Because I have submitted a written statement today, and I've previously testified before this commission for 15 hours, and before the Senate-House Joint Inquiry Committee for six hours, I have only a very brief opening statement.
I welcome these hearings because of the opportunity that they provide to the American people to better understand why the tragedy of 9/11 happened and what we must do to prevent a reoccurance.
I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11.
To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed.
And for that failure, I would ask -- once all the facts are out -- for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
I welcome these hearings because of the opportunity that they provide to the American people to better understand why the tragedy of 9/11 happened and what we must do to prevent a reoccurance.
I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11.
To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed.
And for that failure, I would ask -- once all the facts are out -- for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
Nobody else has to date done anything but cover their own ass and blame somebody else for what went wrong on September 11, 2001.
I've been rather caught up in this 9/11 Worthless Commission hearing the last couple of days, since seeing Richard Clarke interviewed by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes. I wanted to see his testimony. It hasn't happened yet. I stayed up till 10:00 last night waiting for it, as CSPAN was showing the morning's testimony up until then. (I don't get the CSPAN channel that carries the hearings live.) Suddenly, at 10:00, they decided to quit broadcasting the hearings. I don't know if they resumed them later or whether they might be showing the afternoon's testimony this evening. If so, I'll watch.
At any rate, I've been able only to read online articles and commentaries, and I've seen a couple purported transcripts. More on that later.
What I did get to see was Wednesday morning's testimony by CIA Director George Tenet (with the slightest input from Deputy Director John McLaughlin) and by Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. I'd previously watched Powell and creepy Dick Armitage testifying, and I think I've gotten a fair feeling for the Commissioners.
What is obvious immediately is that the Commissioners each have their own biases, but all seem interested in getting to the commission's ultimate task of trying to make sure another 9/11 doesn't occur on American soil. All, that is, except James Thompson, former governor of Illinois (and a Republican). His whole purpose would appear to be to whitewash the Bush administration and smear anyone who casts an unflaterring light upon it. When he was questioning George Tenet, his entire questioning consisted of quoting passages from Richard Clarke's book that he wanted Tenet to rebut. And he has a bad-ass attitude doing it, too. And from the transcripts of Clarke's testimony, Thompson jumps right on him like a rabid beast without an introduction.
There are a couple of the commissioners who never let an opportunity go by to remark on the issue of having Condi Rice testify. As well they shouldn't. But I wonder what effect that will actually have. She's doing all her testifying under the White House umbrella where nobody can ask her any tough questions that she can't refuse to answer.
Commissioner Gorelick and Chairman Kean both brought up an interesting matter in questioning Tenet. Chairman Kean put it this way: he claimed he was "a little unhappy" that they were precluded from discussing things from five years ago that are "already in books". How strange is that? It's in print, but it's too secret to be discussed at public hearings?
The short story of Tenet's testimony is that both the Clinton and Bush administrations did everything they could be expected to do. There just wasn't enough "actionable" intelligence to do anything more. And his parting message was, this war is going to go on for many years.
One thing that keeps coming to my mind as I watch these proceedings is that, even under oath, there are going to be some people who might not be telling the truth. I think there's probably plenty of blame to go around for everybody in what happened on 9/11. But I don't think the truth is going to play much of a part in how we look at it.
As Richard Clarke said himself during his testimony, a Presidential aide, anyone holding an executive staff position is going to be expected to paint the best picture on the administration for which he or she is working. And, here's a little historical tidbit on that subject I didn't know until I recently started reading Body of Secrets.
Dwight Eisenhower masterminded and micromanaged the covert spy plane missions over the Soviet Union, violating Soviet air space and endangering the men who flew the missions, to say the least. The Soviets knew about the flights essentially the whole time, and when Kruschev's objections went unheeded, they finally shot down one of the flights. Unbeknownst to the pilots of those planes, they were designed so as not to permit survival in the case of them being shot down. Miraculously, Francis Gary Powers did survive, and so the whole project came to light. The Senate conducted an investigation. The Eisenhower administration changed its story three times before the hearings ever began. And then...
...Eisenhower was meeting with members of his National Security Council, warning them to avoid the press. "Our reconnaissance was discovered...endure the storm and say as little as possible."...Now the administration was admitting to "extensive aerial surveillance by unarmed civilian aircraft, normally of a peripheral character but on occasion by penetration. Specific missions...have not been subject to presidential authorization." With that, Eisenhower had drawn a line in the sand. No matter what the cost, a blanket of lies must forever hide his personal involvement in the ill-fated project. (p. 54)
...In public, Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the congressional probe and would "of course, fully coopeate," he quickly told anyone who asked. But in private he was very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His major concern was that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface. (p. 55)
...The blame for the disaster now reached right to the Oval Office door. [Eisenhower] could not allow the Senate Committee to get any closer....
"Administration officials should be calm and clear, but should not be expansive and should not permit the investigators to delve into our intelligence system...," he warned...."No information," he said sternly, "should be divulged" concerning those [systems]. (p. 57)
...In public, Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the congressional probe and would "of course, fully coopeate," he quickly told anyone who asked. But in private he was very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His major concern was that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface. (p. 55)
...The blame for the disaster now reached right to the Oval Office door. [Eisenhower] could not allow the Senate Committee to get any closer....
"Administration officials should be calm and clear, but should not be expansive and should not permit the investigators to delve into our intelligence system...," he warned...."No information," he said sternly, "should be divulged" concerning those [systems]. (p. 57)
In trying to figure out how to avoid the inevitable, several options were considered:
...Eisenhower quickly brushed aside the defense secretary's concern. "Just stand up there and tell 'em you won't take their oath." (p. 57)
...Eisenhower brought up the concept of executive privilege but quickly rejected it as unworkable....But to limit the possibility of a leak, he said, "admininstration officials should tesify themsleves and not allow their subordinates to speak." (p. 58)
...One other possibility brought up by Eisenhower was to have Allen Dulles simply stonewall all questions..."to say that CIA [is] a secret organization of the U.S. Government." Still another possibility was to try to turn the public against the Committee. Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson suggested to Eisenhower that he go on television..."The speech," he said, "should express the hope that no one in this country will engage in activities which will imperil the capability of the country to protect itself in the future."....Eisenhower...should evoke the terrible image of Pearl Harbor. (Ibid)
...Eisenhower brought up the concept of executive privilege but quickly rejected it as unworkable....But to limit the possibility of a leak, he said, "admininstration officials should tesify themsleves and not allow their subordinates to speak." (p. 58)
...One other possibility brought up by Eisenhower was to have Allen Dulles simply stonewall all questions..."to say that CIA [is] a secret organization of the U.S. Government." Still another possibility was to try to turn the public against the Committee. Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson suggested to Eisenhower that he go on television..."The speech," he said, "should express the hope that no one in this country will engage in activities which will imperil the capability of the country to protect itself in the future."....Eisenhower...should evoke the terrible image of Pearl Harbor. (Ibid)
Nothing new under the sun. Not even, or maybe not especially, in how to pull the wool over the public's eyes.
But Eisenhower was resigned to the inevitability of the investigation. He turned to the most difficult topic: covering up his own involvement in the scandal....Eisenhower was so fearful of the probe that he went so far as to order his Cabinet officers to hide his involvement in the scandal even while under oath. At least one Cabinet member directly lied to the committee, a fact known to Eisenhower. (p. 58)
The actual intention was not really to protect our intelligence secrets on the project, as the Soviets had already captured our pilot and had the crashed plane, with large intact parts, including the spy camera and eavesdropping gear. And in this case, the hearings weren't even going to be public. What was important was that it was an election year.
But, back to the recycling of old politics....
There are plenty of news sources and commentaries around the world about what's going on. Even our mainstream media are having to cover the story. (Well, Fox is actually performing some telefellacio for the Bush administration.) I think we have Richard Clarke to thank for this wide coverage. I wonder if, in the absence of his hot off the presses revelations and the White House scramble to discredit Clarke and refute his assertions, there would actually have been any coverage of the hearings other than CSPAN. How many Americans are riveted to CSPAN television?
In a Guardian interview with Julian Borger, Clarke responds to the rebuttal of his claim that Bush simply wanted him to "find" a link between Saddam and 9/11.
JB: Condoleezza Rice argued today that when President Bush was asking you to find evidence linking September 11 to Iraq, he was simply showing due diligence, asking you to explore the options.
RC: That's very funny. There are two ways of asking. There's: 'check every possibility - don't assume its al-Qaida look at everybody'. That's due diligence. Then there's the: 'I want you to find every shred of evidence that it was Iraq and Saddam' - and said in a very emphatic and intimidating way, and the other people who were with me got the same impression as I did. This was not due diligence. This was: 'come back with a memo that says it was an Iraqi attack'.
JB: And when you didn't find any evidence, the memo was bounced back?
RC: Yes
JB: Stephen Hadley [deputy national security advisor] said he bounced it back saying just update this?
RC: Well as soon as he got it he said update it, even though it was very current. Hadley's a good lawyer, he knows how to cover his ass. He not going to write: 'I don't like the answer'. But when your memo is immediately bounced and its got very current information and its bounced back to you and you're told to do over, its pretty clear what the implication is.
RC: That's very funny. There are two ways of asking. There's: 'check every possibility - don't assume its al-Qaida look at everybody'. That's due diligence. Then there's the: 'I want you to find every shred of evidence that it was Iraq and Saddam' - and said in a very emphatic and intimidating way, and the other people who were with me got the same impression as I did. This was not due diligence. This was: 'come back with a memo that says it was an Iraqi attack'.
JB: And when you didn't find any evidence, the memo was bounced back?
RC: Yes
JB: Stephen Hadley [deputy national security advisor] said he bounced it back saying just update this?
RC: Well as soon as he got it he said update it, even though it was very current. Hadley's a good lawyer, he knows how to cover his ass. He not going to write: 'I don't like the answer'. But when your memo is immediately bounced and its got very current information and its bounced back to you and you're told to do over, its pretty clear what the implication is.
There are a couple of curious things that I've picked up in the reading I've done the last couple of days.
One is something in that Guardian interview that I haven't seen anybody pick up on, which speaks to the question of whether Saddam had WMD.
JB: Do you believe the administration believed the intelligence on Iraqi WMD?
RC: We all believed Saddam had WMD. What I kept saying was: So what?. They said he could give it to terrorists. But I said he's not that stupid. If he gave WMD to terrorists he would lose power. The question was: Is there an imminent threat or had we contained him? And I thought we had successfully contained him. I didn't see it as a first-tier issue.
RC: We all believed Saddam had WMD. What I kept saying was: So what?. They said he could give it to terrorists. But I said he's not that stupid. If he gave WMD to terrorists he would lose power. The question was: Is there an imminent threat or had we contained him? And I thought we had successfully contained him. I didn't see it as a first-tier issue.
In the 60 Minutes interview, Clarke had said he published his book now because Bush was using his stance on terrorism in the campaign, and Clarke wanted to set the record straight on that stance. In a Salon interview, he adds a curious statement...
I wanted the book to come out much earlier, but the White House has a policy of reviewing the text of all books written by former White House personnel -- to review them for security reasons. And they actually took a very long time to do that. This book could have come out much earlier. It's the White House that decided when it would be published, not me. I turned it in toward the end of last year, and even though there was nothing in it that was not already obviously unclassified, they took a very, very long time.
The Salon article gives Clarke an opportunity to answer Cheney's claims that he wasn't "in the loop"...
I was in the same meetings that Dick Cheney was in, during the days after 9/11. Condi Rice and Dick Cheney appointed me as co-chairman of the interagency committee called the "Campaign Committee" -- the "campaign" being the war on terrorism. So I was co-chairing the interagency process to fight the war on terrorism after 9/11. I don't think I was "out of the loop."
...Cheney's claim that the Clinton administration had no successes in combatting terrorism (which I find rather interesting, because if you have successes, the stories probably don't make it to the surface)....
It's possible that the vice president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn't know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States, through military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States, through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert action program against al-Qaida; it also launched military strikes against al-Qaida. Maybe the vice president was so busy running Halliburton at the time that he didn't notice.
Touché.
You criticize both the Bush and Clinton administrations, although I have to say the press coverage of your discussion of the Clinton administration varies considerably from what is actually in your book ...
I'm glad you noticed.
I did notice that ... How different were the two administrations in their approaches to terrorism?
Well, prior to 9/11, the Bush administration didn't have an approach to terrorism....
... Apparently on one occasion -- of all these many, many days when George Tenet mentioned the al-Qaida threat -- the president on one occasion said, "I want a strategy. I don't want to swat flies." Well, months or certainly weeks went by after that, and he didn't get his strategy because Condi Rice didn't hold the meeting necessary to approve it and give it to him. And yet George Bush appears not to have asked for it a second time.
In fact, he told Bob Woodward in "Bush at War" that he kind of knew there was a strategy being developed out there, but he didn't know at what stage it was in the process.
I'm glad you noticed.
I did notice that ... How different were the two administrations in their approaches to terrorism?
Well, prior to 9/11, the Bush administration didn't have an approach to terrorism....
... Apparently on one occasion -- of all these many, many days when George Tenet mentioned the al-Qaida threat -- the president on one occasion said, "I want a strategy. I don't want to swat flies." Well, months or certainly weeks went by after that, and he didn't get his strategy because Condi Rice didn't hold the meeting necessary to approve it and give it to him. And yet George Bush appears not to have asked for it a second time.
In fact, he told Bob Woodward in "Bush at War" that he kind of knew there was a strategy being developed out there, but he didn't know at what stage it was in the process.
This guy Clarke is tough. (And, by the way, votes Republican. I wonder how he'll vote this year.) I think he'll be able to hold his own with whatever they throw at him. Update 9:00 pm 03/29/04: Correction: Clarke says in a March 29 interview that he voted for Al Gore in 2000. The Republican thing is from his Republican declaration in the Virginia primary of that same year. I guess that could mean a number of things. You speculate for yourself.
Tom Toles
An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, which generally slants its online articles heavily toward the Bush administration, gives Clarke a lot of credit.
RICHARD CLARKE came across as calm, credible -- and courageous -- in his testimony Wednesday....
"And the reason I am strident in my criticism of the president of the United States is because by invading Iraq . . . the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."
Those words were followed by a long silence, punctuating their power. Clarke has raised unsettling questions about this administration's approach to terrorism, before and after Sept. 11. These questions will not go away.
White House attempts to discredit this public servant have been aggressive to the point of unseemliness. Clarke proved Wednesday that he is fully capable of defending his honor.
"And the reason I am strident in my criticism of the president of the United States is because by invading Iraq . . . the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."
Those words were followed by a long silence, punctuating their power. Clarke has raised unsettling questions about this administration's approach to terrorism, before and after Sept. 11. These questions will not go away.
White House attempts to discredit this public servant have been aggressive to the point of unseemliness. Clarke proved Wednesday that he is fully capable of defending his honor.
Clarke's testimony is actually pretty damning, and particularly since Bush is using his terrorism heroics as his campaign mantra.
I had intended to offer up more of it to you either by quoting or summarizing, but I think this post is much too long as it is. I would suggest that you read the transcript.
In the end, Mr. Clarke says nothing they might have done probably would have stopped the attack. The holes he points out, aside from the total failure of the Bush administration, seem to be in the FBI's structure. In fact, Mr. Clarke would like to have another government agency - a domestic spying agency. He says that al Qa'ida probably came into existence in the late 80's, but the White House was never informed of their existence until the mid-90's. So, he'd also like to have much greater communication and data collecting capabilities between agencies, and a "more robust intelligence capability".
And there is something else that I think we need to understand about the CIA's covert action capabilities.
For many years, they were roundly criticized by the Congress and the media for various covert actions that they carried out at the request of people like me and the White House -- not me, but people like me. And many CIA senior managers were dragged up into this room and others and berated for failed covert action activities, and they became great political footballs.
Now, if you're in the CIA and you're growing up as a CIA manager over this period of time and that's what you see going on and you see one boss after another, one deputy director of operations after another being fired or threatened with indictment, I think the thing you learn from that is that covert action is a very dangerous thing that can damage the CIA, as much as it can damage the enemy.
For many years, they were roundly criticized by the Congress and the media for various covert actions that they carried out at the request of people like me and the White House -- not me, but people like me. And many CIA senior managers were dragged up into this room and others and berated for failed covert action activities, and they became great political footballs.
Now, if you're in the CIA and you're growing up as a CIA manager over this period of time and that's what you see going on and you see one boss after another, one deputy director of operations after another being fired or threatened with indictment, I think the thing you learn from that is that covert action is a very dangerous thing that can damage the CIA, as much as it can damage the enemy.
For all my admiration for him for coming out with the truth, I might still take Mr. Clarke to task for playing the politics game as long as he did...publicly putting a "good face" on the administration's policies until he was finally driven to quit in disgust. And I really am quite far away from him ideologically as to what should be done about the problem of terrorism. He says we never went far enough. He wanted to pre-empt both al Qa'ida and the Taliban to nothingness, even if it meant bombing to dust any location where they might be found.
I don't agree with his solutions, if our answer to terrorism is to continue our foreign policies and corporate supports which permit us to interfere with, manipulate, and exploit other countries and cultures, and simply find more ironclad ways of limiting their ability to rebel.
On the one hand, Clarke talks about increasing those types of agencies, and on the other, he does indicate that he's aware of the possible problems with them.
KERREY: ...Let me say as well that you and I have some disagreements and I'm going to get into them.
First of all, I do not want to go back to the bad old days when covert operations could be done in an environment where the people thought they could do something in violation of U.S. law or that they'd come to Congress and lie about it, thinking that that was okay. I mean, that's what we're directing our attention to.
Perhaps there were some personnel mistakes that were made in the response to the problems in Guatemala in particular.
But I don't want to go back to the bad old days where guys could go out there and operate and not have to worry about U.S. law, not have to worry about whether or not they came and lied to Congress.
CLARKE: Nor do I, Senator.
...CLARKE: I am very fearful that such an agency would have potential to infringe on our civil liberties. And therefore, I think we would have to take extraordinary steps to have active oversight of such an agency. And we would have to explain to the American people in a very compelling way why they needed a domestic intelligence service, because I think most Americans would be fearful of a secret police in the United States.
But frankly, the FBI culture, the FBI organization, the FBI personnel are not the best we could do in this country for a domestic intelligence service.
First of all, I do not want to go back to the bad old days when covert operations could be done in an environment where the people thought they could do something in violation of U.S. law or that they'd come to Congress and lie about it, thinking that that was okay. I mean, that's what we're directing our attention to.
Perhaps there were some personnel mistakes that were made in the response to the problems in Guatemala in particular.
But I don't want to go back to the bad old days where guys could go out there and operate and not have to worry about U.S. law, not have to worry about whether or not they came and lied to Congress.
CLARKE: Nor do I, Senator.
...CLARKE: I am very fearful that such an agency would have potential to infringe on our civil liberties. And therefore, I think we would have to take extraordinary steps to have active oversight of such an agency. And we would have to explain to the American people in a very compelling way why they needed a domestic intelligence service, because I think most Americans would be fearful of a secret police in the United States.
But frankly, the FBI culture, the FBI organization, the FBI personnel are not the best we could do in this country for a domestic intelligence service.
And frankly, I don't think we could create an organization with those responsibilities that would not grow to become a danger to our civil liberties. In fact, I'm quite sure we couldn't.
Also, I think Mr. Clarke should have spoken out sooner. We have a spate of people coming forward, but not before a lot of damage is done. Mr. Foster, the Medicare actuary, should have spoken up sooner (and I'll try to get something posted later about his testimony in that hearing yesterday.) It's just as Daniel Ellsberg has urged people: don't wait as long as I did, he says - a lot of damage, sometimes including the loss of innocent lives, happens in the meanwhile.
