Richard A. Clarke

During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Clarke advised Madeleine Albright, then–US Ambassador to the United Nations, to request the UN to withdraw all UN troops from the country. She refused, and permitted Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire to keep a few hundred UN troops; his forces saved tens of thousands from the genocide.

Later Clarke told Samantha Power, "It wasn't in American's national interest. If we had to do the same thing today and I was advising the President, I would advise the same thing." He supervised the writing of PDD-25,[9] a classified Executive Order that established criteria for future U.S. participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations. It also proposed a reduced military and economic role for the United States in Rwanda.

After Islamists took control in Sudan in a 1989 coup d'état, the United States had adopted a policy of disengagement with the authoritarian regime throughout the 1990s. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, however, some critics charged that the U.S. should have moderated its policy toward Sudan earlier. The influence of Islamists there waned in the second half of the 1990s, and Sudanese officials began to indicate an interest in accommodating US concerns related to Osama bin Laden. He lived in Sudan until he was expelled in May 1996. (He was later revealed to be the planner of 9/11.)

Timothy M. Carney, U.S. ambassador to Sudan between September 1995 and November 1997, co-authored an op-ed in 2002 claiming that in 1997, Sudan offered to turn over its intelligence on bin Laden to the US, but that Susan Rice, as National Security Council (NSC) Africa specialist, together with NSC terrorism specialist Richard A. Clarke, successfully lobbied for continuing to bar U.S. officials, including the CIA and FBI, from engaging with the Khartoum government.[10] Similar allegations (that Susan Rice joined others in missing an opportunity to cooperate with Sudan on counter-terrorism) were made by David Rose, Vanity Fair contributing editor,[11] and Richard Miniter, author of Losing Bin Laden.[12]

Clarke was involved in supervising the investigation of Ramzi Yousef, one of the main perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who had traveled to the United States on an Iraqi passport. Yousef is the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior al-Qaeda member. Many in the Clinton administration and the intelligence community believed Yousef's ties were evidence linking al-Qaeda's activities and the government of Iraq.[13]

In February 1999, Clarke wrote the Deputy National Security Advisor that a reliable source reported Iraqi officials had met with Bin Laden and may have offered him asylum. Clarke advised against surveillance flights to track bin Laden in Afghanistan: he said that anticipating an attack, "old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad," where he would be impossible to find.[14] That year Clarke told the press in official statements that "Iraqi nerve gas experts" and al-Qaeda were linked to an alleged joint-chemical-weapons-development effort at the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.[15]

Michael Scheuer is the former chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA. Matthew Continetti wrote:

Scheuer believes that Clarke's risk aversion and politicking negatively impacted the hunt for bin Laden prior to September 11, 2001. Scheuer stated that his unit, codename "Alec," had provided information that could have led to the capture and or killing of Osama bin Laden on ten occasions during the Clinton administration, only to have his recommendations for action turned down by senior intelligence officials, including Clarke.[16]

In 1996, Clarke entered into a secret pact with Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the UN, Michael Sheehan, and James Rubin, to overthrow U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was running unopposed for a second term in the 1996 selection. They dubbed the pact "Operation Orient Express" to reflect their hope "that many nations would join us in doing in the UN head." However, every other member of the Security Council voted for Boutros-Ghali. Despite severe criticism, Clarke and Sheehan prevailed upon President Clinton to resist international pressure and continue the US's solo veto.[17] After four deadlocked meetings of the Security Council, Boutros-Ghali suspended his candidacy. He is the only U.N. Secretary-General ever to be denied a second term by a Security Council member veto.

The United States fought a four-round veto duel with France, forcing it to back down and accept the selection of US-educated Kofi Annan as the next Secretary-General. In his memoirs, Clarke said that "the entire operation had strengthened Albright's hand in the competition to be Secretary of State in the second Clinton administration."[17]^: 201

On April 8, 2004, Condoleezza Rice was publicly interviewed by the 9/11 investigatory commission. She discussed Clarke and his communications with the Bush administration regarding bin Laden and associated terrorist plots targeting the United States. Clarke had written a memo dated January 25, 2001, to Rice.[18] He urgently requested a meeting of the NSC's Principals Committee to discuss the growing al-Qaeda threat in the greater Middle East, and suggested strategies for combating al-Qaeda that might be adopted by the new Bush administration.[19]

In his memoir, Against All Enemies, Clarke wrote that Condoleezza Rice decided that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism should be downgraded. By demoting the office, he believed that the Administration sent a signal to the national security bureaucracy that reduced the salience of terrorism. No longer would Clarke's memos go to the President; instead they had to pass through a chain of command of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley, who bounced every one of them back.

Within a week of the inauguration, I wrote to Rice and Hadley asking 'urgently' for a Principals, or Cabinet-level, meeting to review the imminent Al-Qaeda threat. Rice told me that the Principals Committee, which had been the first venue for terrorism policy discussions in the Clinton administration, would not address the issue until it had been 'framed' by the Deputies.[17]

The 9/11 Commission reported, in its eighth public hearing:

Clarke asked on several occasions for early principals meetings on these issues and was frustrated that no early meeting was scheduled. No Principals Committee meetings on al-Qaeda were held until September 4th, 2001.[20]

At the first Deputies Committee meeting on terrorism, held in April 2001, Clarke strongly suggested that the U.S. put pressure on both the Taliban and al-Qaeda by arming the Northern Alliance and other groups in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, he said that the US should target bin Laden and his leadership by restoring flights of the MQ-1 Predators. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz responded, "Well, I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden." Clarke replied that he was talking about bin Laden and his network because it posed "an immediate and serious threat to the United States." According to Clarke, Wolfowitz turned to him and said, "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because the FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."[17]

Clarke wrote in Against All Enemies that in the summer of 2001, the intelligence community was convinced of an imminent attack by al-Qaeda, but could not get the attention of the highest levels of the Bush administration.[21] At a July 5, 2001, White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke said that "something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon."[22]

Appointed in 2001 as Special Advisor to the President on Cybersecurity, Clarke spent his last year in the Bush administration focusing on cybersecurity and the threat of terrorism against the critical infrastructure of the United States. At a security conference in 2002, after citing statistics that indicated that less than 0.0025 percent of corporate revenue on average is spent on information-technology security, Clarke was heard to say, "If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, then you will be hacked. What's more, you deserve to be hacked."[23]

Before and after Clarke appeared before the 9/11 Commission, some critics tried to attack his credibility. They impugned his motives, claiming he was a disappointed job-hunter, that he sought publicity, and that he was a political partisan. They charged that he exaggerated perceived failures in the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies while exculpating the former Clinton administration from its perceived shortcomings.[30]

According to some reports, the White House tried to discredit Clarke in a move described as "shooting the messenger."[31] The New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman was more blunt, calling the attacks on Clarke "a campaign of character assassination."[32]

Some Republicans inside and outside the Bush administration questioned both Clarke's testimony and his tenure during the hearings. Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist took to the Senate floor to make a speech alleging Clarke told "two entirely different stories under oath", pointing to congressional hearing testimony Clarke gave in 2002 and his 9/11 Commission testimony. Frist later speculated to reporters Clarke was trading on his former service as a government insider with access to the nation's most valuable intelligence to sell a book.[33]

Clarke was criticized for his suggestions in 1999 of intelligence indicating a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, despite the fact Clarke and others concluded after investigations by 2001 that no link had been established. In Against All Enemies Clarke writes, "It is certainly possible that Iraqi agents dangled the possibility of asylum in Iraq before bin Laden at some point when everyone knew that the U.S. was pressuring the Taliban to arrest him. If that dangle happened, bin Laden's accepting asylum clearly did not," (p. 270). In an interview on March 21, 2004, Clarke claimed that "there's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaeda, ever."[34] Clarke claimed in his book that this conclusion was understood by the intelligence community at the time of 9/11 and the ensuing months, but top Bush administration officials were preoccupied with finding a link between Iraq and 9/11 in the months that followed the attack, and thus, Clarke argued, the Iraq war distracted attention and resources from the war in Afghanistan and hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Fox News, allegedly with the Administration's consent, identified and released a background briefing that Clarke gave in August 2002, at the Administration's request, to minimize the fallout from a Time magazine story about the President's failure to take certain actions before 9/11.[35] In that briefing on behalf of the White House, Clarke stated "there was no plan on Al-Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration," and that after taking office President Bush decided to "add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, fivefold, to go after Al-Qaeda."[36] At the next day's hearing, 9/11 Commission member James Thompson challenged Clarke with the 2002 account, and Clarke explained: "I was asked to make that case to the press. I was a special assistant to the President, and I made the case I was asked to make... I was asked to highlight the positive aspects of what the Administration had done and to minimize the negative aspects of what the Administration had done. And as a special assistant to the President, one is frequently asked to do that kind of thing. I've done it for several Presidents."[24]

Another point of attack was Clarke's role in allowing members of the bin Laden family to fly to Saudi Arabia on September 20, 2001. According to Clarke's statements to the 9/11 Commission, a request was relayed to Clarke from the Saudi embassy to allow the members of the bin Laden family living in the U.S. to fly home. Clarke testified to the commission that he passed this decision in turn to the FBI via Dale Watson, and that the FBI at length sent its approval of the flight to the Interagency Crisis Management Group.[37] However, FBI spokesman John Iannarelli denied that the FBI had a role in approving the flight: "I can say unequivocally that the FBI had no role in facilitating these flights."[38]

Clarke has also exchanged criticism with Michael Scheuer, former chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station at the CIA. When asked to respond to Clarke's claim that Scheuer was "a hothead, a middle manager who really didn't go to any of the cabinet meetings," Scheuer returned the criticism as follows: "I certainly agree with the fact that I didn't go to the cabinet meetings. But I'm certainly also aware that I'm much better informed than Mr. Clarke ever was about the nature of the intelligence that was available against Osama bin Laden and which was consistently denigrated by himself and Mr. Tenet."[39]

On March 28, 2004, at the height of the controversy during the 9/11 Commission Hearings, Clarke went on NBC's Sunday morning news show Meet the Press and was interviewed by journalist Tim Russert. In responding to and rebutting the criticism, Clarke challenged the Bush administration to declassify the whole record, including closed testimony by Bush administration officials before the commission.[40]

As of August 2017, Clarke had been obtaining large amounts of funds, notably $20 million for the Middle East Institute via the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR), an Abu Dhabi-based think tank. The Middle East Institute had been propagating Emirati agendas in Washington and was mentioned in mail leaks of Yousef Al Otaiba, the Emirati ambassador to the US. The Intercept reported that Saif Mohamed Al Hajeri, CEO of Tawazun Holding L.L.C., had been sanctioning the money, larger than the annual budget of the Middle East Institute, on orders of Otaiba.[41]