly thereafter he, too, resigned and quit the government because he
thought we weren't doing enough on the war on terrorism, and we were making it
worse by the war on Iraq.

GROSS: Let me read something you say about President Bush in your book. You
write, `When he focused, he asked the kind of questions that revealed a
bumper-sticker description of the problem. Once he had that, he could put
energy behind a drive to achieve his goal. The problem was that many of the
important issues, like terrorism, like Iraq, were laced with important
subtlety and nuance. These issues needed analysis, and Bush and his inner
circle had no real interest in complicated analyses on the issues they cared
about. They already knew the answers. It was received wisdom.' Let's get
back to what you're saying about President Bush here; that he had a
`bumper-sticker description of problems.'

Mr. CLARKE: Well, I think one of my favorite quotes from President Bush is,
quote, "I don't do nuance," unquote. That's his self-description. And, you
know, many of these problems are very nuanced, technical, detailed kinds of
things that you can't reduce to a bumper-sticker slogan, like, `Fight the war
on terrorism.' And it takes attention, it takes time, it takes analysis. And
they're not too fond of analysis.

GROSS: What do you hope your testimony to the September 11th commission will
accomplish?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, I think, for one thing, it will set the record straight
about what the Clinton administration did and did not do; set the record
straight about what the Bush administration did and did not do. You know, the
Clinton administration is not blameless here. And recent press coverage of my
book has focused on my criticism of the Bush administration, but that's one
chapter in the book. There's a lot of blame to go around. The Clinton
administration did accomplish some things, which are not widely known, but it
also failed in some areas. Among the things it did, which are not widely
known, is it did retaliate militarily for terrorist attacks against Iraq,
against al-Qaeda, which the previous Bush administration and the previous
Reagan administration had not done. We had hundreds of Americans killed
during the Reagan administration in Beirut, and there was no military
retaliation against the terrorists. Hundreds of Americans killed by Libya in
Pan Am 103 in the Bush administration, and there was no military retaliation
against the terrorists.

So Clinton did use military retaliation. He effectively stopped
Iraqi-sponsored terrorism against the United States. He effectively stopped
Iranian-sponsored terrorism against the United States. He prevented al-Qaeda
from taking over Bosnia when it was trying to do so. He stopped the attacks
in the millennium period. He stopped many al-Qaeda attacks. But he did not
eliminate al-Qaeda. Why? It's easy for us now, after 9/11, to say that we
should have done this or that beforehand. But when Clinton left office, fewer
than 50 Americans had been killed by al-Qaeda over the course of eight years.
Contrast that to the figures I just gave you for the terrorist deaths under
Reagan and Bush. A lot of people thought that al-Qaeda was a kind of
nuisance-level problem. Clinton didn't. His administration was working hard
to go after al-Qaeda. It didn't do some of the things that it might have
done. For example, it didn't bomb all of the infrastructure, all of the
terrorist camps. It did once bomb in Afghanistan, but it didn't go back and
bomb and bomb and bomb and destroy the terrorist camps. It should have done
that.

GROSS: In terms of the Clinton administration and its attempts to destroy
al-Qaeda, you were very angry about the distraction of the impeachment process
and how much attention was paid by the government to the Monica Lewinsky
scandal. You write, `Clinton was weakened by continued political attack. He
couldn't get the CIA, the Pentagon and FBI to act sufficiently to deal with
the threats.' To what extent do you think that the impeachment process
hindered the United States' ability to stop the threat of terrorism or to at
least decrease that threat?

Mr. CLARKE: After the two US embassies were attacked in August of 1998,
President Clinton responded with a military retaliation against al-Qaeda
camps. And instead of the Congress and the media and the American people
saying, `Yes, that's what we want; use military force against terrorists,' what
happened was a wave of criticism of Clinton. The Republicans and many in the
right-wing media said what the president was trying to do was to divert
attention from his own personal problems in the Lewinsky investigation.

They recalled a movie called "Wag The Dog." And you remember that movie had
the following scenario: A president in trouble politically decides to use
military force to divert attention, and he makes up a reason to invade
Albania. And so after Clinton attacked the camps, he was accused of `wagging
the dog'; in other words, using military force when it wasn't necessary in
order to divert attention. Well, after you've used military force once and
you get that kind of reaction, let's just say you're not precluded from doing
it again, but the threshold is raised. It becomes more difficult for the
president to decide to do it again. And, frankly, Terry, if anybody has
wagged the dog here, I think it's not Bill Clinton. It's George Bush because,
just as in the movie when we made up a reason to invade Albania, I'd say we've
made up a reason to invade Iraq.

GROSS: My guest is Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief in the
Clinton and Bush administrations. His new book is called "Against All
Enemies." Our interview was recorded yesterday. We'll hear more of it after
a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Clark. And he served
as the national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and
counterterrorism under the administrations of President Clinton and President
Bush. He also served in security positions under President Reagan and the
first President Bush. His new book is called "Against All Enemies: Inside
America's War on Terror." And it's quite critical of the Bush administration.

Let's look at some of the criticisms that the Bush administration and other
people who support the administration are leveling at you. One of them is
that this is obviously timed to the presidential election and that you have
political motives in doing this now.

Mr. CLARKE: OK, let's take that apart. There are two things, they say. One,
the timing by releasing it in March, in the beginning of the presidential
election, is obviously political. I turned this book in to the White House
last year because, as a former White House official, they have to review it
for security content. They took three months to go through it and get back to
me. This book could have been out last year. It's their choice that it's
coming out now, not mine.

The second thing--and Dan Bartlett, one of their spokesmen, said, `This book
is Dick Clarke's attempt to get a high-level position in the Kerry
administration.' And they pointed out that I am a friend of Rand Beers, who
used to work in the Bush White House doing terrorism, and he was now working
for John Kerry. Well, they're right about that; I am a friend of Rand Beers.
I was his friend when he worked in the Reagan White House, I was his friend
when he worked in the Bush White House, number one, and I was his friend when
he worked in the Bush White House, number two. And I am his friend now when
he is Kerry's national security adviser. Do I want a job in the Kerry
administration? No. And let me say for the record if John Kerry gets elected
and offers me a job, I will thank him very much and decline. This is not
about me getting a job. This is about the facts getting out to the American
people.

GROSS: Is it Beers who you are co-teaching a course with at Harvard, because
that has been another criticism?

Mr. CLARKE: It is. And, you know, I'm not going to run away from a friend of
25 years because he happens to be doing what they apparently think is
dishonorable in working for John Kerry.

GROSS: And here's something that has been disputed. You say in your book
that it's just a fable that, under the Clinton administration, the Sudanese
government offered to arrest bin Laden, hand him over in chains to FBI agents.
But Washington rejected it because the Clinton administration didn't see bin
Laden as important or couldn't find anywhere to put him on trial. So you're
saying all that's a fable, that that never happened. And some of your critics
are saying, `Oh, that did happen, and the Clinton administration missed a
great opportunity because they could have gotten bin Laden as a prisoner.'

Mr. CLARKE: Yeah. I think we have to go back and look at the history of the
time to see whether or not this is true. The man who was running Sudan at the
time, Hassan Al-Turabi, was himself, in fact, a terrorist. He supported
terrorism against Egypt. He supported terrorism against other countries. He
had invited terrorists from all over the world to set up shop in Khartoum. He
also had a close, personal relationship with bin Laden. They often dined in
the evening together. Bin Laden would go horseback riding with his son. Bin
Laden had given his efforts a great deal of money. And they were ideological
soul mates. Turabi, using Egyptian terrorists, tried to kill the president of
Egypt while he was visiting Ethiopia. This resulted in UN sanctions against
Sudan for being a terrorist state sponsor. Terry, it's very difficult to get
the UN, particularly back then, to pass sanctions on a country because it's a
terrorist state sponsor.

Now this is the government that people are now, in their revisionist history,
saying would have taken their dear friend, put him in chains and handed him
over to the FBI. They didn't offer to do that. There were discussions from
time to time because they were trying to get us off their back. But they knew
how to turn him over. In fact, when the United States found Carlos the
Jackal, that terrorist, in Sudan and informed the French, the Sudanese very
readily went out, found him, put him in chains, brought him to the airport and
gave him to the French. If they had wanted to do that with bin Laden, they
would have done that. But, in fact, they had no interest in doing it because
they agreed with bin Laden. They were part of his international movement.

GROSS: Now you are familiar with al-Qaeda not just as a national security
expert. You are familiar with al-Qaeda as a former target (laughs). They had
targeted you for assassination. And this was--what years were you a target?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, there were a series of reports--and, you know, in
retrospect, I'm not sure that those reports were true. But the CIA did come
to me, you know, I think 1999, and say that they had information that al-Qaeda
had put a contract out on me. And that kind of brings it home that they can
operate in the United States. I always believed that. But the FBI never was
able to identify a terrorist cell in the United States by al-Qaeda, even
though we kept telling them to look harder because we thought they were there.

GROSS: And what did you do to protect yourself?

Mr. CLARKE: Well, I can't go into too much of that. The president ordered
Secret Service to provide me with additional security, and they did. And
they're a very, very effective organization. Secret Service is probably the
most effective federal agency, but even they say that there's only so much
they can do to protect someone if the enemy is willing to sacrifice their life
in the attack.

GROSS: On September 11th, when you first heard the news about the attacks,
you had been preparing for attacks. You thought they were coming. You had
warned about them. But you didn't know if they would happen in the United
States, and you certainly didn't know what shape they would take. So what was
your first reaction when you knew, `OK, this is it, this is the big one, and
here's what actually happened. Here's the shape it took'?

Mr. CLARKE: My initial reaction was, `How much more of it is there? Are
there going to be simultaneous attacks overseas? Are there going to be
follow-on attacks?' So for the first several days and, indeed, for the first
several weeks we were looking to increase security quickly and prevent
follow-on attacks or further attacks, even though we recognized that this had
been the big one that we knew was coming and we had been unable to prevent it.

GROSS: Richard Clarke, thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. CLARKE: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Richard Clarke served as counterterrorism chief in the administrations
of Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. His new book is called "Against All
Enemies." He's one of the witnesses testifying before the September 11th
commission.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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